November 9, 2016 3 min read
Success Story: Worcester Public Schools Improve Educator Success with Online Evaluations & PD Tracking
Industry:
Solution:
The Scenario
The Worcester Public School System is the third largest school system in Massachusetts, with many of the schools and teachers receiving awards on a regional and national scale. In an effort to maintain its level of excellence, Worcester Public Schools sought to migrate from a paper-based system to an online educator evaluation platform. Committed to ensuring optimal performance levels, the Worcester school administration placed a focus on implementing a streamlined teacher evaluation platform that also incorporated professional development tracking.
The Challenge
As a district with more than 2,400 teachers and administrators, Worcester was in need of an online educator evaluation system that could easily scale to support a broad user base. The district also wanted to work with a trusted partner with the capabilities to develop the right type of professional development tracking tool to meet their needs, based on its Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) grant. After evaluating all options, Vector Evaluations+ (formerly TeachPoint) was the clear winner, from an economics perspective and its ability to support Worcester’s unique requirements. After a two-year phased implementation of the online evaluation tool, Worcester rolled out the platform across the entire school system. During this time, key administrators partnered with Vector Solutions on the development of the Vector PD tracking tool, which was successfully launched across the district during the 2015-2016 school year.
The Solution
Vector Evaluations+ is viewed as the choice online educator evaluation platform by Massachusetts districts and schools. Worcester Public School teachers, administrators and staff find Vector Evaluations+ an easy-to-use Evaluation Tool for their classroom observations and evaluation system. In particular, they enjoy being able to:
- Create customized forms for reporting purposes
- Easily upload evidence
- Access all information from a centralized location
In addition, the Vector PD Tracking Tool enables Worcester teachers and administrators to streamline the process of scheduling, managing, and tracking professional development activities across the school district. In particular, teachers have benefited from being able to easily:
- Identify and register for development opportunities
- Download or print certificates of attendance
- Manage all PD and evaluations in one place
The Results
Since Worcester Public Schools is a large district with many teachers that may transfer within schools, being able to access documentation from a centralized location has had an enormous impact on streamlining the teacher evaluation workflow. More time is being spent on improving teacher effectiveness vs. hunting down information across all of the different schools. In addition, since principals are able to access historical performance information, they are more informed (and effective) when helping teachers improve in certain areas. Further, by using both the Vector Evaluations+ Tool with the Vector PD Tracking Tool, Worcester is able to benefit from a versatile solution covering the entire teacher evaluation and performance improvement spectrum. Vector Evaluations+ and Vector PD Tracking are viewed as outstanding platforms by users and are playing an important role in ensuring Worcester’s ability to consistently improve educator success in providing a great education for its students.
“We have had a very positive experience with Vector Evaluations+. They tailored the platform to meet our unique needs and have been a great partner throughout the entire process.”
Mary Meade-Montaques
Manager for Instruction & School Leadership
“With Vector Evaluations+, we benefit from having everything in one place, enabling us to focus on the evaluations themselves, rather than taking time to search for supporting documentation.”
Margaret Doyle
Principal, Quinsigamond School
“Vector Evaluations+ is a versatile tool that gives teachers the opportunity to easily capture work and share it with their evaluator, while the Vector PD tracking tool offers everything educators need to manage the entire professional development process.”
Julie Keefe
Curriculum, Professional Learning & Technology Liaison
