3 Things We'd Change About Evaluation Season

Evaluation season doesn't ease back in. One day you're wrapping up summer PD, the next you're expected to walk into a classroom with a clipboard and score cold, whether or not anyone's actually calibrated on the rubric since May.  

In our latest Off Script: Conversations with Educators conversation, 3 Things We'd Change About Evaluation Season, three former educators on our own team, Lisa Tunnell, M.Ed., Heidi King, Ed.D., and Amy Stock, MS, talked through the one thing they'd each change about how evaluation season kicks off.  

Between them, they've spent decades as teachers, coaches, deans, and principals before moving into product and customer success roles supporting the districts who use our Evaluation platform.

Key Takeaways from the Session

• The real bottleneck in evaluation season isn't the observation itself, it's turning fifteen to thirty minutes in a classroom into a rubric-aligned narrative without it turning into an autopsy weeks later.
• Fast, specific feedback isn't a nice-to-have, it's a retention lever for the first-year teachers and career-changers now filling a lot of classrooms.
• Asking a teacher what they're already working on before you observe turns the evaluation into a partnership instead of a checklist.
• Piling on feedback backfires. One or two priorities a teacher can actually act on beats a long list every time.
• Consistency across a district was never about every evaluator scoring the same way. It's about every teacher getting specific, actionable feedback no matter who's holding the clipboard.
• A single observation rarely changes practice. The follow-up conversation is where the growth actually sticks.

What's the real gap in evaluation season?

Tunnell: Across my career I've seen teacher evaluation from a lot of angles, the glorious chaos of an eighth-grade science classroom, the very different rhythm of a CTE classroom, and years watching my husband, a middle school principal, do paperwork at the kitchen table at night and on weekends while we were raising three kids.

Administrators want to be in classrooms with kids and teachers. That's the best part of their day. It's what happens afterward that's hard. Translating what you saw into a rubric-aligned narrative and an actual growth plan doesn't come naturally, and when you're tired, it's easy to default to something like "great job, see you next year" instead of feedback a teacher can use.

Why does the speed of feedback matter so much?

Tunnell: Quality feedback is a retention lifeline right now. We've got people coming into classrooms straight from industry and a lot of first-year teachers who need real coaching to grow into confident, long-term educators. That feedback has to happen quickly. It can't be an autopsy of something that happened three weeks ago, because by then the teacher doesn't remember the lesson and the feedback loses its power.

How do you make an evaluation feel like it's for the teacher, not just about compliance?

King: When teachers hear the word evaluation, they think about checking boxes, deadlines, and rubric scores. I remember my first year, evaluation day was about making sure my lesson looked perfect and my students were on their best behavior. It wasn't about growth.

One of the simplest things an administrator can do is ask a teacher, before the observation, what are you working on right now? Teachers are their own harshest critics. They already have an answer. That question turns the evaluator from someone coming in with a checklist into a partner, and it makes the rubric feel like part of daily instruction instead of something separate from it.

What keeps feedback from overwhelming a teacher?

King: Feedback has to be timely, but it also can't be a long list. Give a teacher one or two meaningful priorities they can actually work on instead of everything you noticed. I used to teach psychology, and one of the things I taught my students was chunking, breaking something big into small, manageable parts. It's the same idea here. Help a teacher work on one thing, let them get there, then move to the next.

What does actionable feedback actually sound like?

King: Good feedback answers three questions: what's working, what could be strengthened, and what's one thing you can try next. "Students were engaged" isn't specific evidence. Something like, every student contributed one idea during the small group discussion and several students referred back to a classmate's response before sharing their own, that's evidence a teacher can actually use. And it should come with something practical to try, not just "improve your questioning," but consider adding one planned follow-up question that pushes students to explain their thinking.

How do you turn a post-observation conversation from a transaction into something that builds a teacher up?

King: Evaluations can easily become transactional:  

• complete the observation
• submit the form
• assign the rating
• get the signature
• move on

That has very little to do with growth. A better approach is to start the post-conference with reflective questions.  

• What do you think went well?
• What surprised you?
• What would you change if you taught this lesson again tomorrow?  

Come to that conversation with curiosity, with the evidence you gathered, and with respect. And don't let it end there. A single observation rarely changes practice, so agree on one specific next step, whether that's adjusting a routine, observing a colleague, or meeting with an instructional coach, and then follow up and ask how it went.

Does consistency across a district mean every evaluator has to score the same way?

Stock: Not at all. We hire principals for a lot of different reasons, and we're not trying to build identical evaluators. I was at three different districts over my career, and in every one there were known administrators, the ones who were hard to get top marks from, and the ones who always gave the highest rating, so you wanted them as your evaluator. Consistency isn't about making everyone the same. It's about making sure every teacher gets that same high-quality, specific feedback, no matter who's doing the observing.

What can evaluation data tell you beyond how teachers are doing?

Stock: Almost every time we look at evaluation data, we're looking at the teachers. How are they doing? But you can also look at what the data says about your evaluators, not to call anyone out, but to understand why an administrator is giving the feedback they're giving, and how that might look different for a brand-new teacher versus a veteran.

Having guardrails in place for how evaluators give feedback, and actually reviewing that, is how you make sure everyone's getting what they need while still keeping consistency across a campus and a district.

What's next for making this easier on evaluators?

Stock: We've built an Evaluation AI Assistant, which speaks directly to the gap Lisa mentioned between the observation and the write-up. It takes the scripting from the classroom and the rubric and helps put that into words, and principals and assistant principals can edit, delete, or add to it with a click. It's about giving evaluators something in their back pocket so the write-up doesn't eat the whole weekend, and so the language stays consistent across the district.

Final Thoughts

None of this is really about the rubric. It's about whether a teacher walks away from evaluation season believing someone's actually paying attention to them, not just checking a box. That takes speed, specific evidence, and a conversation that continues past the post-conference. Get that right, and evaluation stops being something administrators dread and starts being the tool that keeps good teachers in the building.

If closing the gap between what happens in the classroom and what actually reaches the teacher sounds familiar, that's what our Evaluation platform is built to help with. Book a demo to see how it fits into your district's evaluation season.