Cross Veteran Takes On Teacher Evals

After more than two decades working at New Haven’s largest high school, Michele Sherban-Kline is leaving to take charge of a new way of grading teachers and addressing poor performance.

Sherban-Kline, who’s 47, has spent the last 23 years at Wilbur Cross High School, as an assistant principal for the past six. Monday night the Borad of Education tapped her for a new challenge as the district kicks off a critical part of a citywide school reform effort.

In her new post, Sherban-Kline will oversee the implementation of new evaluations for the district’s 1,630 teachers. The new evaluations will be tied to student test scores as well as to student growth on other academic goals.

The position, which pays $128,823 a year, is funded by an ​“anonymous,” two-year grant, said schools Superintendent Reggie Mayo. The Board of Ed voted unanimously to create the position and appoint Sherban-Kline.

In taking the job, Sherban-Kline is leaving a school where she has spent over half of her life. She graduated from Cross as a student, then spent her entire career with the district there. Her departure comes as Mayo picked a candidate from another school, former Betsy Ross Arts Magnet School Principal Peggy Moore, to replace longtime Cross principal Rose Coggins, who retired this summer. Sherban-Kline had sought the principal’s position.

“This is a big change for me, moving out of Cross,” Sherban-Kline said Monday night. She said she is ​“nervous” and ​“excited” about her new gig.

In her new post, she’ll coordinate a new way of grading teachers that is already underway in city schools. For the first time in district history, all teachers will be evaluated this year based on their students’ progress.

Read about the new system here.

Click here to read the documents related to teacher evaluations.

Principals and teachers have started with the first step of the process, which is to sit down for a ​“goal-setting” session. Each teacher will identify two goals he or she aims students to achieve by the end of the year. This allows for a broader way to measure academic progress, one that applies to all teachers, not just those who teach subjects that are covered by standardized tests.

Students in grades three to eight take the Connecticut Mastery Tests, which covers math, science, writing and reading. Sophomores take the Connecticut Academic Performance Test. The academic goal-setting will give a way for the district to measure student progress for teachers who teach other grade levels, or who teach subjects such as art or music.

Under the new system, principals and assistant principals will assess their teachers through a series of observations and by analyzing past test scores, Sherban-Kline said.

By November, all teachers will have been given an initial grade, from one to five, one being the lowest. Only teachers in the lowest and highest categories will be notified of their grade at that time, Sherban-Kline said. Once those initial grades are mapped out, outside observers from Area Cooperative Educational Services (ACES) will come to the school for a second observation to validate whether those grades appear to be accurate.

Those who score on the bottom category will be offered more support, including professional development and the chance to observe other teachers in an area of weakness, she said. They’ll get extra evaluations along the way, so that ​“there are no surprises.”

Those who are marked as the top-performers will work with their principal to see ​“how they could share those good skills with other people,” and mentor struggling teachers.

Struggling teachers will be given a chance to improve. By contract, non-tenured teachers (those in their first or second year of teaching) must be notified by March whether they will be offered a job the following year. If they don’t show growth by March, they will not be asked to return.

Tenured teachers who are identified as struggling in November will be given to the end of the school year to improve. If they don’t show improvement, ​“then there would certainly be grounds for dismissal,” Sherban-Kline said. Those teachers would be given a dismissal hearing, according to the union contract.

The major component of many teachers’ grades — the state standardized test scores — won’t be available until July. Those scores will be used to finalize a teacher’s grade, but struggling teachers will know long before then if they are in danger of failing the evaluation.

Sherban-Kline said her role will be to coordinate this whole process, including helping different parties — the union, teachers, administrators — work together.

“The beauty of the evaluation system is that it was a cooperation” between teachers and administrators, she said. The new evaluation system was put together over the course of a year by a committee of teachers, administrators and parents. 

A New York Times editorial in May applauded New Haven’s new teacher evaluations as a model for the nation, especially in the way the city and the teachers union worked together on the project. The evaluations drew interest from President Obama’s secretary of education, who invited New Haven’s school and union officials to D.C. to share how the new system works.

Dave Cicarella, president of the teachers union, welcomed Sherban-Kline to the new role in public remarks before the board Monday. He said while Superintendent Mayo selected Sherban-Kline, he did ask the teachers union for input in the decision.

“We absolutely and overwhelmingly support” her new appointment, Cicarella said. ​“Her skills are a perfect match for that job.”

Garth Harries, the city’s school reform czar, said developing talent in the city’s teaching force is a key part of the city’s school change campaign, which aims to cut the dropout rate in half and close the achievement gap in five years.

“Parents know there’s nothing more important for their children’s education than the quality of the teacher in front of the room,” Harries said.

“Michele has been an integral player at Cross. She has a lot of supporters at that school,” Harries said. ​“Everything that’s made her an outstanding administrator at Cross will make her a critical player on this bigger stage.”