The following is a summary of information covered in the ‘traveling show’:
At some point soon you will be notified of the date for your end-of-year evaluation.
- You will need to prepare for that meeting by completing a self-evaluation on the 60 Marshall rubric criteria.
- At 9:00 am, three working days prior to that meeting, you will send this self-evaluation to your Principal through t-eval (and he/she will send you his/her evaluation of you)
- Not only will you see your Principal’s evaluation of you, but there will be another screen to identify all criteria on which you and your Principal differ
- Your end-of-year evaluation will focus only the criteria on which you differ.
If there are only a few criteria on which you and your Principal disagree, the meeting will probably be short. If you disagree on many criteria, and see the need for more time, then ask for it. It might take as many as 2 or 3 meetings to complete your evaluation and we’ve been assured by district administration that time will be provided.
- Your Principal/Supervisor should be aware that he/she needs observable, written data to justify any LTTs (scores of Less Than Three), otherwise you should be getting a 3, unless you can prove to them, with documentation, that you should be a 4. This is a key point to stress: it’s incumbent upon Administration to provide written documentation to prove that you deserve an LTT score; it’s up to you to prove with documentation that you deserve a 4. Without documentation on either side, you should be a three (unless you both verbally agree that you’re a four even without documentation).
- Administration must have hard data to support LTTs. This means something that was noted in writing, and you should ask for that. It was noted by administration at a District Evaluation Advisory Committee meeting (DEAC) that teachers should already know if they may be getting an LTT – meaning that there is already some kind of written comment/notification in your possession. It cannot be something an administrator claims they “saw” but didn’t comment on at the time. If they don’t have it during the meeting but insist that they are giving you an LTT, ask for them to email/send you the documentation.
- If you give yourself a four (and your Principal has you as a three – or lower), it’s now up to you to prove that you are a four. Bring necessary documentation to the meeting for that. Remember, your administrator only observed you for 60-100 minutes throughout the course of the year – certainly you can find something from the other 39,900 minutes that you taught…
- Of course, it’s probably a good idea to bring written documentation of your work in areas your administrator identifies you with an LTT. Even though the onus is on them to prove with documentation that you’re an LTT, your documentation might help them to see that they’re not seeing the full picture.
In the final analysis, we cannot stop administration from giving an LTT without documentation, but if they fail to provide hard data that you find convincing, then you should definitely note that in your rebuttal. The rebuttal will be your official statement of their failure to follow identified procedures.
- However, if your overall evaluation score (SGP + SGO + Eval) is greater than a 2.65, there is no need to do anything more than note any failure to provide convincing documentation in your rebuttal. If you are evaluated with a score over 2.65 you will be rated as Effective (or Highly Effective) and it’s over for this year. Your pride may be injured with some 2’s that you don’t agree with, but as long as you are rated with an overall score of 2.65 or higher, you have a job, an increment, and are moving into next year in perfect shape.
Finally, note how PROCESS is the key to the entire evaluation drama:
- NJEA experts have concluded that our only hope to fight for fairness is to make sure that administration follows the legal and contractual process for evaluations. And this is why the observation logs we gave out at the start of the year are so important. You must be observed a certain number of times, administrators must stay for at least 10 minutes, your post-observation conference is supposed to be held within 24-48 hours of the observation, the t-eval summary should be posted within 5 days, and you should not be observed again until all this happens. Failures of process should be documented on your observation log.
- We know there have been violations of process, but none of that matters as long as we are rated Effective or Highly Effective. Any and all documentation that you have that administration failed to follow the proper process will only matter if you’re rated Partially Effective or Ineffective TWO YEARS in a ROW. In such a case, tenure charges kick in – and we can use all their failure of process in our defense.
- As angry and frustrated as you may be to receive LTTs when you believe you don’t deserve them, we aren’t going to legally challenge those individual criteria ratings because no official ‘harm’ has been done if the final rating is Effective or Highly Effective.
However, if you are rated Partially Effective or Ineffective, see your Head Rep immediately – and he/she will contact us.