Measuring Growth of Students With Disabilities

Focus: Special Education

A report called “The Widget Effect,” issued by the New Teacher Project in 2009, contended fewer than 1 percent of the teachers it studied were rated as unsatisfactory through their schools’ evaluation protocols. “The disconnect between teacher evaluation systems and actual teacher performance is most strikingly illustrated by the wide gap between student outcomes and teacher ratings in many districts,” the report said.

In Michigan, teacher evaluation systems tied to student growth have undergone significant legislative-induced change, sparked in part by the federal Race to the Top initiative.

At the regional education service agency where I worked as associate superintendent until last summer, I oversaw the administration and staff at a school for students with significant disabilities. Michigan’s teacher evaluation requirements also apply to staff responsible for educating these students. This presented a huge challenge for us, as assessments for these students are not as comprehensive and appropriate for the purpose of measuring student growth as those for students who plan to receive a high school diploma, with and without disabilities.

With the new law in Michigan, we revised our teacher evaluation system to include rubrics defining what constituted highly effective, effective, minimally effective and ineffective, as well as measures of student growth. I convened a committee of teachers and administrators who worked with students with significant impairments. We included school staff in neighboring counties as part of this work, allowing for a broader and more heterogeneous perspective.

Multiple Domains

The group convened over several months facilitated by a teacher leader and me. The group read research about teacher evaluation, especially for those teaching students with disabilities. Participants shared their learning as we developed the system. One key component everyone agreed on was that the system had to represent overall achievement but also the specific needs of individual students.

Next we identified the assessment tools staff were using to measure student progress. Our desire was to comprehensively measure student growth across multiple domains. When the list of assessments was complete, it included standardized assessments, state assessments, locally developed assessments and individual education plans’ goals and objectives. The latter’s use as part of teacher evaluation was the most highly debated topic in the process. In the end, we agreed they would not be included as they belonged to individual students and posed an inadvertent risk of developing goals better suited to teacher need than student need.

Finally, we developed a method for calculating growth with this broad range of assessments. We determined all teacher evaluations would be based on classroomwide student growth goals in the areas of English language arts and math. Measures could include locally developed, standardized, informal or state assessments.

In addition, teachers would develop goals for students in their classrooms in the other areas of need such as behavior, communication and daily living. These goals could encompass smaller groups of children as long as all of the students were included in at least one of these goals. We determined the method and percentages for each effectiveness rating.

Upon completion, we had a comprehensive system for teacher evaluation that included observations in the classroom, portfolios that teachers would develop to demonstrate how they were addressing each component and a student-growth measure appropriate for this population of students. Plans were made to roll out the system to staff and include a feedback period and revisions.

Contributing Factors

Looking back after several years of implementing this system, I feel these components contributed to a successful outcome of the project.

• We convened practitioners who were skilled in the instruction of students with significant disabilities and broadened our perspective by reaching out to neighboring areas.


• We read the latest research and read the opinions.


• We created a community that allowed for sharing of perspectives, questioning and resolutions. We had open, honest dialogue.


• We were supported in our work by the service agency, which put resources behind it.


• We involved front-line staff and used their input.

As the administrator in charge of making sure we were evaluating our staff fairly in a way that recognized everyone’s skills and informed us of the growth of staff and students, I saw this as an amazing process. At the outset, we were unsure if our task was possible. We concluded with extreme pride in our work. Teacher evaluation can be a highly emotional topic. Our process created a culture that kept the right perspective, one focusing all of us on continuous growth.