Alaska District Expands Teacher Evaluator Use After Pilot Program
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."
About the Author
Michael Hart is a Los Angeles-based freelance writer and the former executive editor of THE Journal.