Dr. Duane Baker recently spoke at the WERA Conference in Seattle, WA. The title of his talk was: "How Likely are Teachers to Exhibit Effective Instructional Practices Under the New Teacher Evaluation System?" He discussed how the STAR Framework aligns with all three Professional Practices Frameworks, and predicted Washington State's readiness for Teacher Evaluation based on 25,000 classroom observations.

The STAR Protocol and Process is transformational professional development that aligns with and directly supports all three of the Washington State Professional Practices Frameworks that are options in the Teacher Evaluation System. As such, we've developed crosswalk documents for each framework that specifically call out how STAR supports each and a packet that combines and compares all of them.

Clicking an image will take you to the document's page.

Over the last couple years, we've noticed some confusion around instructional terminology. We're not big fans of confusion, so we've created a diagram that maps out the different layers of instruction and where different terms fit in. The purpose of this post is to provide an explanatory graphic and statement that perhaps will provide you with some clarity around instructional terminology. We hope you find it useful.

We like to think about instruction as consisting of four layers. At the top, there is the Professional Practices Framework (a.k.a. State Teacher Evaluation Criteria) that guides the teacher evaluation process. In addition, there are three other layers of instructional focus: the Instructional Framework layer, the Instructional Model layer, and the Instructional Strategies layer. All four layers of instructional support should be designed to complement each other; they are not mutually exclusive. For example, just because you've selected one of the three professional practices frameworks (Danielson, Marzano, or 5D+) to implement in your district, does not mean you would not also adopt supportive instructional models (GLAD, AVID, SIOP, etc.) or strategies (essential questions, higher order thinking, etc.). Now, let's dive into each of these layers.