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Distribution, by effectiveness rating, of 300 teachers who were part of a two-year observation pilot.

City teachers got better when they participated in a two-year teacher evaluation pilot program, Chancellor Dennis Walcott announced today.

Of 300 teachers who were observed and given systematic feedback multiple times for consecutive years, the number with the lowest rating on a four-tiered evaluation system fell by half and the number with the highest rating more than doubled. Officials said the trends were evidence that when used correctly, a citywide evaluation system would help teachers improve.

The teachers were among 5,000 who participated last year in the city’s Teacher Effectiveness Pilot, in which some schools practiced using a style of teacher observations called the Danielson Framework. The model is a way of advising and assessing teachers based on multiple observations throughout the year and is seen as likely to count for a significant component of teachers’ annual ratings in the future.

Walcott announced the numbers during an address at the Schools for Tomorrow conference hosted by the New York Times. His speech centered on the city’s efforts to boost teacher quality and took a gentler tone about the purpose of teacher evaluations at a time when city and union officials are expressing optimism about reaching a deal on instituting a new evaluation system. Gov. Andrew Cuomo has said he will withhold some state aid from districts that have not adopted new teacher evaluations by January 2013.

“Across all categories, from the weakest to the strongest, we saw teacher improvement,” Walcott said during his address. “It’s time to bring these results to every student in every school through a citywide evaluation deal.” (more…)

New York City’s release of teacher ratings last month stoked fierce debate over the role of evaluations in boosting student achievement and about whether the public should be privy to their results.

A panel discussion featuring former state education chief David Steiner; United Federation of Teachers Vice President Leo Casey; policy researchers; and Nick Lemann, dean of Columbia University’s journalism school tackled those issues this afternoon. The panel, part of a two-day long symposium on testing, was billed as a conversation about whether to make teacher ratings public, as New York City did with caveats last month and New York State is poised, at least legally, to do in the future.

But the panelists mostly skirted that issue, focusing instead on the bigger question of how current teacher evaluations can be improved upon — an issue that the state is grappling with as it rolls out new curriculum standards and prepares to impose a state-wide evaluation system.

Eric Nadelstern, a former top city Department of Education official who spoke from the audience, was the only person to speak out in favor of the data releases — or address the matter head on at all.

“Clearly the tests have to get better, but we can’t wait until they do before we use them to determine whether or not the adults are doing good work,” said Nadelstern, who led the city’s effort to create report cards for each school. “However imperfect the data, if we’re using it to make high stakes decisions about kids, shouldn’t we make that data available to the students, to the parents and to the public?” (more…)