Washington Teachers’ Union President George Parker says that the WTU will appeal today’s DCPS firings. WTU also released a survey of teacher reactions to the new evaluation system this morning. Photo by Meaghan Gay.

Earlier this morning, the Washington Teachers Union sent its members the results of a survey about IMPACT, the new employee evaluation system used by DCPS. The survey was sent out to DCPS teachers last spring, and was completed by 928 teachers. According to an email from the Washington Teachers’ Union, the results are being released now because, “media interest in the survey results is much higher than earlier this year.” That’s probably true — just hours ago, news broke that 241 teachers had been fired for “ineffective” performance under the new system. George Parker, president of the WTU, has announced that the union will appeal the firings.

Under IMPACT, all DCPS teachers receive five evaluations and debriefs throughout the school year — three by their supervisors or principals, and two by external “Master Educators” who have expertise in the teacher’s subject and grade level. Teachers are scored against an extensive rubric that measures a variety of factors corresponding to the DCPS “teaching and learning framework.” The $4 million system is designed to provide data-based feedback to educators, and its year-long development included input from more than 500 teachers and school-based staff. Yet some teachers have complained that the system is confusing, and that it was poorly implemented.

So what exactly do the teachers think? Overall, it sounds like a large majority of teachers who responded to the survey felt they didn’t receive enough training to understand IMPACT or what was expected of them under it, but most teachers also agreed with the ratings they received.

Only 38 percent of teachers felt that they had “received sufficient training in the Teaching and Learning Framework to successfully implement it into [their] instructional practice” and 80 percent of the teachers responded “no” to the question, “Based on your understanding of the IMPACT evaluation system, do you feel that it is an effective way to evaluate the performance of DCPS teachers?”