1. Overview of Student Growth and T-TESS

2. Warm-Up Activity
Take 3 minutes to jot down answers to the two questions below on your own.
Take 3 minutes to share with your table.
What does the term “student growth” mean to you?
What is the primary purpose of teacher appraisal?
Give participants about 3 minutes to think and jot down ideas on their own, then another 3 minutes to share with their table partners.
Have a brief share out – no longer than a 5-10 minute conversation about student growth and appraisal. This will give the trainers a better understanding of the assumptions brought into the room that day.

3. Appraisal Philosophy
Formative – the experience leads to development for teachers and principals
Timely and Ongoing – development is continuous, not intermittent
Relationships – colleagues working together
Tell story of how T-TESS was built and the conversations about what it is that effective teachers do that make them so effective….

4. Philosophy of Individual Growth
Maximize Potential – thoughtful, deliberate, evidence-based practices will lead to the best outcomes for each educator.
Self-Assessment and Adjustment - building habits of reflection and accurate self-assessment in teachers so that it occurs naturally and regularly.
75,600 instructional minutes during the year.
45 minutes of conferencing in teacher appraisal.
Who provides feedback during the other 75,555 minutes?

5. Texas Teacher Evaluation and Support System (T-TESS)
Rubric
Goal-Setting and Professional Development Process
Student Growth
Student Learning Objectives
Value-add scores
Portfolios
District Pre and Post tests

6. Student Growth
Student growth measures will be required as a part of teacher appraisal systems beginning in
Districts may choose from the four possible measures of student growth.
Student growth data, like observation feedback, is for the purposes of making more informed professional development decisions.

7. Assessment vs. Process Assessment-based student growth:
District pre- and post-tests
Value-added measures
Standardize, objective, comparable
Process-based student growth:
Student learning objectives
Portfolios
Granular, timely, context specific feedback

8. SLOs, Appraisal and Student Outcomes
SLOs are not a second gradebook.
They are:
A means to teacher growth (reflect, assess, adjust, and develop over time);
A concentrated look at instructional impact through the lens of the most important skill;
Results feed into a teacher’s own cycle of development (GSPD plans); and
Evidence-based.
Because SLOs are about teachers – focusing on the supporting teachers in their development of deliberate, evidence-based thinking as they plan and deliver instruction, monitor and assess learning, and adjust and refine practice to meet the learning needs of the actual students in their classrooms.
As teachers think about SLOs, their first instinct might be that they already do this – this is about student learning and how they move through some of the curriculum. How is it different than just teaching like they already do?
The value of the SLO process is the distilled focus it allows so that teachers and appraisers can filter through the otherwise noisy school year to really hone in the teacher’s choices and practice. Trying to draw conclusions about practice when wrestling with an entire course worth of learning can be very difficult.
To explain evidence-based - we mean that to be a counterpoint to the previous slide that says SLOs are not mathematical or mathematically precise. While that’s true, we don’t want to give the impression that determinations in SLOs (where students are, where they should be, where they actually land, etc.) are willy-nilly and whatever the teacher says or wants. The entire point of all of this is to develop more thoughtful, deliberate, and evidenced-based teachers. So although SLOs deal with estimation and aren’t designed to come up with a magical growth number or teacher effectiveness number, they are certainly evidence-based in that teachers are constantly pointing to evidence to justify their rational decisions.
MILESTONE: minutes

9. What SLOs Are Not
Determining student growth is not:
Subtracting a beginning-of-year skill number from an end-of-year skill number
Mathematical or mathematically precise
Numerically standardized across a campus or district
Focused on traditional testing

10. What You Will Hear Us Say…
Growth mindset
Scoring is the least important part
The process is the value
Called student growth, but really about teacher growth
Honest assessment, sincere reflection, and commitment to adjustment equals student growth
These are the key phrases and concepts we will circle back to throughout the day…

11. The SLO Process
A series of questions that, if I answer thoughtfully and thoroughly, should lead to improvements in instruction and student learning.

12. Questions to Start the Course

13. First Question
What are the student skills on which this SLO should focus?

14. Skill and Need
Balance between foundational skill(s) I teach in this course, the needs of my students, and needs of the teacher

15. Second Question
Where do I think my students will be with these skills upon entering my course?

16. Third Question
Where are my students actually with this skill upon entering my class?

17. Fourth Question
Based on where my students actually are with this skill, if I provide effective instruction throughout this course, where should these students be at the end of the course?

18. Questions During the Course

19. Next Set of Questions
What practices and strategies will allow my students (collectively and individually) to progress throughout the course?
How are my students progressing in response to these practices and strategies?
For those that aren’t progressing appropriately, what changes can I make that may allow me to better reach them?

20. Questions to End the Course

21. First Question
How did each student in the SLO progress?

22. Second Question
How did I do in engaging in the SLO process and progressing my students?

23. SLO Outcome Rubrics
The rubric combines teacher practices and student outcomes by generally looking at five things:
The quality of the SLO
High expectations in student growth goals
The process of monitoring, analyzing data, and making adjustments to practice
Students making targeted growth
Students exceeding targeted growth

24. Third Question
In looking at how my students progressed, what worked, what didn’t work, and, most importantly, what I can improve upon to have a greater effect on all of my students next year?

25. Reflection
Which students met/exceeded targeted growth? Why did this happen?
Which student fell below targeted growth? Why did this happen?
What will I adjust or improve upon next year based on this data?
Areas for improvement could be:
Instructional practices
Instructional strategies
Pacing/scaffolding
Assumptions

26. Alignment with T-TESS Post-conference and end-of-year conference
SLO process as evidence on the T-TESS rubric
Principal practice and the T-PESS rubric
Goal-setting and pd plan
Collaboration