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 Utah from the State of the States 2022: Teacher and Principal Evaluation Policies report.
Evaluation Feedback: Utah requires "regular conferences between an educator and an evaluator."
Professional Development: Utah does not require professional development to be aligned with evaluation results.
Improvement Plans: Utah requires "a process for an evaluator to give an educator specific, measurable, actionable, and written direction regarding an educator's needed improvement and recommended course of action." The teacher is responsible for improving his or her performance using the resources offered by the district.
Evaluation Rating Categories: Utah requires a summative evaluation rating to differentiate among four levels of performance: highly effective, effective, emerging/minimally effective, and not effective.
Ensure that professional development is aligned with findings from teachers' evaluations.
Professional development that is not informed by evaluation results may be of little value to teachers' professional growth and the aim of increasing their effectiveness in the classroom. Utah should ensure that districts utilize teacher evaluation results in determining professional development needs and activities.
Utah was helpful in providing NCTQ with the facts necessary for this analysis.
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.