Medfield Teachers Overshadowed by Administrator Ratings

No matter your age or occupation -- and whether at school or work -- a great report card is always welcome. With the Massachusetts department of education web portal providing newly updated district profiles, it's easier than ever to see how schools, teachers and students are doing.

Among the district statistics, Medfield educator evaluation information is particularly interesting.

Each year, Medfield educators along with others across the Commonwealth, receive their own personal report cards in the form of evaluations. For teachers, they're often evaluated by a principal or department head; for administrators, it's typically the superintendent who conducts the evaluation. By law, superintendents are publicly evaluated by their school committees; all others are private.

Ultimately, one overall rating -- either "Exemplary," "Proficient," "Needs Improvement" or "Unsatisfactory" -- is reported annually to the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (MA DESE) for each educator, with aggregated data published for individual districts.

According to information from MA DESE, (the latest available), the majority (82.4%) of all Massachusetts educators received "Proficient" ratings; 21.1% of administrators and 12.8% of teachers received "Exemplary" ratings.

However, in five school districts across the Commonwealth -- Milton, Medfield, Maynard, Frontier and Ludlow -- the prevalence of "Exemplary" ratings significantly favored administrators over teachers by 45 percentage points or more, with little correlation to educators' years of experience in a district. See data from MA DESE below.

For Medfield in particular, the out-of-sync teacher rating doesn't seem to align with current data on the popular site, Niche, which puts it among the top "Districts with the Best Teachers in Massachusetts" at #13 out of 238. Milton teachers were ranked #28 on Niche. Comparable districts for Medfield are more closely aligned regarding teacher and administrator ratings with small differences between the two positions. In Hopkinton, for example, ratings were virtually even: 19.1% of teachers and 19% of administrators received "Exemplary" ratings.

Representatives from two of the districts above were asked last week to comment on the ratings; a third was asked about the superintendent evaluation. No answers have been received to date.

"We do follow up with districts when we see anomalies in the data reporting to verify accuracy and offer technical assistance," said Jacqueline Reis, in the Commissioner's Office at MA DESE. She also pointed out that "in small districts, even a small number of people can create big changes in percentages."

Whether looking at differences in performance ratings or salary levels, one retired teacher noted,"When teachers perceive a gap, a chasm, in fact, between the regard with which they are held, it undermines morale. Once staff morale suffers, we all suffer.”