Scenario

Your district is considering implementing a new, more thorough teacher evaluation system that uses multiple measures of teachers’ effectiveness.  The measures being considered include scores of observations of teacher practice, student academic growth, student surveys, and teacher contribution to the school community.

Before committing to this new system, you think it would be a good idea to figure out its likely costs.  As a start on this, you want to understand the costs for an individual school.  

Under the new system, teachers get observed by the principal according to the following rules:

• ‘Distinguished’ teachers get formally observed twice (for one class period) per year

• All other teachers get formal observations four times over the course of the year.

• All other teachers also receive two informal evaluations over the course of the year.  These observations are only for part of the class period (15 minutes)

• Before each formal observation the principal must alert the teachers and provide a list of areas of focus for that observation.

• After each formal observation, the principal must meet in conference with the teacher for at least a half hour and provide a writeup of his findings aligned with the district’s teaching framework.  

• After the conference, teachers have one week to respond.

• After each informal observation, the principal needs to provide feedback to the teacher – however, no formal report needs to be filed. 

• Principals are trained each year on scoring formal observations for three days.  

• Principals meet with their supervisors twice a year to review teachers performance in the school and to identify especially strong teachers who could serve as mentors to others.

There are two sheets in the Excel file.  First, the “Assumptions” sheet contains some known assumptions for this school.  You will need to make more assumptions in the cost model, too.  Second, the sheet “Model” contains a very simple activity-based costing template.  

1. The first step in any activity-based costing model is to list the separate activities that must be performed in pursuit of a goal or execution of a function.  Think through and list out the activities that you believe teachers and principals must execute to carry out the evaluation process as described.  Add a short description of the activities if they are not self-evident. (Note: in real life you would interview principals and teachers to better understand the required activities.)  

Remember, only include activities that teachers and principals would not otherwise be doing for other reasons.  For instance, if a principal observes a teacher in a class, this is an incremental activity for the principal but not for the teacher – who would be teaching that class anyway.  On the other hand, a post-observation conference would be an incremental activity for both the teacher and the principal.

2. Estimating time costs for teachers and principals. 

a. We now need to determine the amount of time it takes to perform each activity once.  Based on your understanding of the activity, come up with reasonable assumptions of time for each activity.  

b. Use column E to describe the drivers or triggers of each activity.  For instance, time spent by principals in classrooms conducting observations will be driven by the number of teachers and the number of observations per teacher per year.  Use columns F & G to capture the number of times each activity is performed and the total time spent on the activity.     

c. Using the salary information on the “Assumptions” spreadsheet, calculate the total cost of the evaluation process for an individual teacher and principal.

3. Now we can look at a total estimated resource cost for our typical elementary school.

a. What are the total personnel costs for running the evaluation process in this school in dollars? In hours? What is the cost per student?

b. In this school, what percent of their paid time do teachers spend on the teacher evaluation process?  What percent of time does the principal spend on the teacher evaluation process?

4. We have estimated the time costs of the evaluation system.  What other direct costs might go with the evaluation system?

5. Write a few paragraphs describing to the superintendent the implications of your analysis.  What additional policies and guidelines should the district consider to make the new evaluation system successful?