Teacher Evaluations

Alaska District Expands Teacher Evaluator Use After Pilot Program

• By Michael Hart
• 09/24/15

After a two-year pilot program that involved 10 schools, the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District has expanded its use of a teacher evalation platform to 12 more schools.

Teacher Evaluator from Rediker Software, an online teacher evaluation application designed specifically for the iPad, is intended to help school districts ensure compliance with state standards at the same time it uses in-house evaluations drawn up by the district. It is a stand-alone platform designed to allow multiple evaluations to be made for each teacher throughout an academic year without requiring a lot of time by school administrators.

"The school district had some very unique needs that we were able to customize and cater to," said Rediker Software President Andrew Anderlonis.

The school district covers 25,600 square miles on the Kenai peninsula with 44 schools and 9,000 K-12 students in 21 remote communities.

With the desired evaluation parameters in place, administrators can establish goals, create specific improvement plans for the educator and communicate with the teacher about the results. There is also an export ability to allow evaluators to avoid retyping data when working to comply with state requirements.

Other features include:

• Real-time dashboards;
• A self-evaluator so teachers can respond to evaluations;
• Customized rating scales that comply with mandated teacher ratings;
• The ability to track multiple observations throughout the evaluation process; and
• Automatic e-mail notifications to teachers when evaluations are ready to be reviewed.

During the evaluation process, administrators and evaluators can digitally reference standards, set goals for instructors and create improvement plans.

"One important function that was added to meet the needs of the district was the ability to layer past evaluations on top of the evaluation that is being done and pull content from those past evaluations," Anderlonis said. "This ultimately saved administrators time by not having to find and flip through past evaluations."