Educator Effectiveness

welcome uh this is the educator Effectiveness and implementation tools for E session of the 2024 wise data conference thank you for coming appreciate you being here uh happy to be here with you folks um first just a little bit about me my name is Jacob H Nagel I go by Jake I'm an education consultant with the licensing educator advancement and development team um I've been with DPI working on E since 2013 since before full implementation started and I've been working on E policy evaluation of th

e system communication for the E System since 2015 uh recently I completed a masters of public affairs at the Robert M laal school at W Madison um but uh happy to be with DPI and happy to be with all of you a little bit about what we're going to be doing today uh so we're going to be talking about Wisconsin e system found foundations uh we're going to be talking about what kind of tools there are available to support the implementation of e in Wisconsin and uh hopefully have some time to take so

me questions from you all about what's going on out there um so as your agenda should have noted this is a presentation style um uh spot today um so not you know a a live um feedback session but uh I will you know of course take your questions and if I can't help you you I will make sure that uh we follow up and and get someone to help you all right um so there's a number of us in the room today uh I guess we want to know a little bit uh about uh who you are um whether you're currently using um

our Frontline education or our Google platforms and uh maybe have a little bit of discussion amongst yourselves about what your vision for educator Effectiveness is in your school or District uh so first uh how many school administrators do we have here and District administrators and um maybe someone who's uh working specifically with Frontline as a technical person got one hand over there all right so lots of District staff any any other roles out there that I should be aware of great great um

well thanks for being here and can I get a raise of hands how how many of your schools or districts use Frontline oh wow the vast majority okay um and then so I assume the others are using something else maybe our Google forms or something locally developed okay um and ideally you're sitting sort of close to someone um and since there's so many of us uh we maybe have you like turn to uh uh somebody near you and and talk a little bit about um what your vision for e in your school or District loo

ks like e middle scho sh this e e e e um which is good because this presentation is kind of perfect for that so so what is e um how we at the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction Define it is um a learning centered system uh of continuous Improvement that's designed to improve education for students uh it does this by supporting guided and individualized professional growth and development of Educators so teachers and principles but uh why do do educator Effectiveness in Wisconsin so besid

es uh the fact that uh the legislature passed a law a while ago saying that we had to um there are some very good reasons to be doing this so one thing we know first and foremost is that teachers are the most important school-based factor contributing to student outcom so how effective teachers are is an important factor and how well students will learn um uh if you're interested uh these slide decks I believe are posted on the the wise data um conference website and there's some citations in th

ere for for all of this stuff what else do we know we know that school leadership is the second most important school-based factor contributing to student outcomes so that's teachers and principles these are the most important factors contributing to student outcomes in schools um and that is where educator Effectiveness is focused so uh how do school leaders actually make this contribution to student achievement we know from research that they do this through their effects on the school environ

ment so what does teacher Effectiveness look like what are School cultures how are things being implemented in the schools and districts and that is again what e is all about we also know that teacher and principal Effectiveness is not fixed it can be improved we know that beginning teachers improve uh over the course of the first three or five years um and we know that teachers continue to develop um across the whole course of their career and school leaders have an important role to play in de

veloping that why else do we do that well it's part of our Approach at DPI for impacting educational Equity um and what does what does that mean it just means making sure that students have the resources and educational rigor they need in their education when they need it across any race gender ethnicity language ability sexual orientation family background or family income um so a little bit more about um what that means in E specifically when we talk about e as a learning centered continuous I

mprovement system there are really five principles that we have tried to bake into the E system that are based on research and best practice um these are a foundation of trust that encourages Educators to take risks and learn from their mistakes a common research-based framework of what is effective practice for teachers and principles regular engagement in educator developed goals so a process of setting goals and monitoring them and improving over time cycles of continuous Improvement Guided b

y timely and specific feedback from um peers and evaluators and integration of all these processes in the system into the school and District um priorities and practices uh so we're going to focus on just a couple of those principles because not all of them relate to the kind of data tools that we'll be talking about today um but some things we wanted to highlight so trust matters um trust is necessary to establish effecting effective learning communities which are the basis of the educator Effe

ctiveness system trusting School cultures encourage risk-taking and learning from mistakes it strengthens professional culture among colleagues and we know from research in schools where professional culture is organized for improvement we also see Improvement in teacher retention and job satisfaction commitment to the school in which they serve and their communities so why is trust important uh for these data tools well the purpose of these data tools is to help create a system of transparency

