Leveraging the Results of Strategic Evaluation Systems

While T-TESS incorporates multiple measures to evaluate teacher practice, districts’ implementation of T-TESS has not meaningfully differentiated teacher performance. Strengthening an evaluation system to provide meaningful differentiation enables important results and rewards the most impactful educators. It allows for:

• Equity in access to effective teachers and school leaders: using evaluation data for strategic staffing decisions to ensure students with the highest need have access to effective educators.
• Differentiated professional development: using evaluation data to provide targeted training and support to educators.
• Differentiated compensation: using evaluation data to inform salary levels, not just tenure, so that effective teachers are rewarded with higher compensation.
• Identification of future campus leaders: using evaluation data to identify and support educators for career pathways that lead to leadership positions and retention of effective teachers.
• Improved teacher recruitment: using evaluation data to inform educator recruitment and support.

Additionally, below is the link to the TIA updates including exemplars of TIA submission

https://tiatexas.org/tia-resources/

• TEA SLOs
• National Board Certification in Texas
• Student Growth Performance Standards
• Teacher Observation Performance Standards
• TEA Teacher Incentive Allotment Home

• National Institute for Excellence in Teaching (NIET)

  • Accessing Teacher Incentive Allotment(TIA) Portal 
  • Educator Effectiveness Preparation & Support System (EE PASS)
  • TIA Portal Presentation
  • Contact: support@neit.org

A list of districts that expressed interest in developing a local designation system through the online submission of a letter of intent is posted. The letter of intent was an initial, non-binding expression of interest in potentially pursuing or simply learning more about TIA.

This is not a pre-requisite for applying for TIA, does not represent final cohort status, and does not require previous stakeholder engagement.  Districts can choose to apply under more than one cohort in order to accommodate additional groups of eligible teachers.

ROESC Districts Not Participating in TIA

Edinburg CISD, McAllen CISD*, SantaRosa ISD, United ISD, Valley View ISD

*Note: Project RISE District Partners

List of Rural Campuses

Designated teachers that work on rural campuses will generate greater allotments. A list of rural campuses for the 2019-2020 academic year is now available. 

Cohort A Qualification for TIA Designations,  are as follows:

• 40% T-TESS domain 2 & 3 (3.7 and above)
• 30% SLO (55% or above)
• 20% state tested
• 10% mentor/master teacher

Adjust Framing of SLO to support TIA

• If using as a valid and reliable SGM for TIA:
  • Build in procedures to increase ability of SLO to accurately measure student growth
  • Goal is for student growth ratings using SLOs align with results from TTU statistical data checks

Current Guidance on SLOs

• Phase 1 - Create an SLO
  • Based on “foundational skill” for the course
  • Create Initial Skill Profile/skill rubric
  • Create Targeted Skill Profile/skill rubric
  • Set learning targets for each student
• Phase 2 - Monitor Progress
  • Instruction, collect evidence, analyze data, reflect
  • Multiple sources of evidence
• Phase 3 - Evaluate Success
  • Using Targeted Skill Profile and Student Growth Tracker, determine student progress on targeted growth

Initial Skill Profile and Targeted Skill Profile

• Initial Skill Profile: French II (BOY Skill Levels)
  • Above: Remembers 75% of French I vocabulary, knows present tense with few errors for regular verbs as well as present tense with irregular verbs
  • Typical: Remembers 60% of French I vocabulary, has understanding of most regular verbs in the present tense
  • Below: Remember less than 60% of French I vocabulary, struggles to conjugate regular verbs in the present tense
• Targeted Skill Profile: French II (Expected EOY Skill Levels & Student's Actual EOY Skill Levels)
  • Above: Understands more than 80% of French II vocabulary, conjugates present, past and imperfect, including irregular verbs
  • Typical: Understands all of French I vocabulary and 80% of French II vocabulary, can conjugate in the present, past and imperfect tenses
  • Below: Understands less than 60% of French II vocabulary, conjugates in present tense only

Portfolios as Student Growth Measure

• Work especially well with performance based courses
• Student work products can be varied:
  • Audio or video recordings of student musical, choir or theatrical performances
  • Student art work either scanned digitally or hard copy or both
  • Sample student-created products such as welding, woodwork, etc. 
• Student work assessed against skill proficiency rubric

Best Practices in Assessment Portfolios

Assessments/projects/work products designed to go in the portfolio are:

• Aligned to content standards for the course
• Specify what skill proficiencies are required across a variety of proficiency levels
• Specify what the students have to be able to demonstrate
• Include a rubric that describes what various levels of proficiency look like for all aspects of the task

A “To Do List” for Assessment Portfolios

1. Determine curricular standards/skills to be addressed

2. Design student tasks/assessments/projects that represent content and skill levels students will need to demonstrate (Validity of student tasks is key)

3. Design performance standards that describe in detail what various levels of mastery look like (rubric)

4. Train team of teachers or other professionals to evaluate portfolios using the rubric (Reliability of scoring is key)

Categories of Pre-test/Post-test

• State tests
• Examples: STAAR, Tx KEA
• Tests from outside vendors
• Examples: NWEA MAP, Renaissance STAR
• District-created tests
• Examples: Benchmark BOY, MOY, EOY created locally

Ways to use STAAR tests…

• As a pre-test/post-test
• As the basis for calculating VAM
• As its own predicted growth measure using STAAR Student Progress measure (for applicable courses)

Reseources for Creating Tests

• TEA Formative Assessment Resource
• DMAC, Eduphoria, Released STAAR Questions

• Measures how much progress students make from year to year
• Analyzes students’ current and prior assessment data on a nationally normed test (like STAAR or MAP)
• Looks at a student’s prior testing history, together with data from students with similar testing histories to create a “predicted” score for each student
• A comparison of predicted scores to the actual scores can determine if more, less, or expected amount of growth occurred

VAM: 3 Essential Factors

• Stretch: scale of test must be wide enough to to measure growth at both the highest and lowest achieving levels (differentiate growth across all achievement levels)
• Relevance: the test must align to state standards such that the test actually measures what students are expected to know and do
• Reliability: Scales must be reliable from year to year so that tests can be correlated across the years to determine a predictive relationship

VAM addresses these three areas through research-based modeling

• Measurement Error: Minimizes the effects of measurement error associated with any one test score
• Mobility: Accounts for mobility of students
• Missing Data: Compensates for missing data

Value Added Measures DO NOT EQUAL STAAR Student Progress Measure