Custom «Montgomery County» Essay Paper Sample

The organization under consideration is Montgomery County which is located in the Ohio state of the United States of America. Its mission is to improve the quality of health, education and welfare of its citizens.  The schools aim at improving the overall productivity of the students and this is made possible through the efforts of the teachers. The need and importance of integrating a strong sense of education has made the county schools come up with a system that enhances the abilities and capabilities of the teachers to deliver quality education. Excellent teaching is usually natured by a school through a system of valuing the feedback, analyzing and evaluating the eminence of education through the teachers.  It has departments under the Board of County Commissioners and most notably, the Human Services Education^{1 p.35}. It is served by Montgomery High, J.B. Mcnabb Middle School, Mount Sterling Elementary School, Mapleton Elementary school, Early Learning Center, Montgomery County area Technology Center and Carmago Elementary schools.

The vision of Montgomery County schools is to serve the community while striving for Excellency. Creating a world class system of education for the students of all walks of life and preparing them for future undertakings has been the Mission of the county schools.

The program to be evaluated is the PAR system. MCS incorporated the PAR System into its structure which adopts qualitative approach to evaluating the teacher’s performance as well as growth. MCS recognizes the importance of evaluation making to adopt a teacher evaluation system which helps the teachers to better address the classroom problems and thus help the children become better learners. The key responsibilities present in the system are:

Coaching as well as demonstrating the effective teaching strategies for the classroom management.

Continuing to meet with the participating teachers from time to time till the objective is met.

Monitoring the progress of the referred teachers besides writing them reports about their review.

Frequently meeting with joint committees and submitting timely reports about the staff under evaluation.

Establishing the goals which are mutually agreed between the different parties present and the best course of action to ensure the successful implementation of the system.

Coordinating supporting strategies as well as broadly reaching out to as many teachers as possible.

Foundations of County Schools Performance Evaluation

Performance evaluation and bench-making are widely used method to find out and adopt best practices as a means to boost performance and increase productivity. These are essentially valuable when no objective or engineered standard is available to define efficient and effective performance^{4 p.64}.

It is for this reasons that the Montgomery County Education Association (MCEA) developed the PAR program to recognize and support the teaching profession and the teachers as instruments of change in the society. The human resource system has been formulated with the purpose of upholding the teaching profession through continuous self improvements and enhancing student’s performance.

The overall objective of this evaluation is to review the effectiveness of the existing Performance Appraisal system.  Therefore, while some purely ‘descriptive’ questions will be asked in order to gather condition and procedural information, the majority of the evaluation will be based on ‘impact’ questions in order to identify cause-and-effect relationships between the existing process and observed results as they relate to the identified goals of the program. 

The descriptive evaluation questions for this review will be as follows:

Stakeholders involved

Before evaluation, a performance standard is checked to see if the system is working. If they are in line with the system, the system will be regarded as effective, if not the system will be modified by the experts to attend to the intended needs. The Performance standards are shown as here below:-

The staff should exhibit the highest degree of professionalism.

The workers should be fully committed to professional growth and enhance this through continuous development.

They should continuously conduct student assessment and be determined to improve their performance in class.

The members of staff should create an environment which is conducive for the students learning.

The commitment and involvement of the human resource towards the students in addition to their studies.

All the human resource will be evaluated without bias and based on the years of service. As staff assumes higher responsibilities, the performance standards will be adjusted accordingly with a view to improving their overall performance. These performances are designed for the classroom teachers.

Is the human resource program productive?

 How better does it address the needs of the human resource needs without biasness and favor?

How does the program enhance the goals of the MCEA?

How long did the system take to bring changes?

Is the HR system meeting the standards of the stakeholders?

Under a school setting the stakeholders can be broadly categorized as internal (principals, administrators and Board members) and external (Board of county teachers, the community, workers union, Funding entities, the government, and the media, to name a few), and both categories can be subdivided into various groups^{3 p.28}.

The internal stakeholders are the principals of the schools. They will be in charge of collecting information to be used for the evaluation of the program. This information is supposed to be confidential and unbiased. A minimum of about three observations will be made before coming up with the information about a staff.

Other school administrators can as well carry out the observations where the principal is busy or sick.

