Top Ten Considerations For School Administrators Before Setting Annual Goals and Objectives With Teachers

A Bit of Context

Many districts in California and some districts across the nation have teachers develop annual goals and objectives (G/O). As one might imagine, there are a wide range of expectations between districts. Here are a few:

• Some have every teachers create them every year, whether or not they are being formally evaluated, others have this expectation only for those teachers on the evaluation cycle.
• Some have the expectation that they will be developed collaboratively with the administrator and others do not.
• Some require the use of a variety of teaching standards (like the California Standards for the Teaching Profession – CSTPs) and others do not have a standards-based evaluation system.
• Some require that the G/O be aligned to the school/district goals and you guessed it, others do not.

Important Aspects of the G/O Process

No matter what is required or part of your school/district culture, great care should be taken to make this a meaningful activity rather than just something we do every year. You have an opportunity to build a learning-focused relationship with your teachers about their teaching practice if you are able to plan ahead. The 10 considerations that follow will help you to accomplish this and I would be remiss if I did not include the following disclaimer: ***If you are new to your position, check with other administrators, including those in HR. There may be some suggested practices that would be greatly at odds with the evaluation culture of your school/district. Discuss which would be “no problem“, “a bit of a stretch“, or “not now.” If you are not new to the position, it is a good idea to also check with others. The goal here is to improve your own instructional leadership practice along side of your teachers, not ahead of them***

Top 10 Considerations (in chronological order)

1) Carefully review the requirements set forward by the current collective bargaining agreement. Make sure you understand what is expected and most importantly, critical due dates. Sometimes HR will share a packet of information, including contract language and due dates. Check it out if you don’t already have some guidance.

2) Review you district’s current goals. Don’t have a copy? Check the website or with your supervisor.

3) Review the school’s current goals. Pay attention to how they align to the district goals. This information will be part of the goal-setting meeting you will have with your teachers.

4) Plan enough time to have a conversation about the teacher’s focus for the year and how it aligns to school and district goals. Ideally, setting aside 20-30 minutes of uninterrupted time to focus on each teacher would go a long way to strengthening the foundation of your learning-focused relationships.

5) Although there may be a number of required annual goals, focus on just one for the moment. If your district uses the CSTPs, focus on just one standard and element (ex: 1.2 Using Instructional Time to Optimize Learning). 

6) Familiarize yourself with the Continuum of Teaching Practice associated with that standard and element. Examine it together and discuss how the descriptor evolves with the practice. Here is a link to this document.

7) Discuss what the evidence of improved practice might be. Using the above-mentioned CSTP 1.7 as an example, perhaps the length of time between transitions was reduced throughout the year.

8) Allow the teacher time to think over your conversation before committing to the final G/O for the year. This may require another meeting, although probably not as long. Make sure that you have strong buy-in on the focus for the year from the teacher. This is a learning-focused relationship, after all.

9) Schedule the first observation with this particular standard and element in mind. Have a copy of the Continuum of Teaching Practice for both you and the teacher to refer to during your pre-observation conference to keep the discussion grounded in the objective and precise language of the standard.

10) Revisit the agreed-upon focus standard prior to the classroom observations, as well as other learning-focused conversations throughout the year. The purpose of these conversations is more in about “how are you doing and how can I support you” and not about “don’t forget we said you were going to get better at this.”