Teachboost – October Update

I met with Kate Cohen from Teachboost earlier this week to discuss concerns raised by Burlington educators and evaluators and plans for rolling out the next set of capabilities to support the evaluation process.

• A field in the Educator Plan labeled “Teacher” is internally tagged for the Evaluator and outputs as Evaluator.  When Teachers submitted the name of the Evaluator and saved, ownership of the form transferred to the Evaluator and the Teacher was unable to view the form.
• Unannounced Observation Feedback forms required a rating (Exemplary, Proficient, Needs Improvement, Unsatisfactory) in order to be saved.
• Educators need to have access, even if it is only view-only access, to all documents submitted to the Evaluator.
• Information entered when creating Goals does not flow into the Educator Plan.  The functionality of fields in the Goals screen are superior to the text boxes in the Educator Plan.

I reviewed with Kate the entire evaluation process from Self-Assessment through Teacher Response to Feedback.  Over the next week, we will see proposed updates and you should see new functionality and forms over the next month.

What should we do now?

My recommendation to Educators and Evaluators for the time being is to focus on creating goals, including activity steps.  The information in these fields should remain intact.  Hopefully, we will soon see them become part of the Educator Plan.