Student Learning Outcomes: DRAFT Guidance
Step-by-Step Guide
This initial
draft
guidance is intended to give districts and BOCES a
starting point for determining the 50% student growth or student learning outcomes portion
of teacher and principal evaluations. CDE is using pilot experience and overall feedback to improve this
guidance over time. Use the
provide feedback links throughout this guidance to directly
submit your input and inform improvements to future versions.
To use this guide
You may navigate
through each step using the right-hand navigation. You may also
download the entire guide here.
About this guide
To support
students, Colorado has adopted new standards for what students
should know and be able to do at each level of their schooling,
implemented school and district accountability strategies that are
tied to unified improvement planning, and has adopted standards for
educators who are evaluated annually. Each of these improvement
efforts has the shared purpose of improving student learning and
raising student achievement levels. It is important to recognize the
interdependence of each of these strategies so that they can be
implemented as parts of a cohesive and aligned system. It is also
important to ensure that these strategies are grounded in student
learning and focused on what all educators in the system need to be
doing to continuously improve the learning environment for students.
Senate Bill 10-191, the Great Teachers and Leaders Act, shares this
focus on learning, ensuring all students have outstanding teachers
and leaders who work together to improve learning outcomes for all
students. S.B. 10-191 requires educators to be evaluated annually with
50% of their overall rating based on student growth, or student
learning outcomes. This draft guidance is intended to provide an
initial step-by-step
process for including student learning outcomes, of which student
growth is a subset, as a part of educator evaluations.
Throughout this
document the term “growth” is intended to mean student learning over
time. The intent of Senate Bill 10-191 and the State Board of
Education rules is to ensure that students make at least a year’s
growth in a year’s time regardless of where the student begins and
to ensure that educator’s use multiple types of assessments to
determine how much learning has occurred. This guidance refers to
the multiple measures of student learning, including growth, as
student learning outcomes. The reason for this is that many
assessments may be used to contribute to an educator’s body of
evidence however very few assessments can be called “growth”
measures. Student learning outcomes are inclusive of student growth,
such as data generated from the Colorado Growth Model, as outlined
in Senate Bill 10-191.
The steps outlined in this guide (which can be navigated to from the
right hand side of the page) are intended to provide discussion
points for district and BOCES leadership as they work with their
personnel evaluation committees to make district level/school level decisions about how student
learning outcomes will be used in educator evaluations.