The board members form part of internal stakeholders as they are concerned with the internal affairs of the program. The external stakeholders consist of the board of the county schools, the teachers union, government and funding institutions.

A vital challenge presented while working with stakeholders is to help all of them become successful while being focused on the results and consequences rather than on politics of means.^{3 p.75}.

For the purposes of the evaluation

 After the principals and the administrators have collected the data about the teachers, they are submitted to the panel of teachers who are responsible for evaluating the program.

The evaluators of the PAR program will be a former teacher who have extensive experience in the field of teaching and thus understands the challenges that the teachers undergo at school ^{13 p.2}.

The evaluators also must have peer coaching skills, counseling and adult learning abilities.

The evaluators must have knowledge of the goals of the system as well as to how the HR system operates

Observation will be made to all the teachers at any given time. For the professional teachers, the observations will be limited to two in a year. Informal observations will be carried out in the best way an evaluator knows. At the end of the informal observation a written document will require to be updated. For the formal observations, the evaluators will follow the laid down guidelines as articulated here under.

A proper formal teacher observation will be carried out for over a half an hour.

A formal conference to discuss the formal observation will be carried out from time to time.

The conference will prepare reports to be submitted to the affected staff.

The affected staff may submit their refusal to the conference within a fortnight after receiving the formal observation report.

The term observer here refers to the principal and their deputies. They should have undergone the courses to better arm them with the required skills on conducting the observations.

The observer may request for an additional observer if he is busy or taken ill.

The observation will be reviewed by other evaluators who will present their findings to the panel of the program to make the final decision.

Observation Summary

According to Gates, the term evaluator is used not only to describe one occupation or profession but also a particular role in a given time. Those individuals who conduct evaluation normally wear many hats ^{4 p.25}. They maybe internal employees, members of the management team, the faculty members or consultants who have deeper interest and expertise in measurement and evaluation. This occurs through proper education, experience or requisite training. In other cases the individuals arrive at this point by default and face an unexpected request to try and conduct evaluation.^{4 p.67}. The Human resource aspects of any institution are crucial to guarantee the goals of the same. In the personnel journal by Edwards ^{2 p.122}, the writer observes that evaluators should be competent in some basic areas.

Special evaluation will be conducted when there will be a great concern on the performance of the staff. The probationary teachers will be evaluated on the first year after joining the institution and continuous evaluations amounting to six will be carried out annually. For the experienced teachers this will be done 4 times in a year. Evaluation of the novice teachers will be conducted six times a year. This will be done to make them conform to the school curricular.

According to Cranes, the evaluation methods most familiar to teachers and lecturers could be described as portfolio, observation and other different methods. These can broadly be categorized into different evaluation models such as the process oriented model, hybrid model and the teacher trait model.^{1 p.62}.

The program works using the referral system. This system ensures that the work of the teachers have been evaluated for a given period of time. After evaluation, the results of the teachers are then computed for each school and those found to be operating under the set standards are referred to the PAR program. Once their names have been received by the panelists of the program, immediate plans are made to ensure that the affected teachers are taken for further trainings.

This Human resource system ensures that the teacher’s performance standards are set and followed by the teachers for the benefits of the students. Also, the system eliminates the need for frequent evaluation of the teachers work. It guarantees an in depth observation of the teachers in the classroom. In addition, it stimulates a continuous growth for the professional teachers. This system in deed helps to strengthen the education in Montgomery county schools and it should be expanded to other county schools to improve educational levels.

One key aspect of planning for evaluation is considering the budgeting and financing of the approved budgets. It is costly to carry out an evaluation process and hence, the need for maximum cooperation to avoid waste of resources^{7 p.10}. The evaluators are required to transfer from one learning institution to another and probably their allowances have to be factored in. The evaluators must be people of integrity to facilitate the easy collection of data and refer the teachers without any biasness. A conflict may rise when teachers work in different schools. The evaluation will be filled by the principal of the school in which the teachers spent most of their time.

Objective-Based Evaluation: Tyler (1949)

Over the course of Ralph Tyler’s more than sixty-year career, he influenced education at all levels, including curriculum testing, evaluation, and educational policy. Directly and indirectly, he influenced many noteworthy developments such as objective-referenced testing, objective-based program evaluation, mastery learning, achievement test construction, item banking, the taxonomic classification of educational outcomes, and cooperative test development.

