The Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE) invites all school districts, charter schools, intermediate units and career and technical centers to join them in Phase III of the continued development and implementation of a new teacher evaluation system in the 2012-13 school year.   Please note that SIG schools using the Transformation model are required to participate in Phase III unless these schools have developed an approved alternative that includes student achievement.

The major elements of this project include:

• A detailed teaching practice rubric based on Charlotte Danielson’ss Framework for Teaching;
• On-going study and refinement of “multiple measures of student achievement” and their correlation with the teaching practice rubric;
• Detailed guidance on the evaluation process, its components and the evidence to be considered for evaluation;
• The refinement of a formula for determining the summative evaluation rating;
• Participation in a training network through the intermediate units;
• External evaluators to analyze the third phase of the project; and
• Utilization of an online evaluator training system to address inter-rater reliability.

Phase III implementation sites will have the opportunity to provide recommendations, based upon their experience, for the final design of the new teacher evaluation form. In addition, Phase III implementation sites will be able to offer recommendations for the evaluation guidelines that will include local flexibility, practice components and evidence recommendations.

Phase III implementation sites will also have the opportunity for ongoing online training at no cost, as well as priority registration for the PDE Institute which will be held in December 2012.

Please join PDE in this very important endeavor. It needs a broad representation of the education community across Pennsylvania to develop a strong system. You may select individual buildings for the pilot rather than the entire LEA. This may be the last opportunity to have input before PDE finalizes the rubric and components of the system.

PDE will be conducting an informational webinar from 10:30 a.m. until noon on April 26, 2012, to discuss Phase III and answer questions.   Instructions to attend the webinar can be found at the end of this Penn*Link. Questions on Phase III should be referred to Deb Wynn, executive policy specialist, at dewynn@pa.gov.

If you know you are ready to participate in Phase III, you can indicate your commitment by visiting the following URL and providing the requested information.   We will be asking you to provide more detailed data at the end of April. The URL is https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/S5K8RYR.

TO JOIN THE WEBINAR THE DAY OF THE EVENT:

Note:   You may join the webinar up to 30 minutes prior to the start time.  

• Go to http://vclass.cciu.org/.
• Click the hyperlink for the webinar titled “Teacher Effectiveness — Phase III Information.”
• Log in as “Guest.”
• Enter your email address.
• Enter Display Name: Please enter your first name, last name, and LEA or organization (e.g., Mary Smith – PDE).
• Click the “Log In” button.   Note there is NO password needed to join the webinar.

  ALERT! There has been a recent upgrade of the Elluminate ® webinar application that requires everyone to test their connection to the server if they have not participated in a webinar since August 4, 2009 (see pre-webinar setup instructions in next section).

MANDATORY PRE-WEBINAR SETUP AND SYSTEM TEST:

• System requirements for Elluminate ® are located at: http://www.pdewebinars.org/systemrequirements.php

  Alert!! If your browser is Internet Explorer, it must be version 7.0 or later.

• Next, test your connection to the server that will host the webinar by going to: http://vclass.cciu.org/join_meeting.html?meetingId=1157038045616.   On this site, log in as a “guest” and enter your name and email address.

  NOTE: If you belong to an agency with a firewall-protected network, you will need to have your network tech person open ports 80 and 2187. You may need to turn off your proxy server if you have problems connecting.

• Also an “Introduction to Webinars” PowerPoint presentation is available. Click the link (“Introduction to Webinars”) on the webpage:   http://www.pdewebinars.org/about_webinars.php

SUPPORT FOR ELLUMINATE ® TECHNICAL ISSUES:

• Contact the Chester County Intermediate Unit support team:   Diane Thomson, dianet@cciu.org