Dive Brief:

• Kelly Gillepsie, the founder of the Southwest Plains Regional Service Center in Kansas, has created a pay-to-play teacher observation program called the Digital eWalkThrough System, which relies on continuous data collection instead of single-serving observations.
• The system requires the use of a tablet or phone and lets administrators observe educators in real-time while tracking a number of built-in metrics referred to as "look-fors."
• The eWalkThrough System also places a focus on observer training, designed to define “what each look-for, should look like,” Gillepsie writes.

Dive Insight:

The eWalkThrough System may deepen data collection and ease teacher observations for school leaders due to ease of use and digitalization, but the use of teacher observations in general has been a contentious topic recently. A new study published in Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis reported that observing teachers in the classroom for the purpose of evaluation can "fail to meaningfully assess teacher performance," urging administrators to instead consider the use of students' prior academic achievement as a predictor of how well teachers are doing their jobs. ​