Beyond Evaluation: Providing Effective Feedback to Teachers

States and districts are increasingly focused on providing individualized feedback to teachers outside of their evaluation systems—for example, by assigning a coach who works one-on-one or with small groups of teachers to address instructional challenges that teachers identify as points of practice worth investigating. A key question for educators and policymakers is how coaching feedback differs from evaluative feedback.

Mira-Lisa Katz of WestEd's Strategic Literacy Initiative (SLI) hosted a discussion on the distinction between feedback for coaching and feedback for evaluation. She

• discussed SLI's approach to observing teachers and providing feedback for continuous improvement
• shared materials from SLI's Reading Apprenticeship program and discuss how they can inform efforts to improve their feedback for teachers;
• led a discussion focused on your questions and challenges related to providing teachers effective feedback.