The Performance Matters Evaluation platform brings together formal teacher evaluation, informal teacher walkthrough observations, student performance data (required to be a part of the teacher evaluation), teacher professional development options, and data analysis to strengthen teaching practices that ultimately close the achievement gap across all sub-groups and provide the best education path for every student.

Our current evaluation system was designed as a stop-gap measure to meet FLDOE requirements in a short period of time.  The long term goal was to locate and implement an all-inclusive system that included teacher evaluation, student performance, professional development and data analysis. Our current evaluation system is limited to the first of these four elements and lives exclusively in Focus.  The rest of the critical components are scattered across two other programs; data analysis is rudimentary at best since we do not currently have a way to bring the pieces together.  In addition, when integration begins, it is always a manual process that by design increases potential for human error.  This results in numerous man hours checking and rechecking the data to ensure that all teachers and staff are accurately measured.

It is difficult to quantify the requisite cost to manually produce the necessary elements for our teacher evaluation system, but the number of instructional and support staff that have an evaluation completed as part of their performance has grown significantly in the past 10 years while the number of district staff has remained relatively flat.  This has resulted in a system that is neither as efficient as it could be or robust enough to truly inform decisions on teaching practices.

Expected outcomes include increased and immediate communication regarding instructional practices, alignment with district and school vision specific to educational goals, a robust professional development option for staff, and increased student success.  Teachers will have real-time views of informal and formal observations, be able to link these observations to recommended professional development to strengthen practices, and regularly monitor their teaching with student outcomes.  This approach will also eliminate our dependence on other professional development tracking services and their associated costs, as well as bring testing (Performance Matters), business services (Sungard), and human resources (SearchSoft) under a single company banner.

This product assists with achieving Goal 1: Develop Great Educators and Leaders with Strategy 1.1: Provide teachers and students with the tools and resources necessary to meet the demands of the Florida Standards and students' individual needs.  It will also assist with achieving Goal 4: Create effective data systems and train individuals to leverage information with Strategy 4.2: Facilitate and provide professional development to key staff on use of data.

It is recommended that the superintendent and school board approve the purchase of this product for the remainder of the 2017-18 academic year and for the 2018-19 for the professional development tracking and evaluation set-up, and for the 2018-19 academic year for full implementation.