Above the Line: Evidence-Backed Feedback

Above the Line: The Table She Asked For

A child cried at dinner because no one waited to eat together, the way her class does at lunch. At Alief Montessori, independence is taught by arranging the room so the habit gets practiced again and again.

Ryan Halbert had a plain word for how some teacher judgments used to work:

"Vibe."

He wasn't joking. In a small district, leaders do have a good read on classrooms. They know which teachers are strong, which need help, who is trying, and who is improving.

Halbert, the superintendent of Palestine-Wheatley SD in Arkansas, trusts his read.

He also wants more behind it.

"It's not just my thought. I have data to back that up," he said.

Good evaluation can give a teacher better data. One study of mid-career teachers found that teachers were more productive after evaluation with the largest gains among teachers who had been lower-performing beforehand. Evaluation can give teachers information they can use to build skills, change effort, or both.¹

Palestine-Wheatley is trying to make that information more organized.

Halbert expects principals to spend at least 30% of the day in classrooms. These visits give the leadership team information that doesn't come from a once-a-year test. Palestine-Wheatley still looks at Arkansas's value-added measure (VAM), formal TESS evaluations, and attendance. But Halbert says that the learning-walk data is probably most useful since leaders are seeing teachers while they are teaching.

The mix of data matters. The Measures of Effective Teaching project, a large study of teacher evaluation, reached a similar conclusion about using more than one signal. Its final report said effective teaching could be identified combining classroom observations, student surveys, and student achievement gains, rather than a single measure.²

Conversations change when the patterns show up across notes, rooms, and visits.

This year, Halbert's team noticed a schoolwide weakness around questioning. So questioning is where PD will start. Assessment and using assessment data may come later, but he does not want to skip the first problem.

His words were simple: teachers need to learn how to ask questions better before the district really digs into assessments.³

That is what the evidence is for. It helps the district decide what should happen next.

At the high school, Halbert said an instructional specialist built a spreadsheet to pull the information together. The useful part is that teacher support no longer has to live only in hallway conversations or leadership-team memory. A teacher's file can include formal evaluation scores, walkthrough notes, attendance, VAM, and what leaders have seen in classrooms.

Then, the district can ask a more pointed question: what kind of help does this teacher actually need?

"In the classroom, you want to differentiate for your kids," he said. "We differentiate for those teachers."

The coaching research points in the same direction. A review of 60 causal studies found that teacher coaching improved both instruction and student achievement. The work they reviewed was coaching tied to classroom practice, observation, and feedback.⁴

Evidence matters.

If the same issue shows up across visits, the feedback has more ground under it. The principal can say: here is what we keep seeing, and here is the help we are going to do about it.

At Palestine-Wheatley, a vibe can start the conversation. It just does not get to be the whole case.