Denverpost.com Public Schools

FOCUS-GLOBAL.CO.CC-An effective teacher will ask students to explain their answers whether they are right or wrong. Effective teachers also wait about 3 to 5 seconds for students to respond, but will give more time to students who are English language learners.

Those are part of the specifics outlined in a 28-page rubric that will be used to evaluate teacher effectiveness at Denver Public Schools using a new framework two years in the making. A pilot version of the framework, called Leading Effective Academic Practice, or LEAP, has been sent out for testing in 16 DPS schools this month.

"We have to roll it out to see how it works, but we really hope it will help us identify our highest performers so we can learn from them and spread that knowledge to the lower-performing teachers who need support," said Tracy Dorland, executive director of educator effectiveness for DPS.

DPS will implement LEAP districtwide in August after revisions are made following feedback from the trial run this spring.

Under the new system, teachers will be evaluated in part based on four observations per semester — two from their principal, and two from peer observers — a change from being observed once every three years.

Peer observers such as Darby Brady are former teachers hired specifically to do 30- to 45-minute classroom observations and to provide teachers with feedback.

Room to grow

Brady, who has been a teacher for seven years, took the job because she said teachers need more feedback.

"The system didn't give me a lot of next steps for growth, and I really wanted that," Brady said. "I didn't want to think that I had reached the best I could be in a few years and that was it."

Peer observers will be matched to observe teachers who teach students similar to those they did and will also "keep a foot in the classroom" as mentors to a first-year teacher.

While teachers are wary of the stringencies of the new framework, many are excited that they will have evaluations from someone who is a teacher.

Mary Kalinowski, a third-grade teacher at Greenlee K-8 school, already has been observed in a pre-pilot trial run of the peer observations.

"I was able to go back that same afternoon and implement some of what she suggested," Kalinowski said. "It's hard to look at yourself, but she pointed out things I wasn't even thinking about."

Pam Shamburg has heard a broader array of feelings, being a Denver Classroom Teachers Association liaison and manager of the LEAP pilot.

"There's apprehension, but they are willing to see how it works," Shamburg said. "Most of the apprehension is not about LEAP itself, it's about old hurt," Shamburg said. "Teachers wonder how much they're valued by the district."

Besides the observations, the total evaluation of a teacher will consider student perceptions, and overall professional collaboration with parents and colleagues.

The largest factor, student performance, will make up 50 percent of evaluations, as is now mandated by a Colorado law passed last year (SB191).

The framework for that portion has not yet been designed, but LEAP leaders said it will likely be based on more than one assessment.

The state department of education also is currently in the process of redefining its own guidelines for what it means to be an effective teacher.

A panel of 15 people, including teachers, union members and administrators, will work through the year to come up with a framework.

"The hope is we can provide something for the state," Dorland said. "Not that they implement our system, but that we can learn from this and share that information with others."

No consequences yet

For the time being, LEAP does not connect a less-than-effective rating with any negative consequences.

Dorland expects the framework will eventually contain a growth model for teachers to improve, at which time consequences and rewards would be used as incentives.

"In this model it would also be important that the district can be held co-accountable if teachers are failing to grow," Dorland said. "They need to be supporting people to reach that bar. This is about growth."