Where Teacher Evaluation Fails with PJ Caposey Transformative Principal 377

PJ Caposey is a dynamic speaker and a transformational leader and educator. PJ began his career as an award-winning teacher in the inner-city of Chicago and has subsequently led significant change in every administrative post he has held. PJ became a principal at 28 and within three years was able to lead a small-town/rural school historically achieving near the bottom of its county to multiple national recognitions. After four years, PJ moved to his current district, Meridian CUSD 223, where he is in his eighth year as superintendent and has led a similar turnaround leading to multiple national recognitions for multiple different efforts. PJ has written 8 books for various publishers and his work has been published online for sites such as ASCD, Edutopia, NPR, the Washington Post, and the Huffington Post. He works in the Education Department of two universities and in a myriad of capacities with the Illinois Principal’s Association including Principal Coach and author of the first complete stack of MicroCredentials offered in Illinois.

• Why did you go into Education
• Diagnosed with cancer at 17.
• Teachers weren’t vital to me being successful until they were! Why (almost) everyone does teacher evaluation wrong and why it is one of the worst ROI processes in schools!
• I l love teacher evaluation when I am performing it.
• Resource intensive - seldom leads to
• Teachers growth and success wasn’t dependent on the evaluation process
• Second thing it does is sort teachers.
* Total waste of time because almost everyone is proficient. The process is too long to get rid of someone (Hire slow, fire fast is how the business world recommends. Education is hire fast (usually 1 interview) and fire slow. Evaluation process can take easily a full calendar year to fire someone).
• Veteran Teachers are more often insubordinate than ineffective.
• unwilling to change at the macro, then we can do something to change at the micro
• If we are waiting holistically to have the conversation during the evaluation process, we’ve lost the opportunity.
• Evaluation audit and assessment.
• Suggestions for improvement are too often copy and pasted.
• That indicates a depth of knowledge on an evaluator’s part.
• Pre-conference is the most effective way to focus on growth.
• Pre-conference should be focused on the why questions.
• If we don’t get to the why level, then our feedback will never lead to growth.
• Ken Scott driver’s ed teacher
• What is the objective
• how will they show mastery
• why should they know it.
• It’s really hard to bring teachers to observe each other.
• Instructional coaching.
• Any feedback that is trusted and is about growth is more valuable than feedback that is about raking and sorting.
• If we don’t create
• How to be a transformative principal? Shawn Achor - moving the goalposts - what does success look like? Encourage teachers to give themselves grace. You’re playing a game that doesn’t end in 2021! 
* Since everyone is already proficient, we might as well let teachers make their own goals and be in charge of their evaluation (much like we want kids to be in charge of their learning). 
* Principals observing teachers is fine, but the emphasis should be on teachers observing each other. Knowledge of instruction gets much better when you can see what other teachers are doing. 


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