and accessibility uh where everyone can know what's going on in their evaluation see the data that's being presented to them um see what evidence is being collected and have genuine conversations that Foster trust so that's one of the purposes and our goals with the system and its data tools uh integration uh was another one of the principles we talked about and um the system uh should help integrate uh into school systems and pro processes um through the goals that inform professional learning

that the school might undertake uh to help support teachers and principles in meeting their goals uh the Frameworks so whether it's the Danielson framework for teaching for teachers or the Wisconsin framework principal leadership these should be informing and guiding professional conversations that occur in an e context or outside of it we know that hiring mentoring and cre development um work best when they're aligned with the E process so that you know we're identifying mentors based on actual

assessments of their practice um that there are career opportunities for People based on um their s their proven success in schools and that also we're guiding development Based on data and feedback and then alignment uh between classroom school and District goals to help Drive growth across the system and we know that when these things are in place ee can support other initiatives that schools and districts are undertaking whether that's curriculum implementation Universal Design for Learning

implementing professional learning communities among teachers or principles all those types of things so part of that transparency um is about how uh data is reported to people um and uh one of the things we wanted to highlight were the kinds of data reports that you can receive um out of the Frontline education system uh I guess I should actually back up a little bit so if people aren't familiar Frontline education um is a valuation management platform that's online um that the state of Wiscons

in provides to schools and districts that use our state model for e in order to help them manage the process so this is the the forms and the the data collection uh that's occurring um for you while you're engaging in the actual process of of doing e uh whether that's conducting observations or having professional conversations between colleagues those kinds of things so that's what Frontline is um there's a number of reports that can come out of Frontline that can help support this kind of inte

gration for you um so there's three different broad types of reports that are looking at different kinds of things within Frontline these are all customizable um you can save templates um and they uh can produce data that you can share at districtwide or or School building data digs whatever it may be uh so this is the report writer uh and this will look at things like text Fields so what kind of SLO goals are people writing it'll collect samples of those uh the rubric Explorer and this looks at

um places where people are indicating things on the rubrics themselves so for instance if you had a question like what are the three most common components that teachers are saying they need support in you can build a report that will gather that information out of Frontline to help support you in identifying the kind of professional learning that you want to put on as a school or a district then there's also the growth Explorer um and this is for things like drop downs and and checkboxes um so

you can see um Trends in what are the kinds of things that I've been observing over the course of the year what where am I tagging most of my evidence if I'm an observer uh what kind of feedback is coming up most commonly in professional conversations between colleagues those kinds of things all right so when we talk about e we talked about the high- minded principles a little bit um but what actually happens in practice what are the the things that districts and schools do to actually make thi

s happen um we've tried to boil it down to to six main things that people do and these uh come up in our six requirements document that you can find on our website um there really six main elements of the system so one is Observer certification training and calibration so making sure that people who are observing teachers um know the rubric that they're using to do these observations and are cated with each other so that observations are fair across observers orientation and ongoing training for

teachers and principles in the system so they know and understand how um their evaluations are conducted and what happens um and this goes to supporting that trust factor that we were talking about um Regular self-review so teachers and principles in the system must conduct a self- review as part of the process um this is important for engaging reflective feedback that is collaborative between teachers and principles educator developed goals uh so it's both a principle and an important element

of practicing the system is to develop educator goals so this is the the student learning or school learning objective so student for teachers school for principles observations uh collection of evidence and delivery of feedback this is you know this is what happens when principles go into classrooms observe a lesson take down evidence and then when they provide feedback to teachers and uh same thing for um principles and their evaluators and that there are regular conferences where these feedba

ck conversations can occur and collaboration can occur um not only between teachers principles and their evaluators uh but also between peers so we're going to focus on uh four of these elements um and talk about the system tools that we have um that support completing this work in the building so that's the regular self- review educator goals observations and evidence collection and feedback and those regular conferences uh so what are the tools that actually support this process well is the Fr

ontline education employee evaluation management system which we talked a little bit about earlier we have Google um templates which can be converted to Microsoft um and potentially uh you may be using some other locally developed option A lot of people use Google classroom or something else to support this process um but DPI only supports directly Frontline and our own developed Google templates um an important thing to note um some of you may be familiar with front line some of you may be fami

liar with Google um and we'll have a number of screenshots of what's going on in Frontline as we go through the presentation uh but these forms actually mirror each other um so our our templates that are currently available on the website uh in Google should mirror roughly what you see in front line there's some you know different and how the the technology Works uh so there's some distinctions there um but if you're familiar with Frontline or vice versa um you should roughly understand what's g

