EDUCATEAlabama Orientation Module

Teacher Orientation Module

LESSON 1: MAJOR CHANGES FROM PEPE

The need for a new teacher evaluation system was dictated by the fact that there are state adopted teacher performance standards – the “Alabama Quality Teaching Standards” (AQTS). These standards will be the foundation for both teacher evaluation and teacher professional development in the years ahead. The process of revising the evaluation system to address the new standards also provided the opportunity to address many of the concerns about the Professional Education Personnel Evaluation (PEPE) system that have been expressed by teachers and administrators in recent years. The new evaluation system is streamlined in several ways and its focus/purpose is quite different.

EDUCATEAlabama is a strictly formative evaluation system designed to provide data about a teacher’s current practices measured against the AQTS that can be used to set expectations, goals, and plans for teacher professional growth.
EDUCATEAlabama uses verbiage aligned with the Alabama Continuum for Teacher Development. Instead of numerical scores/ratings, levels of practice identified in the evaluation process are designated as Emerging, Applying, Integrating or Innovating.
EDUCATEAlabama addresses the five AQTS and 39 related indicators. The new evaluation process employs holistic descriptions of practice. The number of forms used in the evaluation process has been minimized. Levels of practice appear only on the Collaborative Summary Report.
EDUCATEAlabama’s Continua (series of 39 continuums – one per indicator within 5 standards) are used to define levels of teacher practice. The EDUCATEAlabama Continua are very similar to those of the Alabama Continuum for Teacher Development used in the Alabama Mentoring Program. The EDUCATEAlabama Continuums have four levels of practice rather than the five defined in the Teacher Development Continuum.
EDUCATEAlabama includes teacher self-assessment, based on the Alabama Quality Teaching Standards, as are all other data collection instruments and procedures
EDUCATEAlabama includes a minimum of two unannounced observations for all teachers. Anecdotal notes are used to record observational data.
EDUCATEAlabama also uses Dialogues and Principal Data as data collection procedures in areas that are not observable in the classroom.
EDUCATEAlabama builds a Collaborative Summary Report (CSR) compiling all data gathered during the evaluation process. The appropriate continuum in the EDUCATEAlabama Continua is applied to the data/information available for each indicator to determine the levels of practice exhibited during a full evaluation year.
At the conclusion of the EDUCATEAlabama process, evaluator and teacher will collaboratively develop the CSR and a Professional Learning Plan (PLP.)

Each of the elements of EDUCATEAlabama summarized here is more fully explained in subsequent lessons within this module.