Thirty minutes or 30 hours?

By Thomas B. Pfankuch
Times-Union staff writer

Thirty minutes or 30 hours?

It's difficult for school administrators to say how much observation it takes to adequately evaluate teacher performance.

But Duval County's evaluation process - typically based only on a half-hour, pre-arranged classroom observation by a principal - is clearly not working, education experts said.

Consultants from SchoolMatch, a firm hired by The Florida Times-Union to audit the Duval County schools, said successful districts sometimes spend 30 hours or more observing their teachers during an evaluation.

The Duval County school system, like all Florida school districts, uses principals to evaluate teacher performance.

Under state law and by union-negotiated contract, principals at a minimum observe teachers once a year during pre-arranged classroom visits. Problem teachers are observed at least twice.

But that annual evaluation systemhas come under fire, both in Jacksonville and in Tallahassee, where lawmakers passed legislation this spring that seeks to improve the evaluation system to improve teacher performance and weed more ineffective teachers out of the classroom.

In an average year, 30 of the 7,000 teachers in the Duval County school system receive unsatisfactory evaluations.

Representatives from SchoolMatch and the state's top educator said it's almost impossible that there are so few unsatisfactory teachers in a district as large as Duval County.

''It's got to be more than that,'' said Florida Education Commissioner Frank Brogan. ''I don't believe it's significantly more than that, but the evaluation process is weak and it lends itself to the protection of the weakest in our profession rather than culling out the weakest in our profession.''

Other school districts have worked to improve their teacher evaluation programs. Two - Rochester, N.Y., and Toledo, Ohio - have found success with evaluation programs that use peer review, in which teachers evaluate other teachers.

''In a five-year period, we had only one teacher who was non-renewed, and we knew that wasn't right,'' said William Lehrer, assistant superintendent for human resources in the Toledo system. ''That's when we came up with this system.''

In Toledo and Rochester, administrators say their peer review programs have increased the quality of their teachers and removed more bad teachers than the traditional principal review system.

Before starting peer review, 99.9 percent of teachers in both districts typically received satisfactory evaluations. Under peer review, both districts found that the number of teachers receiving poor reviews, and therefore additional training, increased dramatically to about 8 percent.

''I think teachers are harder on other teachers, they take it seriously and do an excellent job,'' said Augustin Melendez, supervisor of human resources for Rochester public schools.

The Toledo system mixes peer review with the traditional system of principal review, and focuses extensively on first-year teachers.

New teachers in the district, or interns, are assigned a mentor. These consultants receive a three-year leave of absence from the classroom, additional training and an additional $5,000 stipend.

Throughout the year, the consultants spend an average of 40 hours observing and working with each intern and documenting their performance. In Duval County, most teachers are observed for 30 minutes by principals who then base evaluations mainly on that observation.

At the end of the school year in Toledo, the mentor makes a presentation on the effectiveness of each intern to a review board made up of union members and school administrators.

After their first year, Toledo teachers are evaluated by principals for the next two years, then receive no further evaluations.

Toledo's evaluation program has operated since 1986 and has drawn nationwide attention from educational experts, media and school districts.

Administrators in Rochester modeled their peer review system after the Toledo program.

New teachers in the Rochester public schools are assigned to a lead teacher who makes 60 to 75 individual contacts with new teachers, working with them to improve classroom management and teaching style and methods.

At the end of the year, the lead teacher evaluates the new teacher; recommendations on future contracts generally are followed by administrators, Melendez said.

Tenured teachers in Rochester are evaluated every three years by their principal and a peer reviewer of their choice. The evaluation includes observation and interviews, but the teacher also must present a portfolio of progress that usually contains student test scores, examples of students' work and ways the teacher has worked to improve since the last review.

Teachers found by the reviewers to be incompetent or unfit are removed from the classroom immediately and given other duties pending the outcome of a hearing.

The drawback to the Toledo and Rochester evaluation systems is that they are costly - $500,000 to $600,000 a year in Toledo and $850,000 a year in Rochester.

But Lehrer and Melendez said the cost is outweighed by the improvements to their teaching staffs, and by the money saved by not going through extensive court battles trying to get incompetent teachers out of the classroom.

Both administrators said teachers rarely fight the findings of their evaluation systems because the observations and reviews are extensive and designed so the teachers have ample opportunity to improve.

Education Commissioner Brogan praised peer review, and said the time is right for districts around the state to start developing the system. Legislation passed in the spring mandates that all 67 districts in Florida create review programs that formally tie teacher evaluation to student performance.

Brogan said reviews done by a principal and a teacher would lead to more comprehensive teacher evaluations and more classroom observations and would force administrators, union representatives, principals and teachers to work together.

''Peer review is something I would love to see implemented in places around the sate,'' Brogan said. ''Teachers would not be intimidated by such a process, and the combination of the administrative evaluation inclusive with some sort of peer review would be infinitely fair and provide more of a collegial atmosphere than we've seen in the past.''

The president of the teachers union in Jacksonville also supports peer review as a way to improve the existing teacher evaluation system.

''Part of being a professional is determining who stays and who goes,'' said Andy Ford, president of the Duval Teachers United. ''Self-policing tends to be a little more strict, and the peer review system would help the satisfactory teacher become even better.''