Evaluations on RISE

Thanks to a new law and statewide education reform, Jay Schools is in the process of adopting a new evaluation system for educators.
Indiana Public Law 90, which went into effect on July 1, 2011, states among other things, that teachers must undergo an annual performance evaluation. For Jay School Corporation, this means the adoption of a new evaluation program — RISE — two new positions at the administrative level and a year of teacher training.
RISE is a state-developed evaluation system that any school throughout the state is allowed to use or modify to stay in compliance with the state law. While RISE isn’t the only option — schools could also design a program of their own — Dr. Wood Barwick, assistant superintendent of Jay School Corporation, said he believed it was the one state officials wanted schools to adopt. He also noted that RISE came already designed and ready to use, and that he believed it would be the best choice for making sure the corporation stayed in compliance with the law.
Dr. Tim Long, superintendent of Jay School Corporation agreed, saying RISE is a proven and acceptable system to “meet what the law says to meet.”
With the decision to use RISE came two new positions — RISE coordinators who are overseeing the implementation of the new system. Trent Paxson, the former principal at Judge Haynes Elementary, is the RISE coordinator at the elementary and junior high levels. Jeremy Gulley, former principal at Jay County and Huntington North high schools, is the RISE coordinator at the high school level.
As coordinators, Paxson and Gulley are training teachers this year in preparation of the full adoption of the RISE evaluation system, which will be implemented for the 2013-2014 school year.
They get to spend this year practicing. “(Teachers and administrators) are getting used to RISE,” Barwick said. “We’re doing practice RISE (this year).”
 “(The teachers) are informed and we can get a lot of questions answered before going into it,” Paxson said. “We’re being proactive.”
The two RISE coordinators are doing more than just answering questions.
They are helping Jay School Corporation meet the requirements put forth by IPL 90 and working to make sure both teachers and administrators understand what is expected from them under the new evaluation system.
“Our main focus is to train teachers about what is required out of RISE to fulfill public law 90,” said Paxson.
The law says that teachers must be evaluated and placed into one of four different categories — highly effective, effective, improvement necessary or ineffective. The final ranking of each teacher will be determined by his or her performance on three or four different components (models are slightly different for teachers who don’t have ISTEP-tested subjects), each graded on a one-to-four point scale. Each of the components will be weighted to reflect its perceived importance (see graphic) and teachers will receive a cumulative score.
A teacher receiving a total score of 1.75 or lower will be rated “ineffective”. Those with ratings from 1.75 to 2.5 will rated “improvement necessary” with those from 2.5 to 3.5 as “effective” and 3.5 to 4 as “highly effective”.
Two main factors will be part of the evaluation.
The first of those is professional practice, which is comprised of teacher evaluation rubrics (TER) and a school wide learning measure (SWL). The other is student learning, comprised of individual growth models (IGM) for students — based on standardized test results — and student learning objectives (SLO).
According to Gulley, one of the biggest differences between RISE and the evaluations that the schools have done previously is the inclusion of the individual growth model (IGM), which tracks students’ ISTEP scores in third through eighth grade or their end of course assessment (ECA) scores for English and Math in tenth grade. The IGM will account for 35 percent of the evaluation for those who teach more than half of their classes in ISTEP-tested subjects and 20 percent for those who teach less than half of their classes in those areas. For teachers without IGM data, it won’t factor into their score.
“The biggest change is that student learning is part of a teacher’s evaluation,” Gulley said, noting that the goal is to hold teachers responsible for what their students are learning in as objective a way as possible.
The largest chunk of the evaluation, however, will be the teacher evaluation rubric (TER).
The TER is broken down into three main categories, weighted based on perceived importance: instruction (75 percent), leadership (15 percent) and planning (10 percent). Scores in each of these categories (one to four) will be combined and weighted accordingly to create the teacher’s final score on the TER, which will account for between 50 and 75 percent of the overall evaluation.
The SLO is worth between 10 and 20 percent of a teacher’s evaluation, based on how many IGM classes they teach.
