An analysis of the costs of administration in teacher evaluation

Abstract

<p>The purpose of this investigation was to construct a model for determining the costs of administration in teacher evaluation. Five Minnesota and Iowa school organizations from the School Improvement Model (SIM) Project comprised the sample. SIM, a consortium project of those school organizations, Iowa State University, financed by the Northwest Area Foundation, provided access to administrators' time utilization estimates, as well as to budget and personnel records;SIM involved students in fourth (elementary) and eighth (secondary) grades; therefore, no high schools were involved in the study. Time commitment estimates in three areas of administration (General Administration, Supervision, and Teacher Evaluation) were converted to percentages of contract hours, and those percentages were applied to salaries of the 21 sample administrators and two teacher advisors. Resulting data were compared to General Fund Instructional Budget (IB) totals for each building. IB totals were arrived at by subtracting categorical funding from 1982-83 general fund budget amounts for the buildings (IB = Total General Fund Budget - Categorical Funding). Categorical funds were removed to define budget dollars most closely associated with instruction;The model formula was tested via two data applications: a mainframe computer at Iowa State University (utilizing SPSSx), and a microcomputer (utilizing Advanced Version Visicalc). Costs of teacher evaluation were accurately determined for the SIM schools. However, these numbers were only illustrative of how the model worked, and should not be generalized to a larger target population;Findings indicated that administration cost about 4 percent of the IB for the SIM schools; teacher evaluation less than one-half (.40 percent). SIM administrators and teacher advisors spent only 4.5 percent of their time on teacher evaluation, while estimating 17.5 percent!;Two general conclusions were reached: (1) the model was successful, thus providing a framework for determining the costs of administration in teacher evaluation; and (2) it was not costly nor time-consuming to evaluate teachers in the SIM Project school organizations.</p>