![Best Practices at Tier 1 [Secondary] - Gayle Gregory](/cover_679455.jpg "Best Practices at Tier 1 [Secondary] - Gayle Gregory")
Teacher evaluation and merit pay: Many states are attempting to improve teaching through a more demanding teacher evaluation process, the use of merit pay to reward teachers who demonstrate above-average results, or both. In reality, there is no evidence that either incentive-laden or overly punitive teacher evaluation processes will significantly improve instruction. In actuality, teacher evaluations do not recognize good teaching, leave poor teaching unaddressed, and do not inform decision making in any meaningful way (Weisberg, Sexton, Mulhern, & Keeling, 2009). Additionally, three out of four teachers report that their evaluation process has virtually no impact on their classroom practice (Duffett, Farkas, Rotherham, & Silva, 2008). Likewise, research consistently concludes that merit pay does not improve student achievement or change teacher behavior in a positive way. It may actually contribute to declines in student learning, as it is typically abandoned within a few years of implementation (Pfeffer & Sutton, 2006).
As you can see, each of these efforts to improve core instruction has failed to result in high-leverage education practices. There are two primary reasons for these failures. First, the reforms have focused on the wrong outcome—ultimately, the goal of education reform is not to improve teaching but to increase student learning. While this difference might sound like semantics to some, in reality, it represents a seismic shift in thinking, as the effectiveness of any given teaching strategy can only be determined by evidence of its impact on student learning (DuFour & Marzano, 2011). When the goal of education reform was to improve teaching, we could logically assume that instruction could improve if teachers were required to meet more rigorous credentials and evaluation expectations, utilize research-based textbook programs, differentiate instruction in their classroom, and expect to receive bonus pay when they achieved better-than-average results in their students’ learning outcomes. However, when compared to the criteria of increased student learning, all of these efforts to improve teaching fail miserably to hit the mark—wrong target, wrong result.
Second, these previous education reform efforts view teaching as primarily an individual act. That is, they assume that teaching is what each teacher does in his or her own classroom. When teaching is framed this way, then the perceived solution is to train, observe, evaluate, entice, bribe, reward, threaten, dictate, or coach each teacher into individually providing better performance—the basis of failed reform efforts previously described. We can assume that individuals with good intentions advocated, and often mandated, this litany of unsuccessful reform efforts. But as Jim Collins (2009) says in his book How the Mighty Fall, “Bad decisions made with good intentions are still bad decisions” (p. 148).
If coaching individual teachers into better performance has failed to significantly increase student achievement, then how does a school strengthen its core instructional program to ensure higher levels of student learning? What we will advocate for in this book, and describe in great detail, is that good teaching is not an individual act but instead a collaborative process. Good teaching is not “what I do for my students” but instead “what we do with our students.” The PLC at Work process will create the framework for teacher-to-teacher collaboration, and effective differentiated instruction will engage students to be partners in learning. A review of what we know about good teaching will prove these points.
Synthesizing What We Know About Good Teaching
Based on comprehensive meta-analyses of the research on effective teaching, as well as decades of site evidence on the effectiveness of previous reform efforts, the teaching profession has never had greater consensus on what constitutes good teaching—and what does not. We know that effective teaching cannot be reduced to a single template, rubric, or checklist aligned to program fidelity, because there is no such thing as a universally effective teaching strategy, methodology, or textbook series (DuFour & Mattos, 2013). In fact, any approach that assumes such universality fails to provide teachers with the professional autonomy inherent in the art of teaching. Furthermore, requiring teachers to implement a lockstep core instructional program often restricts their flexibility, making it extremely difficult to differentiate curriculum, instruction, and assessments to meet individual student needs in the classroom.
Yet, allowing the instructional pendulum to swing completely the opposite direction, by giving teachers complete autonomy over their instructional decisions, is an equally ineffective approach to improve core instruction. As Hattie (2009) notes, “Not all teachers are effective, not all teachers are experts, and not all teachers have powerful effects on students” (p. 34). There are instructional practices that are proven to be highly effective and many that are not. Any school dedicated to ensuring that all students learn at high levels cannot assume that each faculty member has the knowledge, skill, or inclination to consistently use these proven practices in his or her classroom.
Based on these facts, we know that effective instruction requires an expectation that all teachers use practices proven to have the greatest impact on student learning, while simultaneously infusing their own style and offering differentiated instruction for individual student needs. The key to achieving this outcome lies in identifying and leveraging the right practices—the best practices for the kind of instruction that all students must receive, regardless of what teachers they are assigned to for core instruction. To this end, the research is abundantly clear: good teaching requires a collaborative effort. Teachers must work in collaborative teams and take collective responsibility for their students’ learning. Lastly, teachers must work collaboratively with their students to engage everyone in the learning process.
Harnessing the Power of Collaborative Teams
Organizations get better results when people work collaboratively. This universal truth certainly applies to schools and the collaborative approach to good teaching. In his study of factors that most impact student learning, Hattie’s (2009) first recommendation for increasing student achievement is for teachers to work collaboratively instead of in isolation. Hattie’s recommendation recognizes—and experience and common sense confirm—that there is no way an individual teacher has all the time, all the skills, and all the knowledge necessary to meet every student’s individual needs. The only way a school staff can achieve the mission of enabling the highest level of learning for all students is by leveraging their combined skills (DuFour, DuFour, Eaker, & Many, 2010).
If improved student learning requires a collective effort, then collaborative teacher teams are the engines that drive effective core instruction. By team, we do not mean loosely connected groups that assemble for traditional grade-level, department, faculty, or parent-conference meetings. Instead, to be effective, educators in teaching teams must work collaboratively to achieve the common goal of shared essential student learning outcomes. Ronald Gallimore and his colleagues find that “to be successful, teams need to set and share goals to work on that are immediately applicable to their classrooms. Without such goals, teams will drift toward superficial discussions and truncated efforts” (Gallimore, Ermeling, Saunders, & Goldenberg, 2009, p. 548). Subsequently, collaborative teams share essential student learning outcomes. Their structure could include grade-level, subject- or course-specific, vertical, or interdisciplinary teams. These common learning goals are what unite and focus the work of each teacher team.
While forming the right teacher teams is the first step in improving student achievement, just having teachers meet together does not create the collaborative effort necessary for improved teaching and learning. Teacher teams must focus their collective efforts on the instructional practices proven to best increase student achievement. This right work can be captured in the four critical questions of the PLC at Work process (DuFour et al., 2010).
1. What do we want our students to learn?
2. How will we know if our students are learning?
3. How will we respond when students don’t learn?
4. How will we respond when they do?
Let’s