The PAR system should:

Ensure the effectiveness of the teaching staff and add value to education within Montgomery county schools.

The main aim of the human resource system is to evaluate the work of the teachers within the county schools.

After the evaluation the system must show how well the teachers learned from the program and how effectively they applied the learning.

The system should enhance the human resource aspects of the schools.

It is however, very difficult to evaluate a particular system as the needs of the different people are varied and difficult to satisfy^{12 p.179}. Before the final evaluation is done, the teacher and the evaluator will review on the sources of data.  Such sources of data will include:-

The unit plans

Publications

Clear evidence of the communication with the parents of the children enrolled at the school.

Samples of the assignments from the students.

Student test scores.

The final evaluation report should show the overall performance of the teachers and should be sent to the office of the human resource (OHR) to be included in each of the teachers file. The teacher who receives a rating of below standard should automatically refer to the PAR system. This system will ensure that the teachers are active in enhancing the learning process in the schools and the overall student performance increase. Also, very few teachers should have bad behaviors. This improves the human resource of the MCS by reducing the time wasted in hiring and recruiting teachers.

Evaluation milestone will be as shown below:-

Costing

The cost of the evaluating system is fair compared to the advantages to accrue from the system. The overall budget for the system will be:-

The training program will not incur expenses to the schools thus the evaluation will balance the necessity of having reliable data in line with the costs of collecting and analyzing the data. The evaluation process will involve the following:-

Team deliberations

Interviewing the stakeholders representing the teachers and the parents.

Formulating questionnaires to be filled in by the superintendents of the county schools as well as the members of the Board of education.

Reviews of the policies set by the board, the documents of the school meetings and other documentations presented by the other stakeholders.

The interviews will be filed in by the principals and the parents with the aim of gauging whether they collect the data from observation and other methods of teacher evaluation. On the other hand the performance standards have been set on the following criteria:-

Are teachers committed to learning and the needs of their students?

How well the teachers know their subjects and how well they teach the subjects.

Are the teachers monitoring the performance of the students and if yes, are the students improving?

Do the teachers establish a constructive learning environment for the students?

Do the teachers exhibit a high level of professionalism?

How committed are the teachers to their incessant improvement and professional growth?

The existence of the model establishes a particular standard which can be used in predicting the success and sustainability of the teachers and the schools that they teach^{14 p.4}. The MCEA has developed studies that are available to the schools wanting to conduct self-assessments to determine the elements of their teacher’s ethics programs. Coming up with systems of the institution and processes is a requirement of the regulatory environment. Organizations are however given some considerable amount of freedom in coming up with ethics as well as compliance programs. This way the system will support the teaching staff by:-

Helping in enhancing their lessons and review the work of the students.

Model their lessons to be interesting.

Providing resource recommendation

Working in teams as teachers.

Arranging for teachers to be observers for other teachers.

Working towards assisting teachers to be successful.

Secondary Research and Other Data Collection Activities in Montgomery County Public Schools.

MCPS encourages education research and data collection that informs instructional and administrative decision making. However, MCPS is conscious of the demands placed on students and staff members to participate in these and other data collection activities mandated by state and federal agencies. MCPS holds its internal research, evaluation, and assessment activities conducted through the Office of Shared Accountability (OSA) to high standards of methodological rigor .MCPS permits more informal data collection by those internal to MCPS to inform instructional or administrative decision making, consistent with the discharge of their responsibilities and job functions.

Calendar of Research and Other Data Collection Activities is a calendar listing research and other data collection activities scheduled through procedures outlined in the regulation. This calendar is maintained on the OSA webpage.

External individuals or organizations are for-profit and not-for-profit research organizations, local/state/federal agencies, national study groups, and other external researchers, as well as individuals involved in doctoral dissertations.

Instruments are electronic or printed formats designed to acquire data. These include, but are not limited to, surveys or questionnaires, focus group or telephone scripts, observation guides, and other tools necessary to complete a research or other data collection activity.

Internal entities are MCPS staff; parents; MCPS task forces, advisory groups, or committees; the Montgomery County Council of Parent Teacher Associations(MCCPTA), Parent Teacher Associations (PTAs), and Parent Teacher Student Associations (PTSAs).

