As the third year of an evaluation cycle comes, students at Pleasant Valley High School question the impact of their voices in the process of their teachers’ evaluations.
Pleasant Valley School District includes seven schools with over three hundred educators. This district has over one thousand students enrolled in it, ranging from the ages of four to eighteen. The huge amount of students places a strong responsibility on both the district and the teachers.
Are the students receiving the best education that PV can offer? Are the educators doing their jobs and making sure the students can succeed in academics? These answers are kept in check due to the laws of the state of Iowa; these certain rules help determine each teacher’s capability of educating the students in the classroom.
As stated by the Department of Education of Iowa, “The Iowa Teaching Standards and Criteria are the very foundation of Iowa’s teacher quality efforts. The teaching standards and criteria represent a set of knowledge, skills, and dispositions that reflect the best evidence available regarding quality teaching.”
The teacher evaluation process must include the Iowa teaching standards and criteria. The Department of Education of Iowa outlined the requirements that must be met in order to continue teaching.
Teacher evaluations must be conducted once every three years. The Department of Education outlined this process. “A teacher evaluation system should be built around a range of sources of data, information, and processes that will demonstrate the teacher’s mastery of the Iowa Teaching Standards.” This process also requires supporting documentation, like reviews and feedback, from fellow educators, parents, and students.
However, at Pleasant Valley School District, the students are not involved in the process. Even though the law states that students should be involved, many students at PV do not have a say in teacher evaluations. In this, many students believe that they, the ones that are most impacted by the school administration decisions on teachers, do not have an adequate voice.
Susan Anil, an executive of Spartan Assembly, shared her opinion on whether students’ inputs should be a factor of PV’s teacher evaluation process. “I think that it would be beneficial for the students’ voices to be heard throughout this process. While some of what students say should be taken with a grain of salt due to possible personal conflicts and other circumstances, I feel that the evaluations will only become stronger with students’ perspectives,” she said.
Considering all possible factors within the teacher evaluation process, like students’ input, can improve the decisions made within the Pleasant Valley School District. This is because each of the educators in the district have made an impact on the students’ lives and academics.
