Learning for Adaptation: Building Teacher Career Pathways at DSST Public Schools

Abstract

The past five years have witnessed unprecedented changes in teacher evaluation systems, as states and districts have responded to federal incentives under the 2009 Race to the Top grant competition. Across the country, teacher evaluation has become more frequent, higher stakes, and more explicitly tied to student achievement outcomes. This capstone examines the initial implementation of one such system at DSST Public Schools, a network of nine consistently high-performing charter schools in Denver, Colorado. I describe my role in leading a cross-functional team charged with implementing, learning from, and improving the system in its first full year. I explore the everyday challenges of positioning evaluation as a resource to drive teacher development, arguing that evaluation will achieve lofty developmental goals only if teams of system designers and system users decouple the measurement and development purposes of teacher evaluation and commit to the creation of complementary systems. Leaders can accelerate this process by modeling a developmental mindset and creating conditions for purposeful team learning that leads to system adaptation. This capstone offers important lessons for practitioners and policymakers seeking to position teacher evaluation as a resource for teacher growth and development; for DSST Public Schools in its effort to develop teachers and leaders across its expanding network of schools; and for myself as an educational leader.