As educators, we frequently attend PD sessions extolling the virtues of formative assessment for students’ academic growth. However, this important component of assessment seems conspicuously absent in our own teacher evaluation process. To the powers that be, I say: If the goal of the teacher evaluation process is growth (as it should be), then it would make sense to devote at least a portion of an educator’s final rating to a measure of the educator’s growth.

Perhaps, at the onset of the school year, educators and their supervisors could jointly determine areas of potential growth and actionable steps to get there. Specific mechanisms for measurement of such growth could also be jointly identified and agreed upon. Under such a “growth model,” educators might be encouraged to advance their rating by demonstrating evidence of their growth.

Such a system is a far cry from the (often capricious) summative judgments of the Danielson process. If school systems are truly interested in promoting a growth mindset among students, then it makes sense to encourage the same in teachers.

William Dalton, teacher, PS/MS 43, Queens