Providence Public Schools Selects Teachscape to Help Empower Teachers to Improve Teaching Practices

Rhode Island's largest school district to deliver individualized PD based on fair and reliable teacher evaluations

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 12, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Providence Public Schools, Rhode Island's largest school district, has selected Teachscape, the leader in delivering Web-based solutions and expert services to improve teaching practice, to advance its teacher evaluation and professional development processes. Teachscape will help the district implement its evaluation system for 2,000 educators, including teachers, administrators, and support professionals. Teachscape will also help Providence deliver individualized online professional learning for each of its teachers.

"Our overarching goal is to dramatically improve student achievement by focusing intentionally on improving the quality of education in our district. We want to ensure that we are doing everything we can to support educator effectiveness so that we can continue to attract and retain the most effective educators possible," said Nkolika Onye, Executive Director of Performance Management at Providence Public Schools.

The district is implementing Teachscape's award-winning products, Teachscape Focus, Teachscape Reflect, and Teachscape Learn, in a multi-phased approach. It began working with Teachscape three years ago to conduct classroom walkthroughs. "The tools for conducting classroom walkthroughs provide our administrators with the ability to collect classroom data quickly, and then share the data with their teachers. Together, teachers and administrators are able to reflect upon and analyze their findings, make instructional decisions, implement and monitor for improvement."

Today, all of the district's 100 evaluators, which includes principals, assistant principals, and certificated central office administrators, have been trained and assessed using the Teachscape Focus observation training and assessment system to help them better conduct fair and reliable teacher evaluations using Charlotte Danielson's Framework for Teaching in conjunction with the Rhode Island Innovation Consortium Framework. "As the largest district in the state with more than 24,000 students, 2,000 teachers and 100 evaluators, inter-rater reliability is crucial. Teachscape Focus is of tremendous and obvious value," said Onye.

Providence will use the Teachscape Reflect observation and evaluation system to electronically conduct and manage each of its evaluation processes for teachers, administrators, and support professionals in their entirety.

"Teachscape Reflect will allow Providence to more readily integrate multiple measures so that evaluators can begin to develop a more accurate assessment of educator effectiveness," said Onye. "Together, evaluators and educators will be able to engage in focused conversations based on the observation results. This is designed to help both groups understand the educator's strengths and weaknesses so educators can focus on specific areas in which to build their skills and evaluators can use the data to provide more targeted support and feedback to those they are evaluating."

Teachscape Learn is a key component of Providence's professional development process. Teachscape Learn is a video-rich professional learning system that provides teachers with tools to plan and track their professional growth and access to online learning communities, video channels, more than 160 Teachscape courses, plus the district's offerings.

"The online courses in Teachscape Learn are robust, yet easy to use. Access to Learn will be a major asset for our teachers as they continually work to improve their teaching practice," said Onye. "Learn will provide our teachers with more and varied resources to develop and improve their skills. By moving to Teachscape Learn to manage our district face-to-face professional development as well, we believe that our educators will see the benefit of a blended approach to improving their own professional growth and become even more inspired and empowered to take ownership of their own professional development."

To learn more about Teachscape, visit www.teachscape.com.

About Teachscape

Teachscape uniquely combines innovative technology, engaging content and expert services to develop great teachers. From its classroom observation training and technology to its powerful web-based content delivery platform, Teachscape's award-winning products and services have been inspired by its dedication to sparking transformative change in teaching practice.  Since 1999, Teachscape has worked with schools and school districts, charter networks, archdioceses, universities and state education departments to measurably and continuously improve the effectiveness of educators to produce gains in student achievement. Teachscape's partners include Charlotte Danielson, ETS, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Stanford University, and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching to help shape its vision, its products, and its strategies. To learn more about Teachscape and its complete collection of professional development offerings, go to http://www.teachscape.com.

SOURCE Teachscape