Educator Effectiveness and Evaluation

After adopting Canvas LMS statewide for remote learning during the pandemic, the New Mexico Public Education Department selected Canvas as their digital delivery tool for their teacher evaluation program, Elevate New Mexico. The Educator Quality Division considered Canvas’ unique features as they discussed the program’s visions and goals. Following a formal needs assessment, the NMPED leadership decided to carry out a pilot in the Spring of 2021, consisting of twelve schools and five different LEAs. By the 2022–23 school year, Elevate New Mexico grew to include over 140 LEAs (districts & charters), 895 school courses, 1,150 school administrators, and 22,360 educators. In short, nearly every school in the state of New Mexico is using Canvas for teacher evaluations and all educators and school administrators have Canvas LMS accounts.

The framework of the Elevate New Mexico evaluation system includes four domains: Planning and Preparation, Creating an Environment for Learning, Teaching for Learning, and Professionalism. Within these domains are nineteen elements that were imported into the Canvas Outcomes tool to take advantage of Canvas’ Learning Mastery Gradebook features to view these standards and to align them with non-scoring rubrics.

One key goal of the Elevate New Mexico feedback cycle was to include comprehensive outcome-based rubrics containing the criteria ratings of Innovating, Applying, Developing, and Not Demonstrating, as opposed to a numeric score. The easy-to-read charts in the Learning Mastery Gradebook help principals visualize the percentage of their teachers who have received each criteria rating. This multi-layered and transparent approach in Canvas provides insight into the evaluation process for district leaders, building administrators, and educators.

Elevate New Mexico divided evaluation activities into four components using Canvas Assignment Groups: Teacher Self-Reflection and Professional Development Plans, Walkthroughs, Formal Observations and Professional Evidence.

The Teacher Self-Reflection built-in Canvas Quizzes allows teachers to rate themselves on the nineteen domain elements and prioritize their goals individually or collectively. Quiz Statistics generate an overview and conversational starting point for building administrators at the beginning of a school year. For example, learning that 30% of teachers rated themselves as Developing for Element 1D: Demonstrating Knowledge of Resources, could inspire a vice-principal to provide specifically aligned professional learning opportunities throughout the upcoming school year.

When teachers need to submit their Professional Development Plans and reflections throughout the year, Canvas Assignments and the Rich Content Editor give them flexibility and an easy-to-use means of answering guiding questions while providing a space for their voice. Administrators can then offer comments using Rubrics and SpeedGrader in Canvas to further fulfill the dynamic feedback cycle.

Canvas Rubrics provided a systematic way for administrators to complete their Walkthroughs and Formal Observations as well. A principal uses SpeedGrader to open the evaluation activity for a teacher, select the criteria rating in the rubric for the element and then provide commentary feedback. In turn, this allows the teacher to view their evaluation inside of Canvas Grades and engage in dialogue about what their supervisor observed.

The Artifacts and Evidence section of Elevate New Mexico allows educators to choose how to submit information using the Rich Content Editor. They choose from file uploads, URL links, photos, Studio media, or connecting to a cloud drive like Office 365 or Google. Once again, administrators can use SpeedGrader to review and give feedback on the documentation with a rubric aligned to domain elements.

Canvas Gradebook provides an efficient way for building administrators to view which activities were completed and to also utilize the notes field to aid in their management of Elevate New Mexico. Filtering views in Gradebook and scanning student rows for completed activities is a time-saving tool.

Yet another approach is to leverage Canvas Blueprints for continuous improvement of the program and to build upon recommendations from Elevate New Mexico participants. This was made possible by housing Elevate New Mexico in a Canvas school year subaccount that then contains a subaccount for each LEA with their individual school courses housed within. This setup provides consistency, organization, and the ability to effectively troubleshoot for the entire state, especially when combined with customized Roles and Permissions in Canvas. Ongoing office hours, training, and customer service provided by the NMPED rounds out a supportive Elevate New Mexico experience, which is broadcast using Canvas Global Announcements and is also visible within embedded schedules on the Home Page.

Like many states, New Mexico has experienced a high turnover of school staff moving between districts, schools, or adjacent states which led to advanced long-term record keeping. It was important that Canvas allows for digital records, no matter where a person might have been in the evaluation process and whether they moved from their current school or went on leave. Teachers appreciate the ability to save evaluations as PDF files for their own records as well.

Elevate New Mexico will be able to repeat the Canvas architecture and organization of this large evaluation program from year to year, while also incorporating what they learn through user feedback in order to continuously improve and support all participants.