Research is the use of systematic observational or experimental designs and instruments that provide reliable, replicable, and generalizable findings. Research typically includes analysis adequate to support findings and the dissemination of findings to contribute to scientific knowledge.

Research by External Individuals or Organizations, as well as MCPS Employees Proposing Studies for Master’s Theses or Doctoral Dissertations

External individuals or organizations, as well as any MCPS employees proposing studies for master’s theses or doctoral dissertations, or research projects must use the research review process.

Requests to conduct research in MCPS normally cannot be accepted after April 1 for the current academic year. Research activities involving students may not be conducted in MCPS from April 15 through September 15. MCPS reserves the right to establish other black-out dates as needed.

Research cannot be initiated until all instruments have been reviewed andapproved. All instruments that are part of a request must be approved as described on MCPS Form 226-17: Research Instrument Clearance Request.

Student and parent participation in research projects is voluntary. Participation of MCPS personnel also is voluntary unless specifically indicated by the deputy superintendent of schools.

MCPS staff members may not authorize, support, or participate in a research activity as defined above, unless the activity has been formally approved under the provisions of this regulation. Similarly, MCPS staff members may not transmit instruments that have not been approved for distribution, consistent with this regulation.

Researchers must provide one complete copy of each report or product developed as a part or outcome of the research project.

Data Collection by Entities Internal to MCPS

MCPS staff members; parents; MCPS task forces, advisory groups or committees; and MCCPTA, PTAs, and PTSAs are not required to submit a proposal narrative or an experimental design but must follow the steps below:

Applicants submit a request comprised of MCPS Form 226-21:Request for an Internal Data Collection Activity,

OSA reviews the request and makes a recommendation to the deputy superintendent of schools and the chief operating officer.

The Deputy Superintendent reviews OSA’s recommendation and evaluate the request to ensure that the activity is appropriate for the public

d) Signatures of the associate superintendent of OSA, the deputy superintendent of schools, and the chief operating officer are required for the study to proceed.

C. Data Collection Activities not Subject to this Regulation

Employee associations wishing to conduct data collection activities (surveys) across units must gain approval from the Committee of the Association Leaders/Deputy Superintendent of Schools/Chief Operating Officer.

MCCPTA, PTAs, and PTSAs requesting information directly from parent members are not subject to this regulation. Data collection activities directed toward MCPS staff members are subject to this regulation.

This regulation does not apply to the following:

Data-gathering procedures, tests, or other data-accessing forms that teachers develop and use to assess their assigned students’ educational status and growth,

Teachers having access to and using existing data required for these same instruction-related purposes

School leadership teams gathering, having access to, or using data that are inherently required and customarily used in the discharge of their responsibilities and functions, including:

Requesting data from students in their schools, community members located within their schools’ attendance areas, or staff in their schools

Requesting data from staff members under their direct supervision

With the greatly increased interest in teacher evaluation and its practice in schools, there has been a flurry of legal and political activities regulating and monitoring evaluation processes. Almost without exception, Montgomery Counties have policies governing the evaluation of teachers. These policies range from simple statements affirming the Montgomery County’s obligations to ensure quality instruction to elaborate documents in addressing a wide range of evaluation issues^{5 p.39}.  As has been mentioned, more often than not they will reflect the Montgomery County’s personnel management priorities and the teachers unions negotiated conditions for cooperating in the evaluation process.

Agreements are also likely to contain minimally accepted teaching standards so that in the case of subsequent court action it may be possible to specify how a teacher’s performances violate that standards^{10 p.58}.  To face judicial scrutiny, the evaluation policy will include

A predetermined standard of teacher knowledge, competencies, and schools

An evaluation system capable of detecting and preventing teacher incompetency and

A system for informing teachers of the required standards and according them an opportunity to correct teaching deficiencies.

The data points are clustered near a diagonal line rising from bottom-left to top-right. Most of the Charter middle schools are below the improvement trend line, indicating that chatters as not adding as much as the average traditional public schools in the county. The Charter schools tend to start with average better students hence posting very good test results. This is one of the advantages of the PAR system of human resource which has seen the high student achievements. The teacher student relationship has improved as well as the teacher to teacher consultation which has resulted to the maintenance of highly qualified teaching staff within the Montgomery County schools.

