Revere to adopt new teacher evaluations

REVERE – The Revere School Committee decided to be one of the early adopters of the Massachusetts Department of Education?s new evaluation of educators.?We are deciding to be pioneers here,” Assistant Superintendent Dianne Kelly said at Tuesday night?s meeting.Race to the Top schools must implement these new evaluations by 2012 and all other schools by 2013. Revere is among the 11 school districts deciding to start implementing it now.It is a five-step evaluation that focuses heavily on rubrics. The first step is for the educator to assess themselves and from that they will go into the second step, which is to make goals and develop a plan. After developing a plan, they then will implement that plan. Later they will discuss with their superior how the plan is going and then finally summarize the outcome. After the five steps are completed, they will go back to step one.Teachers who have been at a school for some time have two years to complete the evaluation and new teachers have one.?It emphasizes on collaborating to improve instruction and student performance,” Kelly said about the new evaluations.School committee member Dan Maguire wanted to know if there was a way to involve students? opinions on their educators.?These are our customers in education,” Maguire said. “Children need to be heard.”Kelly said that students? opinions are not mandatory but can be used voluntarily.Sara Brown can be reached at [email protected].