Evaluating Online Teachers Is Largely a Virtual Task
Administrators use Web tools to monitor e-mail, other data for performance reviews.
When administrators of virtual schools evaluate a teacher, they can’t walk out of their offices, stroll into the classroom, and take a seat at the back to observe the day’s lesson. But they can go online and get megabytes of vital information about the teacher.
Such data include how often and how long the teacher spends online on any given day, the contents of e-mail messages and phone calls, the teacher’s online gradebook, student and parent feedback, and archived, interactive whiteboard discussions.
“Teachers are in a fishbowl when they work online—it’s not like next Tuesday the administrator is going to come in, and that day you’re onstage,” said Jeff Murphy, an instructional leader at the Orlando-based Florida Virtual School, the nation’s largest state-sponsored online school, which served more than 21,000 students from Florida and...
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