oing on with for okay so the regular self-review so why do we engage in a regular self-review um using our our framework of effective practice one it reinforces educator selfefficacy reflecting on their own practice helps them identify ways in which they can improve lets them know ways in which they are already um succeeding or excelling um again encourages that reflective practice and it helps inform student learning and professional practice goals so what are the things that I want to work on

and um what do I need to do to actually make progress with my students so how is that set up currently in our system there are a number of options for doing self-review um it does not have to be designated a particular time it has to happen once in a cycle um during which teacher is evaluated um so that could be at the beginning of a three-year cycle it could be at the end um or some people do have setups uh where they do this annually and that is allowed within the Frontline system um and what

ises it intended to do it's just intended to identify areas of strength and areas of growth for teachers or principal on the relevant rubric of course uh to help inform them of their conversations um as they go across the evaluation cycle with their evaluators um an important thing to note actually about the self- review is that uh we recently implemented um some new flexibility um in the system so for experien teachers those um with more than three years of professional experience um a self-rev

iew can actually stand is evidence of professional practice for 19 out of 22 components in the Danielson framework for teaching so um if you're an evaluator and you're working with a number of experienced teachers um you know um what they're good at uh they know what they're good at you know where you want to focus your attention maybe it's a few key areas of the rubric um this flexibility will allow you to do that so um completing and document the self- review becomes even more important in tha

t context um to know across time where where am I focusing my attention with this particular teacher so why do we engage in educator develop goals um because uh we want to regularly assess and guide where instruction is going over the course a year um that these goals can be thoughtfully aligned to school and District uh priorities um and uh provide a structure of feedback from the classroom to the school to the district level um that goes in both directions and it can increase the ownership and

engagement in the process for educators and it focuses the work on using adult practices to affect student learning so how does that look Frontline um it follows uh of course the cycle um and we talked about those um Regular conferences that occur for people um across uh beginning of the year mid interval and end of year um there are also customizations that are available um so some districts may require um a PPG whereas state of Wisconsin no longer requires a separate PPG separate from the SLO

um some districts may also require teachers to engage in more than one SLO across time um many of the fields um are actually uh customizable um and uh the uh uh the reflection prompts as well uh importantly um these forms are set up to follow across years in the cycle for teachers so information from previous goal years um is pulled um from those previous forms and Pop pre-populates um the next year's form in order for people to be able to track their goals across time so why do we engage in ob

servations evidence and feedback so one regular observation that evidence collection ensures um accurate evidence when Prov in feedback to teachers uh when evaluating their practice um this accurate observation evidence informs the feedback that goes to teachers to help them improve and that feedback provides input into the continuous improvement process for student learning or professional practice goals and then frequent observations uh help contribute to Stronger relationships between evaluat

ors and their educators again going back to that principle of uh a foundation of trust in the system so the more frequently we can um have contact with one another the better we can learn to trust one another and regular conferences uh these create opportunities to provide and receive feedback guide ongoing learning across um a year or or um a cycle um it provides opportunities to check in on student learning or professional practice goals um it provides opportunities to assess the effectiveness

of Prior feedback and then again these contribute to um stronger relationships between evaluators their peers or Educators so when we talk about feedback what is good feedback well feedback is accurate um this is why the training component is important for e um it's based on evidence aligned to those common Frameworks so I as a teacher understand the framework for teaching that I'm being evaluated under and so does my principle um now we have um accurate feedback um the feedback should be usefu

l so again it utilizes that common language of a of a framework uh to be able to identify specific criteria um to help me improve it should be aligned to the priorities of the educator based on their self-review their student learning objective what have you and there should be opportunities to use use that feedback so again connecting to the educator specific context their classroom their building their student learning objectives their professional growth objectives um and it should connect th

em with resources so mentors coaches professional learning communities that may be in their building professional development opportunities um that can help them grow based on what they need um so we talk about a very simple collaborative approach to feedback um there's a lot of work that's been done on on coaching and um how to improve feedback conversations and there are a lot of resources out there like mentors like coaches instructional coaches um that can support this but of course um one o

f the main things uh that differentiates the E system is there's a teacher or a principal and they evaluator and so we wanted to make sure that um our system our data collection systems um our our prompts um reflected uh something that could be doable uh for those types of folks that aren't specialized in coaching so first take a look at what's working validate um what's going on in an Educator's classroom in a principal School building clarify identify what's challenging What's um what needs mo

re work um with the educator and then helping that educator identify next steps so stretch and apply So based on our conversations where are we going to go from here but also if uh you're providing feedback what support might you provide and of course um evaluators uh and people providing feedback can always improve as well so asking and and receiving feedback in turn so how do we support that in the Frontline education system uh we've built the professional conversations log um and this is desi

