Photo by dcJohn.

It makes sense: if you’re really good at your job, you should be able to earn a little bit more trust around the workplace. That’s what appears to be going on inside D.C. Public Schools, which will slightly change its teacher evaluation system to give teachers who earn high ratings the ability to waive in-person evaluations.

The bulk of the change to the evaluation system, as first reported this morning by the Washington Examiner:

Under Impact, teachers and other educators are observed at schools five times each year and scored on a scale of 1 to 4, or “highly effective.” But this school year, the 290 teachers who received “highly effective” ratings for the past two years and who earn an average of 3.5 on their first two evaluations this fall will have the option to waive the three remaining observations.

“This is something we’ve been hearing from teachers and principals since Impact was launched,” said Scott Thompson, director of teacher effectiveness strategy for DCPS. “Everyone thinks it’s reasonable to be evaluated and held to high standards, and if [teachers] consistently demonstrate they are high-performing, it didn’t seem like they needed to be observed quite as many times.”

One observation will be conducted by an independent “master educator,” while a school-based administrator — often a principal — will oversee the other.

The evaluations by so-called “master educators” have often been a point of contention for members of the Washington Teachers’ Union — in 2010, a survey conducted by the Union found that while a majority of teachers were satisfied with how school-based administrators graded them, fewer agreed with the assessments provided by the “master educators.” (Union president Nathan Saunders, unsurprisingly, told the Examiner that “he would ‘like to take credit’ for the change.”)

In the end, though, the ability to waive evaluations serves as just another carrot for teachers within the confines of the evaluation system, and hardly a dramatic overhaul. The change is unlikely to quell controversy over the system’s reliance on standardized testing — after all, half of the IMPACT score for those teaching in grades where students take such tests is still tied to how their charges perform, a method that many teachers still disagree with.