There are two types of SLOs on which teachers will be graded — class and targeted. The class SLO is a mastery goal based on the students’ starting point for the entire class, while the targeted a growth and/or mastery goal that focused on group of students at a low level of preparedness.
A class SLO can be measured by how many students pass an end-of-the-year assessment, such as ISTEP. Teachers that don’t have a state-created test like ISTEP must have their final assessment approved by their building principal. Gulley said the school corporation is encouraging teachers within the same content area across the corporation to work together to create the same test so that all students within the district are testing over the same material.
A targeted SLO is measured by how much progress low-level students make in a class. For example, if a high school English teacher is able to move a student from a sixth grade reading level to an eighth grade reading level (based on results from an objective assessment), the teacher would receive high marks on his or her targeted SLO.
The SWL, which counts for 5 percent of each teacher’s score, is based on the grade each school receives from the state. For most Jay County schools, that grade was an A in 2012.
The new system will drastically increase the amount of time principals and other evaluators spend in the classroom.
To grade the teacher on his or her TER, evaluators will make five separate visits to every teacher’s classroom each year. Two of the evaluations will be 40 minutes or longer, and the other three will be 10 minutes or longer.
RISE calls for a primary and a secondary evaluator, in order to bring checks and balances into the system to keep subjective judgments from potentially clouding a teacher’s overall score. The primary evaluator will be each building’s principal in the large majority of cases. At the high school level, due to time constraints, Principal Phil Ford may receive help in observing some of his teachers from Chad Dodd, dean of students, and athletic director Bob Lutton’s eventual replacement.
Gulley and Paxson will work as secondary evaluators to try and keep objectivity in the evaluation and to help principals with the additional time requirements.
In the previous system, one-third of all teachers were evaluated each year on a rotating basis. Under RISE, all teachers will be evaluated every year.
Evaluators and teachers are also required to hold a conference following the 40-minute-plus observations, and written feedback is required to be given to the teacher within five days. Written feedback must be provided to teachers within two days of the shorter evaluation periods.
“The impact in terms of time commitment will be dramatic,” said Ford, who has also served as assistant principal in both the dean and athletics director positions, noting that outgoing Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett said 85 percent of a principal’s time should be spent in the classroom under RISE.
Tom Jerles, principal at Redkey Elementary, and Andy Schemenaur, principal at East Elementary, both said the extra time principals will spend in the classroom will require a more structured day.
“I’ll have to build a schedule and stick to it,” Jerles said, adding that other issues elementary principals often deal with, such as discipline, may have to be put on the back burner or handled by someone else. “(The observation) is a high priority.”
Schemenaur had similar concerns, noting that discipline is important and that “you have to support the teachers and the school first.”
Ford, Jerles and Schemenaur all said they believe teachers are becoming more comfortable with the system as they gain more knowledge about it. But Barwick said it’s not being universally accepted.
“It’s painful to a lot of people,” Barwick said. “Academic freedom (for teachers) is diminishing right now. … It’s guidelines, rubrics, blueprints. That’s what we’re getting graded on now.”
And many schoolteachers across the state recently campaigned against Dr. Bennett, who was a driving force behind IPL 90 and education reform in the state.
But as the school corporation looks to the future, it seems unlikely that RISE is going anywhere soon. Gulley and Paxson said they plan on learning, making adjustments and refining RISE in the coming years. They want to work with teachers to provide professional development and work to improve techniques to help them stay on the high end of the evaluation.
“We are definitely open to teachers’ ideas on how to implement RISE,” Gulley said. “That’s a fact.”

For more information on RISE, call Paxson at the JSC administrative offices at (260) 726-9341 or Gulley at JCHS at (260) 726-9306. More information can also be found online at www.riseindiana.org or by visiting the Indiana Department of Education’s website at www.doe.in.gov and searching “RISE.” Jay School Corporation is also offering a RISE seminar for its school board members and interested members of the public on Dec. 3 at 6 p.m. at the JSC administrative offices, 1976 W. Tyson Road.

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