Education Week Survey: Receiving Feedback

A new national survey sheds some light on how teachers value evaluative feedback, finding that most teachers do think they have made improvements to their practice as a result of their evaluation system. 

The report by the RAND Corporation examines teachers' perceptions of feedback, observations, and teacher evaluation systems. The report uses data from an October 2016 survey of the American Teacher Panel, which is a randomly selected, nationally representative panel of public school teachers who take periodic surveys. This time, 1,825 teachers completed the survey on evaluations.

The survey found that 88 percent of teachers said they received feedback at least once in the 2015-16 school year, and 35 percent reported receiving it a couple times or more per year. Feedback from formal classroom observations was the most common source, but a large percentage of teachers said they had received informal feedback from other teachers or school leaders at least a few times a month. Only a few teachers—22 percent—said they received feedback from student surveys.

Teachers said it was more helpful to receive feedback from other teachers than school leaders—86 percent compared to 74 percent. Receiving feedback from an instructional coach or mentor was less common—only 36 percent of teachers reported getting it from this source—but among those who did receive this type of feedback, 82 percent said it was helpful.

The report notes that fellow teachers and coaches might provide more subject-specific feedback than a school leader would.

The RAND study found that teachers at high-poverty schools receive feedback from school leaders, coaches, mentors, and peers more frequently than their peers at more affluent schools. Among all teachers, more secondary school teachers received feedback than elementary teachers—but elementary teachers reported receiving feedback more frequently. Elementary teachers were more likely to get feedback from school leaders, while secondary school teachers received informal feedback from students more often.

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