Rethinking Teacher Supervision and Evaluation: How to Work Smart, Build Collaboration, and Close the Achievement Gap » (New Edition)

Kim Marshall, a former teacher, principal, and district official in the Boston Public Schools, is an independent professional development consultant working with schools and districts nationally on leadership practices. Marshall writes for educational journals such as Education Week and Phi Delta Kappan and publishes a weekly online newsletter, The Marshall Memo, summarizing the best ideas and research in education.

Rethinking Teacher Supervision and Evaluation

How to Work Smart, Build Collaboration, and Close the Achievement Gap

Kim Marshall

Rethinking Teacher Supervision and Evaluation

In this important book, education expert Kim Marshall shows how to break away from the typical and often ineffective evaluation approaches in which principals use infrequent classroom visits or rely on standardized test scores to assess a teacher's performance. Marshall proposes a broader framework for supervision and evaluation that enlists teachers in improving the performance of all students.

Emphasizing trust-building and teamwork, Marshall's innovative, four-part framework shifts the focus from periodically evaluating teaching to continuously analyzing learning. This book offers school principals a guide for implementing Marshall's framework and shows how to make frequent, informal classroom visits followed by candid feedback to each teacher; work with teacher teams to plan thoughtful curriculum units rather than focusing on individual lessons; get teachers as teams involved in low-stakes analysis of interim assessment results to fine-tune their teaching and help struggling students; and use compact rubrics for summative teacher evaluation.

This vital resource also includes extensive tools and advice for managing time as well as ideas for using supervision and evaluation practices to foster teacher professional development.

Praise for Rethinking Teacher Supervision and Evaluation

"Here is the right book at the right time for practitioners, policymakers, and parents from an ex-principal who did in his school exactly what the title says."

—Larry Cuban, professor emeritus of education, Stanford University

"Kim Marshall is among the wisest, most insightful educators of our time—and one of the best writers in the business. I highly recommend Rethinking Teacher Supervision and Evaluation to anyone seeking clear, practical advice on effective leadership practices, based on Marshall's hard-won and successful experiences as a school leader."

—Mike Schmoker, speaker and author of Results Now

Acknowledgments xi

Introduction xiii

1 The Challenge: Closing the Achievement Gap 1

2 Supervision and Evaluation: Why We Need a New Approach 19

3 Mini-Observations 1: A System Is Born 41

4 Mini-Observations 2: Suggested Best Practices 65

5 Curriculum Design: The Foundation of Good Teaching 89

6 Interim Assessments: Using Results to Continuously Improve Instruction 113

7 Rubrics: Potent, Time-Efficient Evaluation Tools 139

8 Time Management: Doing First Things First 177

9 Putting It All Together 199

Appendix A A Slim Curriculum Expectations Booklet 209

Appendix B Principal Evaluation Rubrics 223

Bibliography 239

The Author 247

Index 249