Call us immediately at Red River United, 318-424-4579 (we may want to consider a grievance but must weigh the particulars of each individual’s case). SLTs are too important to take lightly.
Here are some basic facts on Student Learning Targets (SLTs) are a crucial part of a teacher’s COMPASS evaluation. To make sure that your evaluation is an appropriate, accurate and fair representation of your professional abilities, please review the following hints for writing your SLTs in collaboration with your principal.
- Set reasonable, realistic targets. Yes, they need to be rigorous but they must also be attainable.
- Consider including the stipulation that only the scores of students who took both the pre and post assessments will be included in the calculation.
- You might stipulate that a certain attendance factor will determine if a student remains in the SLT group. Refer to language for attendance requirements for updating students in CVR. The same rules should apply when writing SLTs.
- Students with high scores on the pre-assessment instrument may not be capable of achieving their targeted growth. Consider excluding those students from your group.
- SLTs should be written only for the students you teach, based on their specific past performance and pre-assessment data. Do not base them on the performance of the students in the entire school or school district.
- SLTs are intended to be a comparison of where your students were at the beginning of the year and how much they have progressed during the year, based on your teaching, just as a VAM score is based on the progress of only your students.
- Make sure your pre and post tests directly reflect your areas of instruction.
- Share your SLT drafts with your peers for wording and math calculations.
- Monitor and record student performance throughout the year.
- At midyear, check to see if you are eligible to make changes to your SLTs.
Red River United has received calls and emails about SLTs. Below are the most common topics and RRU’s position.
- SLTs may include an attendance component. There is no reason not to include attendance because even VAM sets attendance requirements (eliminate a student absent 20 consecutive days). Suggestion, include only students present for the pre and post tests and having 80% instructional class time attendance each semester.
- Growth targets and other parameters are not to be set exclusively by administration. Remember, an SLT should reflect rigorous but achievable growth targets and are to be agreed upon between the teacher and evaluator. Do not sign off on an SLT if you question its achievability.
- The percentage of students to be targeted can be less than 70%. The Louisiana Department of Education suggests 70% but it is not a requirement. The percentage depends on many factors, such as the number of students in the group, how the students scored on the pre-test, and the make-up of the group (regular ed, ESS, targeted intervention, whole group).
- You should only be held accountable for students that you teach. SLTs should not span entire grades or subject levels.