How the Pandemic Changed Our Thinking about Teacher Evaluation

The deputy superintendent of an intermediate education agency on focusing staff performance reviews on student engagement

Amid the school closures and other learning disruptions stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic, half of all states adjusted their teacher evaluation requirements. Many were forced to eschew student growth as a component because either students did not take the standardized tests used to measure growth or because learning outcomes had become so unpredictable that growth scores were largely meaningless.

At Ulster Board of Cooperative Education Services located in New York state’s Hudson Valley, we believe the focus of teacher evaluations should be on providing meaningful feedback and supporting the professional growth of our teachers. When confronted with a need to update our evaluation system in light of the pandemic, we saw an opportunity to align evaluations with those goals.