A task force assigned to improve the way Iowa teachers are evaluated agree the old evaluation system has to go, but haven’t been able to nail down a new system just yet. Byron Darnall with the Iowa Department of Education served as moderator for the task force during its meeting Wednesday. Darnall says the finished recommendations will essentially call for more study.
“We tend to lock in that this one mechanism will improve us overall, research will show that’s not the case. It will take collective resources to get it improving the whole level students, teachers, communities in general,” Darnall says. He says there’s not an easy solution for beefing up evaluation standards.
“How do we align them with what our pre-service teachers are doing and our intuitions of higher ed and how do we develop a system of measuring toward those standards that is integrated with the work in the classroom and not just seen as a task to be completed,” Darnall says.
The recommendations are due to the legislature by November 15th. This task force is one of nine that are working on issues related to education reform.