No matter an individual’s position in the district, from superintendent to director of maintenance, there’s one common goal that unites every employee of Dowagiac Union Schools— student achievement.

That goal is now a metric the administration is using to evaluate the staff’s job performance as well, with the recently implemented changes to the district’s teacher evaluation system. Now, numbers based on student standardized test scores are incorporated into every staff member’s evaluation, whether they are certified or not.

“Every employee has student achievement as a goal, because it’s important” said Deputy Superintendent Dawn Connor. “Why are we all here? Because we want students to learn.”

Connor outlined this and other recent changes to their staff evaluation process during Monday’s meeting of the board of education. A committee of district administrators decided upon these changes, with advice provided by an outside educational consultant, Connor explained.

“We were looking to create a tool that creates support and helps people to improve,” Connor said. “We worked on teacher evaluation tool, but we also worked on our all of our evaluations so that each person has goals they work on.”

This emphasis on goal setting is one of the main aspects of the revised system. In addition to student achievement goals, employees also have individual and building-wide goals they must strive for during the school year.

“Without a goal, without a plan, you’re not going to get where you need to go,” Connor said.

Another change is that administrators will give more frequent feedback to staff throughout the year, a trend that is occurring in districts across the country, Connor said. Building and district leadership will be observing classrooms at least seven times throughout the year, offering 15 minute coaching sessions to teachers improve as educators.

“Having our administrators in our classrooms is very important to us,” Connor said.