Section 50.100 of the ISBE teacher evaluation regulations requires that teachers who are to be evaluated during the upcoming school term be notified that they will be evaluated and provided with certain information regarding the evaluation process. The notice must be given in electronic or paper form by the first day of student attendance or within 30 days after the date of hire of a teacher who starts after the beginning of the school term.

Given the start of school deadline and the lack of guidance from ISBE on teacher evaluation under the various instructional models in our COVID 19 environment, we suggest the notice be given by no later than the first day of student attendance and include both the required content and language along the lines of:

The District’s current evaluation plan will be followed for all evaluations conducted during the 2020-21 school term, subject to modifications to the plan which may result from consultation with the Union and the work of the District’s joint evaluation committee under Section 24A-4(b) and (d) of the Illinois School Code.

A draft of the notice should be provided to the teachers’ union leadership for comment and discussion before sending the notice to teachers, but the deadline should be met even if a response from the union is not timely received or objections are made. At the same time, the union leadership should be invited to convene the joint evaluation committee, as distinguished from the joint committee which addresses reduction in force issues under Section 24-12(c) of the School Code.

The following information must be included with the notice:

1. a copy of the rubric to be used to rate the teacher against identified standards and goals and other tools to be used to determine a performance evaluation rating;
2. a summary of the manner in which measures of student growth and professional practice to be used in the evaluation relate to the performance evaluation ratings of “excellent”, “proficient”, “needs improvement”, and “unsatisfactory” as set forth in Sections 24A-5(e) and 34-85c of the School Code; and
3. a summary of the district’s procedures related to the provision of professional development in the event a teacher receives a “needs improvement” or remediation in the event a teacher receives an “unsatisfactory” rating, to include evaluation tools to be used during the remediation period.

Also, please remember that districts need to be negotiating the process for teachers to appeal unsatisfactory evaluations that we discussed here.