Research On Texas Teacher Evaluation And Support System

Teacher quality is related to the country's education quality,and teacher evaluation plays an important role in promoting the improvement of teacher quality.More and more countries have made efforts in teacher evaluation reform.The new century,with the promotion and encouragement of teacher policies,the teacher evaluation reform has achieved satisfactory results in America,also some states have formed a special teacher evaluation system,which has been introduced and recommended by scholars from different countries to enrich the theory of teacher evaluation about their countries.The enactment of The Every Student Succeeds Act in 2015 combined teacher evaluation with teacher professional development closely,and regarded teacher professional development as a part of the continuous improvement process,indicating the direction for the development of American teacher evaluation in the new era.In the spring of 2014,the Texas teacher steering committee set an evaluation system tied to the teacher standards,which is the Texas Teacher Evaluation and Support System(T-TESS).It replaces the Professional Development and Appraisal System(PDAS).T-TESS is a new teacher evaluation system for Texas that supports teachers' professional development and helps them to grow and improve as educators.It covers not only the evaluation of teacher performance,but also the support for teacher professional development.T-TESS aims to provide continuous,timely and targeted feedback for teacher,and create a continuous improvement cycle for teachers and administrators.T-TESS can support teachers' professional development and promote students' progress,improve the quality of teachers by continuous evaluation and support.The main personnel involved in the implementation of T-TESS are the district leaders who are responsible for the implementation,appraisers and observers for observation and evaluation,and teachers receiving evaluation.In the process of evaluation,teachers are not passive recipients of evaluation,but active participants of evaluation.Teachers have the right to set their own development goals with appraisers and participate the discussion about their evaluation results.The appraiser must obtain the corresponding qualification certificate to attend the training on time,then they can carry on the appraisal for teacher.Evaluation contents include two aspects: teacher performance and student growth.According to the collected evidence,appraiser will give a fair and reasonable performance rating to the teacher by contrasting the teacher performance rating criteria and the student learning objective rating criteria and get the final evaluation rating.The final evaluation rating from high to low are Distinguished,Accomplished,Proficient,Developing and Improvement.Compared with PDAS,T-EESS has higher requirements for teacher.Those who fail to meet certain requirements will not be able to obtain the " Proficient " rating,which is the qualified standard.The implementation process is successively as follows: providing high-quality training for participants,consulting goals and professional development plan between teachers and appraisers,holding pre-conference between teachers and appraisers before observation,formal and informal classroom observation by appraisers on teachers,clarifying reinforcement area and refinement area for teachers in post-conference,holding end-of-year conference before the end of the school year for the final evaluation of teachers.The six evaluation steps are interrelated.The goal set for teachers in the end-of-year conference will become the direction of teachers' efforts in the new school year.In 2016-2017 school year,T-TESS was promoted throughout the Texas,and all regions implemented it in a planned and targeted way.T-TESS combines evaluation with teacher professional development.It not only makes an objective evaluation of teachers,but also provides support for them and helps them to improve.It is a typical case of teacher evaluation and support system in the new era.The study of T-TESS will inject new impetus into the development of teacher evaluation in our country.