Last week I had my end-of-the-year evaluation. I walked into my principal’s office, closed the door and discussed my progress on the goals we had set forth back in September. And when all was said and done, I found out that I am “satisfactory.” What a relief.

Actually, in my district, as in most, you have to be pretty bad to be “unsatisfactory,” and “satisfactory” is as good as you can get, which can leave most of us who have a stake in the teacher evaluation system feeling somewhat, well…unsatisfied.

With all the emphasis on teacher accountability, it’s imperative to have a comprehensive evaluation process that gives teachers frequent, objective and useful feedback based on clear, professional standards. And it’s just as important that the evaluation process point the evaluee in the direction of growth and improvement. A good example of such a pie in the sky system is described in a new report by Accomplished California Teachers (ACT) entitled, A Quality Teacher in Every Classroom: Creating a Teacher Evaluation System that works for California. After looking it over, I have no doubt that it would work for California, or any other state, for that matter. It’s thorough, it’s aligned with the National Board’s Core Propositions, it’s based on student learning, and most importantly; it’s focused on improvement.

But it’s very expensive to put pie in the sky. And California, like most states, can’t afford to put anything in the sky right now. So the challenge is to come up with a satisfying evaluation system that’s also affordable. A compromise, in other words.

First you need to decide on a set of standards. Fortunately, most districts these days, including mine, are leaning toward teaching standards that reflect, to varying degrees, those set forth by the National Board. That’s a good thing, especially since it doesn’t cost any more to have high, meaningful standards than to have low, worthless ones. (By the way, one of the most important advances in the teaching profession was the establishment in 1987 of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. Most people only know about their certification process, but their establishing of teaching standards, upon which that certification process is based, is, in my opinion, far more important.)

After establishing your standards, you need to decide on the actual evaluation process. ACT favors experts, including accomplished teachers, trained for the task, who come in, examine evidence, prepare an evaluation and then meet with the teacher. But of course you have to train these people, cover their classes while they’re out, and probably pay for some travel, so they don’t end up evaluating their best friends. Now you’re talking about some serious money.

Most districts rely on the building principal to administer formal observations. Principals are cheaper: they’ve already been trained (supposedly), they don’t have any classes to teach, and they’re already on-site. Of course, the problem with relying on administrators is that most of them never really get around to conducting regular, thorough observations and evaluations on every teacher in the building. I’m sure my own principal would love to observe each one of us once a week for an hour at a time. Or even once a month. But like most principals, he has to cram 20 hours worth of work into every eight-hour day, and the last thing  on his list is checking in on some veteran, competent teacher down at the end of the hall. Consequently, I rarely see the man.

There’s a third option, of course: self-evaluation. Teachers are the most self-critical people I know, and self-evaluation is essentially free.

But is it effective?

It can be, but most of the time it probably really isn’t. In my district, we rely on supervised self-evaluation for teachers with three or more years of experience. We have to write down two or three goals in the fall, complete with a set of indicators used to determine whether or not the goals were met. Our goals have to be aligned with building goals and there has to be some evidence of collaboration. Each teacher then meets with their principal to have their plan approved and they meet again in the spring to determine the extent to which they’ve met these goals. If they have, they’ve done a “satisfactory” job.

There’s two obvious problems with this system. First of all, since you’re evaluated in terms of how well you’ve met your goals, there’s a clear disincentive to set robust goals. It’s better to shoot low and score than to shoot high and miss.

Secondly, aligning personal goals with those of the building (or district) might not always be appropriate. My building and district goals, for example, are nearly always focused on math and literacy, which might not be the area of my greatest concern. (My art program has some serious shortcomings) Or more fundamentally, a teacher might have legitimate, philosophical differences with the direction a building is taking in regards to curriculum. My district recently adopted an elementary math curriculum that is just this side of “scripted.” Ten years ago, when constructivism was the coin of the realm, a teacher moving towards where we’re at right now would have been radically unsatisfactory. These days, that same teacher wouldn’t even get approval for a goal to be more constructivist.

So if training and using large cadres of teacher-evaluators is prohibitively expensive, if principals are too busy to do the work correctly and if supervised self-evaluation is frequently ineffective, what’s the solution?

I honestly don’t know. But I hope to. In fact, later this month I will participate in a discussion tasked with exploring this issue. Education Sector is hosting the discussion, in which five experts will present their ideas, and four teacher-bloggers, including myself, will pepper them with questions. Expect some live-posting during the event itself (6:30 AM PST on June 30th) as well as a thorough review of the discussion once the dust settles.

So stay tuned. And maybe some day, I’ll be able to answer the question “How’d I do?” with a more satisfying answer than “satisfactory.”