In 2014-15, ESE brought eight districts together to form a professional learning network to support educator evaluators. These districts developed and/or refined strategies to support the capacity of their evaluators, and each district implemented a new initiative. Some focused on promoting a culture of growth, while others focused on improving the efficiency of their evaluation systems or the quality of their observations and feedback. A new interactive document called “On-Track with Evaluator Capacity” tells the story of the network and includes specific strategies, lessons learned, and links to district-created resources. The Department encourages educators to review the document (the tabs and buttons make it easy to navigate) and consider how the eight districts’ strategies can support ongoing refinement of the educator evaluation system in their district. More information about the network is on the ESEwebsite.
The Department would like to thank the teams from Berkshire Hills, Erving School Union 28, Greater Lawrence Technical School, Hadley, Marblehead Community Charter, Monson, Northbridge, and Weymouth for all they contributed to the network and to evaluator capacity.