gned to support any kind of professional conversation that occurs uh between um uh a teacher or principal and their evaluator helps track growth across time time and identify action steps um it dis uh it helps people identify um what's being discussed um what are the rubric components that we're focusing on and it provides prompts to help guide people through that protocol a validate clarify stretch and apply that we discussed there are no required Fields um in the professional conversations log

um evaluators can determine what they want to include um this is all just designed to be a support um for keeping track of those conversations over time so how does this all collect for people um it collects in what we call the professional growth portfolio it's a One-Stop shop uh in Frontline or in our Google setup that collects information across the various fors across across the professional conversations log the self- review and puts it all in one place for people to be able to stream acro

ss time so there's no need to go to different fors or view information elsewhere so it collects the self- review goals goals adjustments um conversations that happened in um the various conversations and what the various Focus components might be um an important point about the professional growth portfolio talked about this with um the the goals as well um but it also um collects uh end ofe information so after you've completed um a cycle you've had a conversation with the educator about um whe

re they' where they've landed that information ends entered transfers to next year's reports so that you can easily pick up the conversation from where you left off okay so that's a little bit about um how we've set up the forms to be able to support the process um one important thing to note um is that districts do need to collect e data um this is actually an assurance of the annual E Grant that districts have and can produce this data uh so what do districts actually need to collect one they

need to be able to provide evidence that they have completed orientation training for educators and evaluators uh that their evaluators have certified in the relevant rubric um and districts provide ongoing monitoring of that training AKA calibration these things occur outside of Front Line typically we have other systems set up to deal with those that Educators complete a self-review during their evaluation cycle that Educators develop and complete at least one SLO annually we're out of order u

m that evaluators conduct required observations professional practice and uh that those conferences that we talked about occur the planning the midye the end of cycle importantly districts that use Frontline have e data collection and compliance taken care of for them um so it's a huge benefit of using Frontline um districts that are implementing their own e management system whether that's Google classroom or the Google templates that we talked about or something completely different um they ha

ve to make sure that they are collecting this data um and storing it and managing it um independently okay so um that's a little bit about how we've set up the platform what its purpose is how it's designed to support us uh so what are the supports that you all have um from us be able to do this so again uh uh there's lots of links um and resources in the uh the PowerPoint itself which you can access from the website uh but importantly we have um our GPI help center um so this should maybe be th

e first stop for people looking to figure out how to um use Frontline to support their work um articles by role so whether um I'm just an evaluator in the system or a teacher uh there are support articles that can help me figure out what I'm looking to do whether that's just log in or whether that's du something more advanced it's specific to the Wisconsin setup and guidance um so this help center uh will be able to provide you specific help if you're trying to figure out how can I adjust my cus

tomizations or my setup um to meet Wisconsin needs uh requirements um and and what's available to me there are announcements for upcoming training opportunities constantly webinars we're promoting Frontline webinars we have our own webinars um and other resources to be able to support people using the system and of course uh we do have a help button so if you do need support um you can uh use that to fill out a quick form um and get help with your question that form goes to um staff at DPI who a

re trained specifically in providing support on Frontline um you can also get directed to the Frontline Learning Center from that same help center site um although you must have an account and be able to log in to access that uh there a couple other things that I wanted to show off for people from our website and I don't the the wise data conference people might be mad at me but sort of going off off the the pre-approved PowerPoint here um so first uh the best and easiest way to find us in all o

f our resources is to go to dpi.wi.gov very simple um and that's where you'll find uh our web page and all of our our various resources so the help center for support the Frontline uh big button down there at the bottom again submitted requests for help um the various articles webinars and trainings that are available all of that available for you there the next thing I wanted to show off was our district implementation tools page so if I'm on the E website I just click on District implementatio

n it'll bring me here and that's where I can find resources on um e requirements system flexibilities resources support Improvement and E development um and implementation over time um access to other um e implementation supports um another important place to go is also your local cisa so we have contracts with all 12 cesas um to support um not only implementation of uh things like Frontline but also to help support people in learning how to provide better feedback um uh develop better slos thos

e are the kinds of things that CIS can help with as well um but uh we're here talking about data systems and so if you are looking for information on Data Systems we have the documentation of evaluation processes page and that's where you can find out about our various tools sorry this is a little confusing I have to look back um uh for meeting those uh requirements that we just talked about we provide resources and information about how to set up e documentation and options um that meet complia

nce provide some sample options for people to use um and describe some ways that you might go about setting that up other thing that I have to promote um some of the screenshots that we looked at earlier um and some of what I described may not be familiar to you if you're using Frontline but you're using an older version of front line um so in 2021 um we adopted what we're calling gross growth focused templates um and so these provide uh the kinds of of um uh functionalities that I was talking a

bout earlier um so if you haven't adopted these versions of the fors yet I would recommend that you do that um DPI is not really supporting older versions of the Forum any longer um and uh so all of our folks are trained up on these new forums uh we're working with Frontline to support the new forums uh but we can't guarantee that if you're using the older version of the forums um that they will still be supported um there are also resources here for setting up um your system with the new growth

