Teacher and Principal Evaluation Policy
The data and analysis on this page is from 2019. View and download the most recent policy data and analysis on Linking Evaluation to Professional Growth in Kansas from the State of the States 2022: Teacher and Principal Evaluation Policies report.
Evaluation Feedback: Kansas requires that teachers receive copies of their evaluation documents. Teachers and evaluators must have a face-to-face meeting after each formal observation and have a final conference at the end of the evaluation period.
Professional Development: Kansas's guidelines require districts to explain how feedback from evaluations guides professional development.
Improvement Plans: Kansas's state model, Kansas Educator Evaluation Protocol (KEEP), requires Individual Growth Plans for teachers who are evaluated as developing or ineffective. However, this is not a requirement for districts that opt to use another evaluation system.
Evaluation Rating Categories: Kansas requires that locally developed evaluation instruments have at least three performance levels.
Ensure that professional development is aligned with findings from teachers' evaluations.
While Kansas demonstrates an intent to customize professional development based on evaluations, the state does not go far enough in ensuring a strong connection. Kansas should specifically ensure that districts utilize teacher evaluation results in determining professional development needs and activities.
Ensure that teachers receiving less-than-effective ratings are placed on a professional improvement plan.
Kansas should adopt a policy requiring that all teachers who receive even one
less-than-effective evaluation rating are placed on structured improvement
plans. These plans should focus on performance areas that directly connect to
student learning and should identify noted deficiencies, define specific action
steps necessary to address these deficiencies, and describe how and when
progress will be measured.
Kansas did not respond to NCTQ's request to review this analysis for accuracy.
7D: Linking Evaluation to Professional Growth
Professional development should be connected to needs identified through teacher evaluations. The goal of teacher evaluation systems should be not just to identify highly effective teachers and those who underperform but to help all teachers improve. Even highly effective teachers may have areas where they can continue to grow and develop their knowledge and skills.[1] Rigorous evaluations should provide actionable feedback on teachers' strengths and weaknesses that can form the basis of professional development activities. Too often professional development is random rather than targeted to the identified needs of individual teachers. Failure to make the connection between evaluations and professional development squanders the likelihood that professional development will be meaningful.[2]
Many states are only explicit about tying professional development plans to evaluation results if the evaluation results are bad. Good evaluations with meaningful feedback should be useful to all teachers, and if done right should help design professional development plans for all teachers—not just those who receive poor ratings.[3]
To further increase the utility and validity of evaluation systems, states should require that evaluation instruments differentiate among various levels of teacher performance rather than only giving binary satisfactory/unsatisfactory ratings. Binary rating systems often offer little meaning because virtually all teachers receive satisfactory ratings.[4] More rating categories allow for more nuanced distinctions between levels of teacher performance.