Impact Kentucky teacher survey can support school improvement
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Impact Kentucky Survey: Improving feedback and coaching

The Impact Kentucky survey of teachers' perceptions of their working conditions was released earlier this week. As I pointed out in my previous blog post, statewide results indicate that many schools have a real opportunity to improve feedback and coaching to help teachers improve their practice.

These survey results offer school leaders a rich window into understanding how their teachers feel. Those feelings don't always translate directly into positive or negative outcomes for students, but they are important indicators. As a strong body of research reveals, principals influence student learning primarily through their relationships with teachers and their efforts to grow the academic capacity of the school. Working conditions are a key component of that capacity. So I encourage educators to explore their school and district's results. The interactive Impact Kentucky results website allows you to compare school results to the entire state and also to similar schools (so, high schools to all Kentucky high schools, for example) and those differences automatically tag the school's greatest (relative) strength and greatest growth areas.

It can take a lot of emotional courage, but highly reflective principals will want to unpack the results with their teachers and invite teacher and staff input into specific strategies to address growth areas. Goals can be set and progress can be monitored. The process itself will likely strengthen teachers perceptions regardless of the specific strategies pursued.

I received an email from one of my former students, now a successful high school principal in a nearby district, after she read my post and reviewed her school's results. She found that, like many schools across the state, one of her lowest domains on the Impact survey was Feedback and Coaching:

I, too, am in that boat.  I make daily classroom visits, however, I do not give my teachers any written feedback.  I want to but the formal "walkthrough" forms I have seen seem so cumbersome.  I've also considered having my department leads develop some type of feedback tool that I can use but we seem stuck in the weeds when we start to create something.

It's worth looking at the five survey questions related to this domain. They read as follows:

  • How often do you receive feedback on your teaching?
  • At your school, how thorough is the feedback you receive in covering all aspects of your role as teacher?
  • How useful do you find the feedback on your teaching?
  • How much feedback do you receive on your teaching?
  • How much do you learn from the teacher evaluation process in your school?

The principal who wrote me went on:

I realize that providing written feedback is something novel for my team and that I will need to do some legwork on my end.  Honestly, I have been afraid to implement something like this for fear that they would think I am trying to catch them doing something wrong.  According to their responses, I do not provide effective/frequent feedback like they wish.

Do you have a form that you find effective?

Here was my response, which initiated some additional thought sharing between us:

Obviously from the data you are not alone in feeling like you want to give teachers better feedback. I’m afraid I have not seen any specific forms that I would recommend. I think this has more to do with creating an atmosphere in which everyone is continually working on their practice. You’ve got the most important step for that in place already by making daily classroom visits. There’s no way you can provide meaningful feedback without knowing what’s actually happening in the classrooms, so you’ve got that foundation already.

The next thing I might recommend, based on examples I’ve seen elsewhere, is to just start leaving some notes for teachers. It doesn’t have to be on a form. You could probably find some  medium-sized sticky notes that you could write a short message on and leave on the teacher’s desk. I would use this primarily for giving specific praise. Acknowledging the good practices you saw when you were in the room. Once you’ve established that as something the teachers can expect, and they see that you recognize their strengths, it will make it easier to provide suggestions (“wonder what it would be like if….have you ever thought about doing….”), and then even more critical feedback (although that might come more in one-on-one conversations)…OR, if you’re doing all this to supplement the use of your walkthrough form, maybe you can also then start using blank comment space on that form to make the occasional improvement suggestion.

When this is all woven into a meaningful evaluation process, then teachers are using the formative feedback you are giving all year and the summative feedback from their evaluation to craft personalized, substantive growth plans each year. Then you can start giving specific feedback during your walkthroughs on those teaching components that you know each teacher is working on.

Keep in mind it’s been years since I did a lot of walkthroughs where I had to give specific feedback, so what I’m describing comes from what I’ve observed other administrators do and from spending a lot of time reading about and researching this topic. You will have to figure out what works best for your particular context and staff. At any rate, the very fact that you are interested in this is great. Ask your teachers for their ideas too about how you and your leadership team can improve the feedback teachers get on their instruction. They’ll have some suggestions!

My former student indicated that she'd had success with the sticky note strategy when she was previously an elementary principal, but was willing to try it with her high school teachers. I imagine it's worth a shot as a good first step, but the teachers themselves will probably have the best ideas. And, I advised her, don't take "I just want to be left alone to teach" as a viable response! That's not an option.

I'd be eager to hear from other administrators or teachers what kinds of feedback strategies have worked best for you in the past? What kinds of feedback not only fostered a positive climate but also helped teachers actually improve their practice? Feel free to comment below or email me: [email protected].

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