ABSTRACT

Assessing teacher performance in ways that foster a teacher’s development is, in any setting, a significant challenge. Creating whole systems of performance assessment within large urban institutions in ways that address the diversity of roles, purposes, and perspectives that participants hold is an even more complex endeavor. For well over a decade, the University of Minnesota (U of M) and the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) have been developing parallel systems of teacher assessment. Although each institution’s experience has unique elements, these two cases of implementing teacher assessments in large urban institutions, seen side-by-side, draw a more complete picture of the issues involved in performance-based teacher assessment. A wide range of cultural, racial, and socioeconomic issues interacts within the urban educational setting. And if there is one lesson to be taken from these cases, it is that meaningful performance assessment within such a complex setting cannot be found in the direct application of standards or a swift adaptation of an assessment “tool” or teaching evaluation form. Rather, the development of a system of performance assessment is a process that takes much time to evolve-one that should ultimately become a shared expression of what is valued in the education of young people. The processes in which educators from MPS and U of M have engaged to imagine and implement their systems is, for this reason, as significant to an examination of urban assessment practices as the nature of the assessments themselves.