Teacher Evaluation in Practice: Implementing Chicago’s REACH Students
This report is the first in a series of studies on Chicago’s REACH teacher evaluation system. The report focuses on the perceptions and experiences of teachers and administrators during the first year of REACH implementation, which was reported to be a particularly demanding year. The authors express the hope that the recorded experiences will be helpful to the Chicago Public Schools and to other districts across the country as they work to restructure and transform teacher evaluation.
The questions shaping this report address the goal of providing information based on one year’s implementation of Chicago’s new teacher evaluation system. It identifies those elements where administrators and teachers find value, as well as issues such as the distrust between teachers and the district, which were articulated and could affect the degree of participants’ ongoing support. It is well organized, and it is relevant for districts and leaders implementing new evaluation models that include classroom observations along with student growth measures. As more data is received, this report and others should help shed light on the impact, value, and acceptance of new teacher evaluation models.