Speed is essential. Evaluations should be bursts of creative energy. If they are to engage teachers and other scholars in the county, and the impact is to be maximized, those who are engaged should see the results quickly.  Teachers and heads of institutions will be interested in seeing how their contribution is treated. They would eagerly read a report that lands on the table a couple of weeks later.

Communication will be addressed to the staff as follows:-

After observation about the teacher’s progress is collected, the observations will be tabulated at the conference and reported after a week to the respective teachers.

The teachers will be required to give out their feedbacks in a period of two weeks.

After submitting their feedbacks, the evaluating team will present this to the conference in three days from where a final evaluation report will be prepared. In case the teachers have cases against the report time will increase accordingly until the cases are solved.

The final evaluation report will be presented to the panelists for their final report after a week. They will give their decisions within a fortnight. Should the teachers feel dissatisfied with their decision, they can go to the courts for further legal actions after appealing to the panel.

Utilizing the Results-Concepts Applicable

Public discussion can be used by the Board of Education to prepare documentations would propose ideas, general outlines and programs as guidelines for developing education policy. This would be the main source of objectives, intentions and recommendations that would be included in the document. This would be approved by the relevant authority.

The follow up of the discussion should be undertaken and bring together public opinion and views of stakeholders, educational institutions, and academics on the entire draft, which would have been discussed several times in the Council of Educational policy. There is the need to charge the secretariat with the duty of collecting, sorting and emailing messages to those responsible with drafting the final copies.

The teachers, who have successfully finished the program, will be evaluated from time to time. Should they get a below standard rating, a consulting teacher will be deployed to such a teacher to counsel and advice them accordingly. If an experienced teacher is successfully released from the program, they can be recommended to the Professional growth cycle where they will hone their skills as professionals.

Strategic Role of the Human Resource Department in Montgomery County School

The HR department facilitates and coordinates the County wide human resource functions and creates a central source of human resources expertise for consistency and efficiency. Over the years, they have built exceptional programs focused on recruiting, developing, and retaining our most valuable asset – The teachers. To continue this practice, the Human Resources Department developed a strategic plan and identified six critical areas.

Communication: Reporting Outcomes and Trends

This highest level of intranet and internet connection in the County allowed the administrators in the various colleges and other institutions to communicate effectively. The County can segregate information rather than issuing it in a blast depending on the number of institutions and their levels. The findings were that the PAR program of human resource was successful and as such the teachers needs to be observed from time to time with the intention of providing them with a forum to enhance their growth and ensure the efficiency of learning. The county schools of Montgomery have benefitted from the system as the novice and the experienced teachers are kept on toes to execute their duties with utmost integrity and due diligence.

The Communication Flow will be as Illustrated Below

The Panel meeting with the Principals to discuss the aims of the HR program as well as define the measures which will depict success.

Devise a plan for the evaluation

Look for the appropriate inputs to be delivered in the questionnaire.

The principals being given the questionnaire and interview questions and proof reading for any mistakes.

After observation, the principals should return the documents fully filed.

Communication of the results to the staff.

Analysis of the data.

Reporting the findings to the Panelists.

The final reports from the panelists communicated to all the stakeholders.

The panelists taking the overall action against the system.

Surveys are sure to indicate that people are very particular. They are only interested in what affects them directly. This aspect of information is in regards to their performance, career opportunity, and pay and benefits^{3 p.27}. This holds true to all schools in the County.

Communication will be delivered to the teachers of each of the county schools in order to uphold transparency and accountability by the PAR panel of system. Forthwith, the affected teachers will be required to enter into the human resource system and improve on their weak areas. After completion of the program they will be taken back to the schools and apply the system in enhancing the levels of education in such schools

Irrespective of the quality of the content and information gathered, the teachers want to hear about it directly from upper-level management within their various departments or institutions. If it is County-wide evaluation, they want to hear from the County’s provincial education Commissioner. Failure of the top management to communicate the state of affairs will cause people to doubt their wisdom or veracity^{9 p.7}. However, the office of the Human Resource team can effectively deliver the results to the teachers which most of the time is the best approach because they understand the various terms and conditions they have with the employees. It is therefore, the transmitter of data on human resource systems. Monitoring will be conducted from time to ensure that the HR evaluation system is working properly and the objectives are being met.