Sherwood School District, located just southwest of Portland, serves 4,950 students in seven schools. The district employs 261 certified teachers, 221 classified staff, and 20 administrators. Heather Cordie is the Superintendent.

The Sherwood School District joined the CLASS Project to, in their words, “break down traditional barriers and open the door to possibilities that will enhance staff career opportunities and professional development, leading to increased student growth.” Sherwood has been a CLASS district since 2007; they have completed three year of implementation and are now sustaining new models of teaching and learning as detailed below.

Career Paths

Sherwood School District has created a career path model that integrates three “career levels” with a wide variety of opportunities for teachers to take on leadership roles outside of the classroom. Such leadership positions range from coaching/mentoring positions to membership on a school- or district-level committee. Teachers are also recognized for continued education.

In Sherwood, career levels and leadership opportunities are interwoven. By taking on leadership roles, teachers accumulate professional practice points that are necessary to advance between career levels.

The career levels can be described as follows:

Career Level 1

• Meets initial TSPC competencies
• Enters Sherwood School District at salary schedule step zero
• Individual professional development goal aligned with student growth
• Successful evaluations (based on Sherwood’s Performance Evaluation Tools)
• Active participant in mentor program

Career Level 2

• Successful evaluations (basic to proficient based on Sherwood’s Performance Evaluation Tools)
• Individual professional development goal aligned with student growth
• Participation in initial leadership opportunities beyond the classroom
• Teacher in good standing

Career Level 3

• Successful evaluations (proficient to distinguished based on Sherwood’s Performance Evaluation Tools)
• Individual professional development goal aligned with student growth
• Exemplar professional practice
• Consistent participation in school, district, or community level leadership opportunities
• Teacher in good standing

In practice, the process looks something like this:

Performance Evaluation

The Sherwood School District has worked to create a performance evaluation system that develops a culture in which educators are responsible for their continued professional growth and administrators are there to support and assist whenever needed by providing timely, informative feedback.

In their words, the Sherwood School District “understands the fundamental purposes of educator evaluation as improving performance and documenting accountability. The performance component, formative in nature and suggesting the need for continuous professional growth, links the personal growth dimension and involves helping educators learn about, reflect on, and improve their practice. The accountability component, viewed as summative and relating to the importance of professional goals of competence and effectiveness, reflects a commitment to the importance of professional goals of competence and quality performance.”

The district’s evaluation system is characterized by:

• Both formative and summative evaluation process
• Self-directed professional growth for educators
• Clear criteria and standards, supporting the district’s mission and beliefs
• Training for both educators and administrators

Sherwood’s evaluation system is based on Charlotte Danielson’s framework of effective teaching that includes the following four domains:

• Planning and Preparation: Educators’ plans based on extensive content knowledge and understanding of students, are designed to engage students in significant learning. All aspects of the educator’s plans–instructional outcomes, learning activities, materials, resources, and assessments–are in complete alignment and are adapted as needed for individual students.

• Classroom Environment: The classroom environment functions smoothly, with highly positive personal interactions, high expectations, and student pride in work, seamless routines, clear standards of conduct, and a physical environment conducive to high-level learning.

• Instruction: All students are highly engaged in learning and make material contributions to the success of the class through their participation in discussions, active involvement in learning activities, and use of assessment information in their learning. The educator persists in the search for approaches to meet the needs of every student.

• Professional Responsibilities: The educator’s ethical standards and sense of professionalism are highly developed, showing perceptive use of reflection, effective systems for record keeping and communication with families, leadership roles in both school and district projects, and extensive professional development activities.

Using the Danielson framework allows Sherwood to provide:

• Clear evaluation criteria
• A common language for instruction
• Differentiated evaluation for novice educators and contract educators
• Collaboration between educators and administrators in their collective efforts to educate students
• Clear direction for on-going staff development
• On-going professional training for administrators to develop knowledge of content, pedagogy, and approaches to learning displayed by students at different developmental levels and how to observe for and give feedback to educators

Professional Development

Sherwood School District’s plan for professional development is based on their objective that “each staff member will have available to them opportunities to grow professionally based upon their need, school building priorities, and district goals. Every staff member will have the opportunity to help design professional development offerings which related to their professional goals and grade level or content area of responsibility.”

Professional development in Sherwood is closely tied to district goals, and all professional development is linked to a domain component of the Sherwood Professional Practice Standards. The district’s strategy for developing a professional development agenda is based on training staff to to become trainer-of-trainers able to offer on-going support to their colleagues, providing offerings aligned with the Sherwood Standards of Professional Practice, and the modeling of the best instructional practices.Teachers are surveyed about their desires and interests, with consideration given to how many educators express interest, availability of a presenter, hours required to complete the presentation, and how the topic aligns with district, school, and educator SMART goals which are directly linked to student achievement.

Educators may also apply for grants to work as teams to set and achieve SMART goals linked to student achievement.

Compensation

Sherwood has created a compensation model that allows teachers to accelerate the rate at which they move through the traditional “step increases.” Teachers wishing to take advantage of the accelerated path may take on additional responsibilities in the district in order to demonstrate development of their professional practice. Sherwood refers to this as their Skip Step Model, and it works as follows:

A teacher fast tracks by being promoted from Career Level 1 to Career Level 2 after completing a successful third year in Sherwood, and/or being promoted from Career Level 2 to Career Level 3 after successfully submitting Professional Practice Evidence (in this example after 5 years at Career Level 2):

Teachers who do not participate in the skip step model will continue to advance through the pay steps in the traditional manner.

In addition to the Skip Step Model, educators may receive a stipend for taking on certain leadership roles. The amount of the stipend may vary and is tied to the level of responsibility of the respective position.

Incentive grant funds are also available and are competitive, with only one grant funded per school and department. These grants provide seed money used to promote staff development, team collaboration, action research, and resources that align efforts towards achieving SMART goals focused on increasing student achievement. If a team’s goal is achieved, then the team receives a reward compensation to be used to enhance the current project, or to develop a new goal.