Indiana school superintendents generally see teacher evaluation changes positively but share concerns about their link to teacher pay, according to a recent education policy brief from Indiana University researchers.
“I think that’s something we found from one survey to the next,” said Hardy Murphy, a co-author of the brief, which is titled “Indiana Superintendents’ Perceptions of Indiana’s Teacher Evaluation Law: A New Perspective.”
Murphy is executive director of the Indiana Urban Schools Association and a clinical faculty member at IUPUI. He’s also the co-project director for the Indiana Teacher Appraisal and Support System.
According to Murphy, the brief on superintendents’ perceptions follows another brief from last winter that showed superintendents favored the changes more than teachers and principals.
“What we highlighted was the amount of support superintendents had for those changes,” he said.
Researchers looked at survey responses from 2012 to 2014, the first three years schools implemented new teacher evaluations in Indiana.
State regulations changed so each district crafted its own evaluation systems that would have to adhere to certain measures.
Sandi Cole is the director of the Center on Education and Lifelong Learning at Indiana University. She’s also a co-project director for INTASS and co-author of the brief. According to Cole, more directly linking student performance to teacher pay was one of the most notable changes in the legislation and stood out as a consistent concern for those surveyed.
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