Teaching Profession

Grading Thy Neighbor

By Alexandra R. Moses — November 10, 2006 2 min read
  • Save to favorites
  • Print

As everyone from parents to the president puts educators under the magnifying glass, a growing number of school districts are asking their own teachers to hold the lens. Called peer review, the system gives experienced teachers responsibility for evaluating certain colleagues—typically those who are new or struggling—with the aim of retaining good teachers and ousting those who show little potential.

The practice has spread with increasing speed since it was pioneered in Toledo, Ohio, 25 years ago. Exact numbers are hard to come by, but Dal Lawrence, the former president of the Toledo Federation of Teachers who launched the system, estimates there are now 75 to 80 programs, with about half of those springing up in the past eight years.

Increasingly, your colleague can help decide if you keep your job.

This year, peer review is expanding to its largest school system yet—Chicago Public Schools, the nation’s third-largest district. Administrators there are teaming up with the Chicago Teachers Union on a pilot program in eight schools, targeting 125 teachers with four or fewer years in the district. Next year, the program will grow to include tenured teachers chosen for intervention.

Marc Wigler, who administers the program for the Chicago Teachers Union, says retention is the primary goal. Especially in urban districts, it can be sink or swim for new teachers, he says. In the peer review program, they’ll each spend 40 hours over the course of the school year with one of eight mentors. “We’re looking to better the profession,” Wigler says. “No principal could give a teacher 40 hours of mentoring.”

At the end of the year, mentors will report to an evaluation board, which decides whether to renew teachers’ contracts. This structured process is an improvement, Wigler contends, over giving principals free rein to dismiss non-tenured teachers.

But Shelly Harris, a fourth-year teacher at Richards Career Academy in Chicago who will be reviewed, fears the union “sold out the teachers.” Says Harris: “The whole thing is condescending and arbitrarily targets a group of teachers merely based on their employment designation, period—not experience, nor competence and education.”

In Toledo, the program has eliminated approximately 8 percent of non-tenured teachers each year, plus a total of 90 tenured teachers. “We are weeding out the ones that maybe don’t belong in the classroom at all,” says Janet Bird, who went through peer review as a new teacher in Toledo in 1992 and has since become a mentor.

Some question how forthright teachers can be with mentors who could eventually hand out a job-ending performance review. But Bird maintains that she wouldn’t have made it if not for her own mentor, who showed her how to address the needs of a student who threw desks in class and was several grade levels behind her other 6th graders. “We really do work hard to build trusting relationships,” she says. “Everybody has that fear of being evaluated. … You just have to look past that.”

And while many of the mentoring relationships do continue for years beyond the review period, Lawrence reports that the way teachers feel about the program usually depends on how they fare: “We get glowing reports back from about 92 percent [of non-tenured teachers], and the 8 percent who don’t make it don’t like the program.”

Related Tags:

A version of this article appeared in the December 01, 2006 edition of Teacher Magazine as Grading Thy Neighbor

Events

This content is provided by our sponsor. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of Education Week's editorial staff.
Sponsor
Science Webinar
Spark Minds, Reignite Students & Teachers: STEM’s Role in Supporting Presence and Engagement
Is your district struggling with chronic absenteeism? Discover how STEM can reignite students' and teachers' passion for learning.
Content provided by Project Lead The Way
Recruitment & Retention Webinar EdRecruiter 2025 Survey Results: The Outlook for Recruitment and Retention
See exclusive findings from EdWeek’s nationwide survey of K-12 job seekers and district HR professionals on recruitment, retention, and job satisfaction. 
Jobs Virtual Career Fair for Teachers and K-12 Staff
Find teaching jobs and K-12 education jubs at the EdWeek Top School Jobs virtual career fair.

EdWeek Top School Jobs

Teacher Jobs
Search over ten thousand teaching jobs nationwide — elementary, middle, high school and more.
View Jobs
Principal Jobs
Find hundreds of jobs for principals, assistant principals, and other school leadership roles.
View Jobs
Administrator Jobs
Over a thousand district-level jobs: superintendents, directors, more.
View Jobs
Support Staff Jobs
Search thousands of jobs, from paraprofessionals to counselors and more.
View Jobs

Read Next

Teaching Profession Why Stressed-Out Teachers Should Heed New Health Warnings About Alcohol
Teachers are at particular risk for misusing alcohol. Here's what you should know
6 min read
Tight cropped photograph of a martini glass held by a female with others blurred in the background partaking in a happy hour at a bar with purple lighting.
E+
Teaching Profession Public Trust in Elementary School Teachers Declines—But Still Tops Most Other Professions
Elementary school teachers second only to nurses in a poll of most-trusted professions.
3 min read
Photograph of diverse kindergarten children with a young white teacher sitting on the floor for a lesson in their classroom.
iStock/Getty
Teaching Profession Teachers, Do You Check Your Work Email on Snow Days?
We know how students feel about snow days. But how do teachers see them?
3 min read
A pair of snow people greet motorists along Union Boulevard as a storm packing heavy snow envelopes the intermountain West on March 17, 2022, in Greenwood Village, Colo.
A pair of snow people greet motorists along Union Boulevard as a storm packing heavy snow envelopes the intermountain West on March 17, 2022, in Greenwood Village, Colo.
David Zalubowski/AP
Teaching Profession Q&A Teach For America's New Head Hopes to Inspire Young People to Take Up Teaching
One Million Degrees CEO Aneesh Sohoni will take over the 35-year-old teacher-preparation group in April.
6 min read
Jennifer Mojica works with students in her math class at Holmes Elementary School in Miami on Sept. 1, 2011. In a distressed neighborhood north of Miami's gleaming downtown, a group of enthusiastic but inexperienced instructors from Teach for America is trying to make progress where more veteran teachers have had difficulty: raising students' reading and math scores.
Teach For America participant Jennifer Mojica works with students in her math class at Holmes Elementary School in Miami on Sept. 1, 2011. Incoming Teach For America CEO Aneesh Sohoni plans to help the group expand its pipeline of new teachers and education advocates.
J Pat Carter/AP