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Texas Teacher Evaluation and Support System (T-TESS) Teachers may be appraised annually, through either a locally developed process approved by the district and campus site-based decision-making committees, or the commissionerrecommended appraisal process —T-TESS.
The commissioner-recommended Texas Teacher Evaluation and Support System has three major components: student growth, goal-setting and professional development, and observation.
Student growth
Prompted by a May 3, 2017, settlement of lawsuits filed by TCTA and three other statewide teacher groups over teacher appraisal requirements, TEA agreed to eliminate from its teacher appraisal rules the requirement to use one or more of the specified student growth measures in individual teacher appraisals, for both the staterecommended and locally developed appraisal systems. Instead of requiring that teachers be appraised based on one or more specified student growth measures including student learning objectives, student portfolios, pre-and-post test results on district-level assessments, or value-added data based on student state assessment results, the rules simply require that a teacher be appraised based on how the individual teacher’s students progress academically in response to the teacher’s pedagogical practice as measured at the individual teacher level by one or more student growth measures. As a result of the lawsuit, TEA clarified that under a locally adopted teacher appraisal system, in addition to considering how the individual teacher’s students progress, the district may also consider how groups of teachers’ students progress. Although TEA rules require that, if calculating a single overall summative appraisal score for teachers, the performance of teachers’ students must count for at least 20% of a teacher’s summative score, as a result of the lawsuit settlement TEA clarified that under a locally adopted teacher appraisal system, there is no required weighting for each measure. If a district provides a single overall summative rating to teachers (which they are not required to do), they can weight each component, including student growth, at a level determined by the district. As of 2019, TCTA-initiated legislation requires the commissioner to ensure that teachers cannot be assigned an area of deficiency on their appraisal solely on the basis of disciplinary referrals or documentation regarding student conduct in the commissioner-recommended appraisal process. It does not prohibit a teacher from being assigned an area of deficiency based on documented evidence of a deficiency in classroom management obtained through observation or a substantiated report. It applies the same standard to a locally developed appraisal process.
Goal-setting & professional development
Teachers new to a district or in their first year of T-TESS must develop their goal-setting and professional development plan,
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participate in a GSPDP conference with their appraiser, and submit the plan to their appraiser within six weeks of completing the T-TESS orientation. For all other teachers, the rules require that a teacher take the GSPDP from the previous year and revise it as needed based on changes to the context of the teacher’s assignment during the current school year, and submit it to the appraiser within the first six weeks of instruction. All teachers are required to maintain the GSPDP throughout the school year to track progress toward their goals and participation in the professional development activities included in the plan. They also are required to share their GSPDP with their appraiser prior to their end-of-year conference, and the GSPDP is used by the appraiser to determine the teacher’s ratings for the goal-setting and professional development dimensions of the T-TESS rubric. The GSPD/self-assessment informs the scoring of two of the dimensions in Domain 4 of the observation rubric.
Ratings
There are five performance levels under T-TESS: distinguished, accomplished, proficient, developing and improvement needed.
Observation
Each teacher will be appraised based on four domains (Planning, Instruction, Learning Environment, and Professional Practices and Responsibilities) consisting of a total of 16 dimensions. The evaluation of each of the dimensions will consider all data generated in the appraisal process. The data for the appraisal of each dimension will be gathered from pre-conferences, observations, post-conferences, end-of-year conferences, the GSPDP process, and other documented sources. Teachers are required to receive at least one classroom observation of a minimum of 45 minutes, but by written, mutual consent of the teacher and the certified appraiser, the required minimum may be conducted in shorter time segments. The time segments must aggregate to at least 45 minutes.
Frequency of and timelines for observations
Each school district must provide teachers with a calendar for appraisals within three weeks from the first day of instruction. The appraisal period for each teacher must include all of the days of a teacher’s contract. Observations during the appraisal period must be conducted during the required days of instruction for students during one school year, and the appraisal calendar will only exclude observations in the two weeks following the day of completion of the T-TESS orientation in the school years when an orientation is required. Annual appraisals are required for all teachers, except that a teacher may receive a full appraisal less frequently if the teacher agrees in writing and the teacher’s most recent full appraisal resulted in summative ratings of at least proficient on nine of the 16 dimensions, and did not identify any area of deficiency, defined as a rating of “improvement needed” or its equivalent,
