Gates Package — page 551

Feedback for Teacher Growth In October, Melinda and I found ourselves near Vail, Colorado, sitting among two dozen twelfth graders learning how to write narrative nonfiction pieces. Looking around, I saw about a third of the class was Hispanic. Approximately half of Eagle County School District's 6,300 students are Hispanic, and the district has among the highest rates of English language learners in Colorado. We were there to watch the person at the front of the room, Mary Ann Stavney, a veteran of Colorado's education system who taught high school, served on the county school board, and instructed at a local college before taking on her current role as a language arts and speech teacher at Eagle Valley High School. In class that day, Mary Ann taught a 40-minute lesson on how students could use evidence to bolster claims in their essays, including a lively mini-lesson on how to use starters like "because," " a result? and "although: She engaged her students, walking among them, asking good questions, and eliciting great participation. 'As a Master Teacher in Eagle Valley High School, Mary Ann Stavney splits her time between teaching students and evaluating teachers (Gypsum, CO, 2012). Both Melinda and I could see why Mary Ann is a Master Teacher, a distinction given to the school's best teachers and an important component of the teacher-evaluation system in Eagle County. In that role, she is trained to evaluate and provide feedback to other teachers. Her work is part of a broader approach to measuring teacher performance that includes test data showing student learning, evaluations from Master Teachers and the school principal, and students' surveys about their teachers. The district is an early innovator in using a mix of measures to help teachers improve. I was amazed to learn a few years ago that over 90 percent of teachers get zero feedback on how to improve. A lot of the debate in education today really amounts to a circular discussion of how to implement tools to measure teacher effectiveness and whether such measurement is even possible. We know that if all teachers were anywhere near as good as the best, our education system would be fantastic. 2013 Annual Letter from Bill Gates 15: