Inadequate support and flawed performance evaluations hamper the effort of Rockford Public Schools (RPS) to improve teacher effectiveness. Specifically, TNTP’s report identified challenges in the district’s approach to managing teacher certification, mentoring, evaluation and layoffs.
The analysis, conducted in collaboration with RPS and the Rockford Education Association, includes detailed survey responses from over 1,000 RPS teachers and administrators. Key findings include:
- Performance evaluation ratings are inflated. Teacher evaluations are based upon brief and infrequent classroom observations and result in 80 percent of tenured teachers being rated “excellent.”
- Poor performance goes unaddressed. Since the 2005-06 school year, only two tenured teachers have been dismissed for poor performance.
- Reductions in force cause unnecessary disruption. Most teachers are recalled soon after being laid off, and nearly half return to the same school.
- Certification is confusing and cumbersome. RPS does not provide teachers with the support they need to maintain their teaching certificate, and has trouble filling high-need vacancies because of cumbersome state certification rules.
- Mentoring programs are inadequate. RPS successfully enrolls most new teachers with no prior experience in the district’s mentor program. Yet only 42 percent of all participants report being “satisfied” or “very satisfied” with the program.