Teacher Effectiveness Focus Groups

1. Briefly introduce yourselves including your name and your role/connection to LAUSD (i.e., My name is Roger and I’m a math teacher at Washington High School.), and tell us briefly why you agreed to participate in this focus group.

2. Why did you choose to participate in this pilot? If you had a choice to participate again next year, would you volunteer (Show of hands, document the count)? a. Why would you? b. Why wouldn’t you?

3. The goal of the Educator Growth and Development Cycle is to develop a system that recognizes and learns from excellence and helps all teachers get better. In your experience, did you feel like this was the case? a. If yes, what made this true for you? Can you give an example? b. If no, what happened and how could it have been different for you?

4. When you speak to other non-participating teachers at your school about your experience? What kinds of questions do they ask? What do you tell them? How do they respond to what you say?

5. Take a look at the recommendations from the fall report. a. Do these recommendation seem right to you? b. Is there anything missing? c. Is there anything there that you don’t think should be there? (If so, why?) d. Is there one recommendation in particular on which you’d like to elaborate? (Based on the conversation, you point to one or two that you sense could provoke and interesting discussion.)

6. What are your hopes and fears about the future of the EGDC and the AGT? a. Do you have a story that causes you to worry about the future? b. Do you have a story that gives you hope? c. Based on your experience, are we headed in the right direction with this? Why/why not? d. What would make you a champion for this process? If you already are, why do you support this for everybody?

7. So far all the feedback we have collected has been from volunteers and the EGDC is in a developmental, no-stakes phase. What do you think will happen at your school when this becomes mandatory and high stakes? a. What steps should the district take to ensure the best possible outcome in this event? b. What would you recommend to district leaders to make sure that the EGDC achieves its goals?

8. Is there anything we haven’t covered that you would like to add?

Observations - things you heard from participants, read (such as on feedback forms, comments, or other sources outside the focus group), or saw in the way people responded. For example, an observation might be that teachers, parents, and external partners did not know what Budgeting for Student Achievement was and how it might impact them; only principals and directors knew that district-wide implementation of Budgeting for Student Achievement has been delayed by the state’s fiscal situation.

Stories - specific quotes or snippets that illustrate someone’s authentic experience in the district. A story then might be that one participant noted that LAUSD couldn’t do it under LAMP and LEARN, saying, “I would really like to see this happen, but my more inexperienced colleagues are afraid it will be too much work and they are just overwhelmed.”

Themes - something for which you have multiple observations. They aggregate the observations and stories and demonstrate where there is commonality. Themes might be that directors and principals say their colleagues’ responses ranged from relief to disappointment to skepticism about the district’s capacity to implement this reform.

Opportunities for action - start with a “what if” — “What if we put out a clear timeline for implementation and set dates by which each category of school needed to phase in?”