Happy Holidays & Update!

I want to wish everyone a happy holiday season and wishes for a great 2014!

This post will provide a recap of the Supporting All Employees – Classified Advisory Committee Meeting that was held on December 10, 2013.  My previous post provides a link to the agenda and presentation, but you can find them again here – agenda and presentation.

The majority of the meeting was spent discussing the pilot of the Classified Growth & Development Cycle (CGDC), or new classified performance evaluation process.  I provided a timeline, which you can find here, in order to show when various parts of the cycle are to be completed.  While the timeline is already somewhat compressed for the year, I am being flexible with deadlines.  I realize that people are busy and the process can seem cumbersome the first time through.

Slide 3 of the presentation includes a breakdown of the participants in the pilot.  While this does not reflect the makeup of the initial proposal, it comes close and does include quite a number of employees from school sites.  We are actually finding that Principals supervising classified employees are fairly willing to participate in the process.  This is despite the fact that they are also evaluating about half of the teachers at their site.  The reasons for this probably include comfort with an expanded process that adds more value to the employee due to what they are seeing with the new teacher evaluations, and the fact that the classified employee does a majority of the work in the CGDC process, which is unlike what they are experiencing with the new teacher evaluations.

The supervisors of the pilot participants were invited to a half-day training session in October to explain the process and how they can initiate the work.  This training was not mandatory, and about half of the supervisors attended a session.  We plan to have a second half-day session early in 2014.  Employee participants did not receive specific training, but a variety of online resources were made available to them describing the various steps in the process.  Additionally, there are also online resources for the supervisors.  These can be found at:  http://classifiedtraining.lausd.net/employee_resources/jit/educator_growth_development_cycle_egdc.

I also presented a list of some of the feedback that we will capture as part of the pilot.  We plan to survey participants and their supervisors two to three times throughout the year.  The list, found here, includes data that we can capture on the back end of the evaluation tools as well as information that we can obtain through a survey.  The first survey will be sent out early in 2014.

In order to maintain some consistency with the growth and development cycles that we are using for teachers and school leaders, we are considering ways in which to capture stakeholder feedback.  At the meeting, I presented a list of the components that we have included in the CGDC, and highlighted those which seemed to lend themselves to ratings by stakeholders – customers, peers, subordinates, etc.  You can find that list of components here, and I have also included the Classified Performance Framework, which further defines the components and may be helpful, here. I drafted a very preliminary survey for the Advisory Committee to react to.  No decisions were made at the meeting, except to agree that I would come back with information captured from more extensive research on 360 degree feedback.  The types of questions, the rating scales, how to determine the relevant stakeholders, and how to present the resulting data were all discussed at the meeting.

I then discussed a new committee that we gathered to address the CGDC.  A Strategic Working Group (SWG) was created to consider a 5-year plan for the CGDC.  The SWG has met once so far and will meet on a fairly regular basis to discuss a variety of issues related to the CGDC work, and develop a plan to continue this work.  A general list of the issues that the SWG considered is listed in the presentation.

Finally, in order to keep the Advisory Committee informed about the progress of the pilot and results of feedback surveys, etc., we will be meeting on a quarterly basis.  Our next meeting will be in March 2014.  At that time, we will discuss some additional options for stakeholder feedback, and we should have some results from the surveys of pilot participants and their supervisors, as well as a few other topics.  We’ll keep you posted on the date of that meeting.  Please join us if you can.

Time for Another Advisory Committee Meeting

It’s time for another Supporting All Employees – Classified Advisory Committee Meeting.  This one is scheduled for Tuesday, December 10, 2013.  If you would like to attend, please contact me through this blog and I will make the necessary arrangements.  We are in the middle of our first pilot year, and I will be providing an update of where we are so far.  Additionally, we’ll talk about what’s upcoming this year and a couple of other topics.  You can find the agenda here, and the presentation here.  Additional information will be provided following the meeting.  Hope you can join us!

July 2013

It has been a long time since I last posted on this blog.  The school year is over and we are planning for the next one.  The initial implementation phase (IIP), or “pilot,” of the new classified growth and development cycle did not occur due to a variety of unforeseen circumstances.  The good news is that we will be launching an IIP as soon as school starts up again in August.  Here is a recap of activities that took place during the last school year that will support our launch in school year 2013-14.

We identified the classifications that we will include in our no-stakes pilot.  Most of the groups selected are located at schools or work closely with students.  Additionally, they include some of the larger classifications in the District.  While only about 100 employees will be included in the pilot, they represent a range of classifications.  The proposed breakdown of potential classifications can be found here.

On a different note, the District is moving the processes in the growth and development cycle online.  While there is an existing platform for the teacher evaluation process, there has not been the capacity to move the processes for classified employees onto the platform yet.  However, I was able to develop tools for the classified growth & development cycle by building them into a program that the District has been using for many years as a survey tool.  The online tools are easy to access for employees using their District single sign-on.  In fact, if you have an LAUSD single sign-on, you may access the Self-Assessment tool here, and the Individual Growth Plan (IGP) here.  Feel free to try these out and provide me with feedback.  We strive to make these tools as easy and clear as possible.  The benefits of online tools include not having to follow paper around, and the ability for us to track who has completed the process and when.  This is important as we work to support all employees with these activities.

One thing that you may find is that not all the components of the self-assessment will apply to all classified employees.  We have developed a tool that we are considering for scaling the process.  The format of the tool allows the employee and his/her supervisor to have a discussion regarding the expectations of the position.  Additionally, it results in a list of those components that should be considered in the assessment/evaluation and those that are not necessary for the position.  The scaling tool can be found here.  Please let me know what you think.

I have also been working for the last several months with a training specialist from the Personnel Commission.  He and I have discussed the pilot process (revision 07/19/13 here) and are developing associated training.  This training will be primarily for the supervisors of the employees in the IIP.  This corresponds to the way we conduct training for the teacher evaluation process, with the principals receiving a majority of the training.  We will likely devise a blended training methodology that includes pre-reading, some video/online content, as well as instructor led training.  This will roll out early in the school year.

Finally, a few weeks before the end of this school year, in May, I held a “mini” Advisory Committee meeting.  While everyone was welcome to attend, I did not send out a mass invitation like I have for prior meetings.  I only sent information to the people that have attended all, or nearly all, previous meetings.  I wanted to provide an update and explain the status of the IIP without having to provide a great deal of background information.  You can find the presentation for this meeting here.  Please feel free to contact me if you have any suggestions, questions, etc.  I am always excited to talk about this work.

I hope that everyone has a great summer!