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Evaluation and Professional Development

July 11, 2005

Schools across the U.S. struggle to address critical learning gaps, and to identify ways to improve quality of teaching for all students. Evaluation can play an important role in teacher professional development and in policy changes. But in many schools evaluation is haphazard and is framed through the principal's cognitive lens, rather than by any particular evaluation instrument. Recent research by UW-Madison education professor Carolyn Kelley and graduate student Victoria Maslow found that evaluation in several schools, particularly in large, diverse, urban high schools, was haphazard. Across the schools, few experienced teachers identified evaluation feedback as useful in advancing their professional learning. Most teachers identified students as the primary source of feedback, and colleagues secondarily. Only in two of the seven schools did teachers indicate that professional development was an important source of teacher learning. This study suggests a need for continued examination of the human resource management of high school teachers and ways that feedback mechanisms can advance teacher learning, especially for experienced teachers.