Focus forms or potentially if you're looking for a change it can help you walk through that process um the front line of a ing Alternative forms so again it talks about advocating backwards here um different options and configuration options that you can do for the self- review for goal setting slos professional practice goals um how to set up um those conversation logs that we talked about what um parts of the template do you want to have in there what Fields do you want to be required um all

of those are flexible options um and again same goes with the professional growth portfolio um there are number of options for setting those up in a way that best suits your needs um so that is where I would go um to support that look at that couple other things I want to talk about um there was one more resource on that page that I wanted to highlight which is a PDF resource just discussing all those various options that that we just talked about what are the potential bonuses uh of uh of adopt

ing the growth Focus forms versus the old form and how you can go about setting those up to support how you implement e locally okay and then um there are a number of late breaking updates since we finished our PowerPoints for this um conference and I just want to highlight a couple of just talked about going to the growth Focus forums okay important e updates that some of you may have heard of um some of you may have not um one important thing to note is that uh DPI is planning to move State mo

del districts to the 2022 version of the Danielson FR for teaching in the 20242 school year um what does that mean well it means we'll be updating our Frontline in Google templates to reflect that change um and uh you can expect that available for you when you go into those systems in 24 25 um we are also working to make sure that in Frontline um that the data uh will transfer appropriately so people who um we talked about how data in the system moves between years that should still work uh and

apply for people um but of course we'll continue to up date folks uh as we work on that implementation in case there are any issues and how precisely to roll over your Frontline platform um set up any new forms uh to work in the new system and with the new rubric um this does mean that districts that aren't using Frontline um or DPI templates uh will have to update their systems to reflect the new rubric on their own um and of course we are going to be providing training and other resources uh t

hat meet the training requirements Etc um in advance of the start of the 2024 school year 24 25 school year and another important thing to point out um some of you may have uh responded to our recent survey about Frontline and uh resources um that support the the tech side e oops um but uh just so people are aware we are continuing with Frontline in 2425 um but beyond that uh we are exploring potential other options there's a number of reasons for that one um our existing contract with Frontline

will have expired um after the next school year so we'll have to go back um and engage in a new Statewide contract if we if we do so and also because we are updating to the new rubric for Teacher evaluation um Frontline is no longer a sole um prietor um so provider of that rubric uh so there are potentially other options out there um but uh we're still ways out on that uh and if people have provided feedback uh by the recent survey it's going to be very helpful as we shape the course going forw

ard okay so that was my presentation any questions that there that there's going to be additional training that is required based on the new that districts use yes uh so uh there will be a a small module um uh additional training for people already certified in the Danielson framework an hour two um that will update them to the new version and complete training requirements um that's for teachers or for administrators that'll be for administrators um but some of that content would be appropriate

for teachers um and they could use that as well so it'll be freely available and then for districts who so we're not going to I'm a district we can't use the new framework like there's things in the new framework that areally inappropriate districts like policy I know that there's a group of superintendant who are working with BPI around the timeline of this implementation again con Junction with act 20 like there's a lot that's being put on districts to implement in a very short timeline with

very short notice um so where District that's moving to the strong model what is the process in terms of notifying DPI of that switch if for a district we have been using the Danielson framework through front line and now we're going to be moving to the strong model yeah so that uh uh if people do move to the ca6 model which US the strong rubrics um uh they just notify us uh written by email um that they're doing that um and obviously you'll have to contract with CA 6 for supports um then there'

s the annual Effectiveness Grant um so that uh would be um have to be updated um that you're using C6 next year in order to make sure that you you get reimbursed for that um but uh that's the process really the the official notice is on the E Grant um but uh you should let us know in advance of of switching over um so that way we can um get rid of Frontline accounts for your for your District using DPI stuff and and get you switched over yep other questions out there any specific um Frontline qu

estions or support that I can help with there all right well uh I will hang out for a while in case anybody wants to talk oneon-one um but otherwise that's all I had for you thanks everyone oh and um I don't forget to fill out the uh the evaluation form which I think um there should be a link in your agenda Etc thanks everybody