RISE and the "Eye Test"

Beyond RISE and Assigning Numbers...

In Glen Hopkins blog post, "Teacher Evaluation: The Ground Floor, the author discusses several foundational topics that contribute to a teacher rating in the RISE evaluation system under the professionalism category.  Hopkins makes the claim that these practices are either a "you do them or you don't" situation, and moreover, they are the cornerstone to obtaining a solid rating in being deemed a professional.  First, I absolutely agree with Hopkins.  I believe the things that he discusses in the blog are key to determining that a teacher is acting professionally on a day in and day out basis.  Second, and more important, I think this opens up a great debate about going beyond simply scoring what one observes in the classroom.  As we have discussed in our class, there are data points, and then there are observations that help you determine a clearer picture of a situation, or as Hopkins discusses, using the "eye test".  In this response I will discuss why applying this is so important to understanding the totality of how effective a teacher is and can be in the building based on using the layout Hopkins addresses in his blog.

I spent 3 years in the classroom and left to enter back into private business.  At the time I left the administration in the building was evaluating teachers off of a district approved rubric.  We had pre and post observation conferences and the feedback was shared with the teacher in the post observation meeting.  The system allowed for what many believed to be "favoritism", or in other words it was easy for the admin to skew the ratings depending on how well he/she got along with the teacher.  When I returned to the classroom a few years later, the building principal I was working with began telling me about RISE by illustrating that the bias of the old system was effectively being removed during an observation.  This new system was simply a check off, either the admin observed the domain being executed, or they didn't.  While this sounding appealing, and certainly seemed to eliminate the cronyism that may have existed, I was worried about the full picture of how a teacher was preforming.  

After reading the blog post by Hopkins, I can say I certainly agree with the statements he makes about the professionalism core.  This is a great example of what we have looked at in Module 7.  This can be a very difficult thing to implement and discuss in education today.  It seems that every decision is data driven, every call on a student comes down to looking at data, every evaluation of teacher comes down to data.  However, there has to be a place for the "eye test' as Hopkins says.  Being a college football fan, this has been a topic of discussion as well.  There are about 8 teams that are vying for 4 spots to get into a playoff.  All or most of these teams have very similar resumes in terms of win/loss record, strength of schedule, etc, so it almost seems like we are splitting hairs with who is considered to be one of the top 4.  However, the reality is that about 3 to 4 of these teams will be left out of a chance to play for a championship.  This is where several commentators have discussed applying the eyeball test.  This typically refers to analyzing what a team does well, how they handle situations, etc. or in other words, looking at things that numbers cannot tell you.  In fact, Hopkins addresses this in his blog.  I think this is vital and can often times give the admin or evaluator a sense of worth in the process.  When we boil everything down to simple black and white, numbers only decisions, we can and often do overlook very important aspects of what makes someone effective.

At the end of the day there is a saying in sports "The back of baseball cards don't lie."  This meaning that if a guy is in a huge slump, but is a career .300 hitter, at some point, it will even out.  I absolutely believe this.  However, having coached basketball and now as a Technology Integration Specialist, I can tell you that there are times that I have observed teachers who might "score" lower than what their potential really is, or I can sense that something may have them simply in a slump as well.  If I did not have that latitude to take that into consideration, I might overlook and not see that potential in someone.