This document provides guidance for districts on developing and implementing student growth measures for teacher evaluations under the Performance Evaluation Reform Act (PERA). It discusses the requirements around establishing a joint committee, identifying appropriate assessments including Type I, II, and III, determining student growth targets, developing student learning objectives, and assigning summative ratings. Key points include establishing equal representation on the joint committee, using at least two assessments per teacher category with one being Type I or II, considering student characteristics when setting growth targets, and employing state default models if the committee cannot reach agreement.

1. Using Student Growth for
Teacher Evaluation
Dr. Richard Voltz, Associate Director
Illinois Association of School
Administrators

2. Final Rules for Student Growth
at
http://www.isbe.net/rules/archive
/pdfs/50ARK.pdf

3. ISBE Resources for Student Growth

4. http://www.isbe.net

5. http://www.isbe.net/PEAC/default.htm

6. http://www.isbe.net/assessment/html
s/balanced-asmt.htm

7. Joint Committee Checklist

8. Important Question:
Is your district’s teacher evaluation
plan presently in the contract?

9. This process will test the TRUST and
RELATIONSHIPS between
Board/Administration and Teachers.

10. Back Mapping Student Growth
• 2016-17 is full implementation for PERA
• 2015-16 should be the “beta” school year for the
chosen student growth assessments.
• 2014-15 should be the “informal” study and
decisions on what Type I, Type II and Type III
assessments to use
– Professional Development of staff
– Develop local assessment
– Technology in place
– Local assessments administered

11. Collective Bargaining?
• Between teachers and administrators and not
school board.
• For student growth only.
• Once PERA Joint Committee officially starts
the parties have 180 days to develop plan OR
the plan will default to State Performance
Evaluation Model.

12. PERA Joint Committee
• Each district will convene a PERA joint
committee of equal representation of teachers
and administrators “Joint committee” means a
committee composed of equal representation
selected by the district and its teachers

13. Will PERA change anything?

14. Main emphasis should be on
professional development of both
principals and teachers.

15. This new system is not about
dismissing teachers, it is about
improving teaching and learning.

16. Your district’s decision on how to
measure student growth may be the
single most important decision your
district will ever make.

17. For this to be done right, evaluators
and teachers need time to develop
and implement.

18. Evaluation Timeline???
• Will teacher evaluations be required to be
completed 60 (RIF) or 45 days (probationary
teacher) before end of school year?
• If yes then will the district use prior year?
• If yes then will the district use only first
semester results?
• What about first year teachers?

19. Student Growth Decisions

20. “Demonstrable change in a
student’s learning between two or
more points in time”

21. Student Growth Decisions

22. Weight
• What percentage should student growth
count for PERA?
– State Model (Default) is 50%
– Lowest is 30% (except can be 25% first two years)
• Grouping students?
• Scoring of student growth?
• Applying student scores to teacher rating?

23. Types of Assessments
Type I Type II Type III
An assessment that
measures a certain
group of students in the
same manner with the
same potential
assessment items, is
scored by a non-district
entity, and is widely
administered beyond
Illinois
An assessment
developed or adopted
and approved by the
school district and used
on a district-wide basis
that is given by all
teachers in a given
grade or subject area
An assessment that is
rigorous, aligned with the
course’s curriculum, and
that the evaluator and
teacher determine
measures student
learning
Examples: Northwest Evaluation
Association (NWEA) MAP tests,
Scantron Performance Series
Examples: Collaboratively
developed common
assessments, curriculum tests,
assessments designed by
textbook publishers
Examples: teacher-created
assessments, assessments of
student performance

24. ASSESSMENTS
• Each teacher will sample two learning goals or big
ideas within the sequence scope of their
instruction
• One assessment is needed for each learning goal
• Must have a Type I or a Type II AND a Type III
UNLESS the Joint Committee assigns two Type III
assessments
• Consider thinking in terms of categories of
teachers rather than individual teachers

25. ASSESSMENTS
• IF the Joint Committee assigns two Type III
assessments to a category of teachers the
implementation of the second Type III may be
delayed until the second year (50.110 b) 3) B))
• The Joint Committee shall, for any Type III
– state the general nature of the assessment
– describe the process and criteria qualified
evaluators and teachers use to identify or develop
the assessment

26. The performance evaluation plan
shall identify at least two types of
assessments for evaluating each
category of teacher (e.g., career
and technical education, grade 2)
and one or more measurement
models to be used to determine
student growth that are specific to
each assessment chosen.

27. District Assessment Identification Tool
Category of Teacher Type I Type II Type III
Early Elementary, Pre-K, K
1st-5th Grade Core
Elementary PE
Elementary Resource
6-8 Math
6-8 ELA
6-8 Science
6-8 Social Studies
6-8 PE
6-12 Health
6-8 Resource
HS Math
HS English
HS Biology
HS Physics
HS Social Studies
HS PE
HS Foreign Language
HS Driver Education
HS Business
HS CTE

28. Potential Problems

29. Teachers do not agree that a Type I
or Type II assessment can be
“identified” and thus the default is
two Type III’s.

