PICCS in Focus:
School Leader Evaluation
March 2009 - Vol 2, Issue 1
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Welcome to the "PICCS in Focus" E-Newsletter! PICCS: Partnership for Innovation in Compensation for Charter Schools, is a comprehensive program designed to recruit, retain, develop and reward top quality teachers and school leaders at charter schools. Led by the Center for Educational Innovation - Public Education Association, PICCS is funded through a five-year federal grant from the Teacher Incentive Fund program, which supports development of performance-based compensation systems to drive increases in student performance.

In this issue of PICCS In Focus, we focus on school leader evaluation. At the PICCS project, we are adopting "learner-centered" leadership approaches and are working to align our leader evaluation systems with this approach. We hope you find this information valuable as you develop your own systems for principal evaluation.

Sincerely,

Harvey Newman & Frank San Felice

Co-Directors, PICCS

Principal with Pen 2
Research on how a principal influences school performance indicates that a principal's effect and influence over his or her school is primarily indirect. Therefore, school leaders can have the most effect on their students, educators and school environment by focusing on three "key drivers":
  • Setting goals and expectations for teacher and student performance.
  • Influencing staff quality through hiring decisions, coaching, feedback and retention.
  • Exercising their influence over their school's organizational culture and environment.

This suggests that evaluations should focus on what principals do to influence these drivers.
Teamwork 2
Dr. Anthony Milanowski offers his Top Ten Recommendations for Educational Leader Evaluations:

  1. The evaluation system should include performance dimensions that reflect both objectively measurable outcomes - such as student achievement - and principal behaviors.
  2. In addition to key outcomes, the evaluation system should include performance dimensions that address important drivers of these outcomes. School culture/climate, professional development of teachers, implementation of effective curricula and teacher engagement of students should all be taken into account.
  3. Consideration should be given to measuring performance drivers both objectively and judgmentally.
  4. The behavioral performance dimensions that are measured judgmentally should include clear standards for performance and multi-level rubrics to make expectations clear to principals, guide evaluators, and provide for specific feedback.
  5. The system should not try to measure all possible aspects of principal performance, but rather focus on key drivers. This is especially important when evaluating behaviors judgmentally, because collecting evidence and making judgments can be time consuming.
  6. The evaluation system should include a session with the evaluators at the beginning of the year in which performance expectations are made clear to the principal. This session should include a discussion and setting of specific goals for performance over a period of time.
  7. To improve perceptions of fairness,evaluation procedures should be communicated beforehand. They should also be specific and uniform for all of those being evaluated. There should be provisions for timely communication of results and feedback, and the opportunity for an appeal if the principal feels an error has been made. The performance standards and evidence collected should be job-relevant.Evaluators should treat those evaluated honestly and without bias.
  8. The evaluation results should include specific feedback on what the principal did well and what needs improvement.
  9. Coaching or assistance should be available to help principals address performance dimensions that need improvement.
  10. There needs to be accountability for implementing the system as designed.
Lead Learn
There is a substantial amount of research on evaluation systems, both in the public and private sectors, and all of it suggests that the perception of the evaluation, by both the evaluators and and those being evaluated, is key to the system's survival and effectiveness. Some of the most important influences on the perception of the evaluation include:
  • The workload imposed by the system.
  • The perceived fairness of the evaluation and its results.
  • The accuracy of the evaluation, including the credibility of the evaluator and their collected evidence.
  • Satisfaction with personal interactions with the evaluator.
  • The usefulness of any feedback for improving performance.

Similarly, the considerable amount of research on improving job performance has suggested that performance evaluations are more valuable in improving performance if:
  • Performance expectations are made clear at the beginning of the evaluation.
  • The evaluator is credible to the person being evaluated.
  • The feedback on performance provided to the person being evaluated is specific, and refers to the concrete examples of performance that justify the ratings given.
  • The feedback is accompanied by specific suggestions on how to improve.
Good Idea
The PICCS project is utilizing VAL-ED (Vanderbilt Assessment of Leadership in Education) as its main tool for principal evaluation. VAL-ED is a paper and on-line assessment that utilizes a multi-rater, evidence-based approach to measure the effectiveness of school leadership behaviors known to influence teacher performance and student learning (the "key drivers" described above). The VAL-ED measures core components and key processes. Core components refer to characteristics of schools that support the learning of students and enhance the ability of teachers to teach. Key processes refer to how leaders create those core components.

The VAL-ED is a 360° assessment that is easy for a school to adopt. Completing the VAL-ED, a 72-item inventory of behaviors, requires just 20-25 minutes per respondent. It is intended to be taken by the principal, the principal's supervisor, and all teachers in the school. 360° assessments provide the best feedback to principals because they incorporate the input of all members of the school's professional community. All respondents will respond to the same items about principal leadership behaviors. When the principal receives a report with the results of the assessment, the report will allow the principal to compare his or her own ratings on each of the core components/key processes against the ratings given by teachers and supervisors. In this way, the principal can get informative feedback about the leadership behaviors in which he or she is excelling and the behaviors on which more work is needed.

PICCS is supported by the Teacher Incentive Fund (TIF), which is a grant from the U.S. Department of Education. The contents of the PICCS website do not necessarily represent the policy of the Department of Education, and you should not assume endorsement by the Federal Government. email: cclawson@cei-pea.org phone: 212.302.8800 web: http://www.piccs.org

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PICCS: Partnership for Innovation in Compensation for Charter Schools
Center For Educational Innovation - Public Education Association

phone: 212-302-8800
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