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My principal attended a workshop on Charlotte Danielson's Framework Domains and was told that the Dept. of Education was revising teacher evaluations based on the program. Anyone have experience with this at all? One of the challenges I have is covering the skills the kids are expected to have on our state testing programs while still following the Framework Domain. Anyone have any suggestions?

Hi James - My district has used the Framework for the past 8 years, going through revisions and the recent alignment with common core and NY APPR standards. One thing that helped a lot was professional development time spent going through the rubrics together. Practice scenarios were presented, administrators explained why one box (represented a domain sub section and proficiency level) was chosen over another and teachers were able to ask questions - applying the rule to a scenario that might be seen in their own classroom. Overall I have had very positive experiences going through the process with my administrators and I think that using Danielson is part of the commitment my district makes to a high level of professionalism. I hope it is a positive experience for you- fell free to contact me with any questions!

Hi Caryn and other friends. It sounds like the temerity and unfamiliarity I have for this system may have come from a lack of local training so that the teachers being evaluated are comfortable with the system and know what to expect. Having been certificated a long time ago, I was thinking that the more recently trained teachers were very familiar with this approach and I was out of step. Another problem I have is the classroom environment. I worked very hard to set up a very nice science room and had all the Grade 6-12 students changing classes and coming into my room. Now, the students don't change classes and I'm an itinerant teacher. This makes it quite difficult for me to be effective. Pretty hard to have hands-on activities when you are carting around 8 periods of materials in a cloth bag.

We are using the Danielson model in our district for evaluations as well. Overall, I am not particularly struggling with the concepts themselves. What I am struggling with is how in the world is an administrator ever supposed to get into a classroom enough if your are on the comprehensive cycle in order to see enough evidence of good teaching. I know you can provide artifacts of what they don’t observe, but still, that takes a lot of time for the administrator to wade through that as well. I understand you are supposed to have these deep, meaningful conferences with the administrator where you are having discussions. But in larger districts where administrators have a third of their staff on comprehensive and two-thirds on focused cycles, it doesn’t seem feasible quality evaluations are being done. Time will tell, though as my dad who was a long time teacher often said, “Give it enough time and the pendulum will swing the other direction.”