30. Type III Assessments are
teacher created.

31. Type III assessment means any
assessment that is rigorous, that is
aligned to a course’s curriculum,
and that the qualified evaluator
and teacher determine measures
student learning in that course

32. Teachers will want the assessment
to match the content that the
teacher(s) intend to teach.

33. Midpoint review could be THE
critical point, especially early in the
implementation phase.

34. STUDENT CHARACTERISTICS
• Must consider at least
– Special education placement
– ELL services
– Low income status
• LIKELY as an adjustment to growth
expectations
• MAY consider other characteristics

35. MEASUREMENT MODEL
• How data are analyzed to assign a rating
• Examples:
– Simple gain score
– Benchmarking – predicted scores
– Multivariate model (includes value added)
– Adaptive conditional model
• There are any number of district models from
other states available

36. RATING
• Must be excellent, proficient, needs
improvement, or unsatisfactory
• Set cut scores based on percent of students
who achieve their growth expectation
• Apply cut scores to assign the rating

37. More Questions
• How will the district
– Assess non-core areas?
– Co-teaching?
– Students who change classes as semester?
– Student attendance?
– Student transfers?

38. SUMMATIVE RATING
• You could use the language in 50.230 to
develop a set of two decision matrices
– One is used to aggregate the two student growth
ratings into a single student growth rating
– The second is used to combine the student growth
rating and the classroom practice rating
• After the use of cut scores to rate each
assessment there’s no more arithmetic
• Everything is rounded up

39. SUMMATIVE RATING
• You could use the relative weights of all three
components of the performance evaluation
rating (classroom practice, student growth 1,
and student growth 2)
• Simply calculate the weighted average of the
three scores and you’ll have the numeric
equivalent of the performance evaluation
rating (see 50.230 (b) for the method)

40. Components of the State Performance
Evaluation Model

41. "State performance evaluation
model" means those components
of an evaluation plan that address
data and indicators of student
growth that a school district is
required to use in the event that its
joint committee fails to reach
agreement.

42. What percentage should student
growth count for PERA?

44. Round Up Model

45. SLO’s are required in the “Model”

46. ISBE SLO Template

51. SLO Definition
• "Student learning objective process" or "SLO
process" means a process for organizing evidence of
student growth over a defined period of time that
addresses learning goals that are measurable
– and specific to the skills or content being taught and the
grade level of the students being assessed,
– and are used to inform and differentiate instruction to
ensure student success.

52. • Any joint committee that agrees on the
assessment to be used but cannot agree on
the measurement model shall employ an
adaptive conditional measurement model to
determine student growth specific to the
student growth expectations.

53. • Any joint committee that cannot agree to a
process to consider certain student
characteristics (e.g., special education
placement, English language learners, low-
income populations) in each measurement
model shall employ an SLO process to make
that determination.

54. Student Growth Rating
• Any joint committee that cannot agree to the
rating scale to be used to determine the
student growth rating to be assigned shall
determine the student growth rating by
totaling the percentage of students meeting
the growth expectation from each assessment
used to determine student growth and
averaging that result, rounding to the nearest
whole number.

55. Student Growth Component
• In the initial three years after a school district's
implementation date for a performance evaluation
system shall meet these requirements…
Content contained is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike
3.0 Unported License
(Illinois Administrative Code Part 50, Sub. A, Sec. 50.210(e))
Unsatisfactory Needs Improvement Proficient Excellent
Less than 25% 25% - 50% 51% - 75% 76% - 100%

56. Student Growth Expectation
• Starting in the fourth year of a school district's
implementation of a performance evaluation system
the rating scale shall meet these requirements...
Content contained is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike
3.0 Unported License
(Illinois Administrative Code Part 50, Sub. A, Sec. 50.210(e))
Unsatisfactory Needs Improvement Proficient Excellent
Less than 40% 40% - 59% 60% - 79% 80% - 100%

57. The growth expectations for the
applicable learning goal shall be
aligned to the needs of the
teacher's classroom and students.

63. Examples
• Students will increase their comprehension,
vocabulary, and fluency in reading.
• Students will use the scientific method to
organize, analyze, evaluate, make inferences,
and predict trends from biology data.
• Students will demonstrate an understanding
of quadratics and exponent rules.

64. What are some Type III assessments?
• Teacher-created assessments
• Assessments designed by textbook publishers
• Student work samples or portfolios
• Assessments of student performance, and
assessments designed by staff who are subject
or grade-level experts that are administered
commonly across a given grade or subject
area in a school

67. Scoring will be very important

68. Assigning a teacher rating as a result of
the student assessments.

69. Rating Example
“Divide by 2”
• Pre test students and then sort students by score
by student category (reg. ed., sp. ed., etc…)
• Group students together for scoring purposes
into levels
• Use “Divide by 2” strategy to determine growth
target
• Decide on growth goal – Example (80% of
students in this group will make target equals
excellent)
• The pre and post tests should be the same for
this methodology

71. Example
• Regular Education students pre-test scores
– 60 to 80%
• (100-80=20; 20/2=10; range is 70 to 90%)
– 40 to 60%
• (100-60=40; 40/2=20; range is 60 to 80%)
– 20 to 40%
• (100-40=60; 60/2=30; range is 50 to 70%)
– 0 to 20%
• (100-20=80; 80/2=40; range is 40 to 60%)
• If 80% of students or higher make goal, teacher score is
Excellent, if 60% to 79% teacher score is Proficient, if
40% to 59% teacher score is Needs Improvement, if
less than 40% teacher score is Unsatisfactory

74. SLO Scoring Example

75. Summative SLO Scores Example
• The teacher assigns a numerical score to each
of the SLO’s (1=U; 2=NI; 3=P; 4=E)
• The teacher averages the scores for all SLO’s
(number will likely be a decimal)

76. For additional information
contact:
Dr. Richard Voltz
rvoltz@iasaedu.org
217-741-0466
http://richvoltz.edublogs.org