Teacher observations - Some people love them, some people hate them. Well, I'm not sure if anyone actually loves them. Regardless, it looks like they are here to stay, so we might as well score highly on them.
My first question about observations was: How do administrators evaluate teachers? What are the criteria? The answer is the Framework For Teaching, a.k.a. the FFT, created by Charlotte Danielson.
Many states in the US use the Danielson FFT to evaluate their teachers. These ratings impact teachers differently depending on where they work, but they remain a significant measure of success for teachers in these states.
Read on to learn more about Danielson (the important details for a classroom teacher) and how to score highly on this rubric.
Jump Ahead:
What is the Danielson Framework for Teaching?
Domain 1: Planning & Preparation
Domain 2: Classroom Environment
Domain 3: Instruction
Domain 4: Professional Responsibilities
Highly Effective Classroom Practices (Do's & Don'ts)
Is the Danielson Framework for Teaching Effective?
Wrapping Up
What is the Danielson Framework for Teaching? (a.k.a. the FFT)
The Danielson Framework for Teaching is an evaluation system created by Charlotte Danielson to assess teachers, identify teachers who need more support, and help teachers grow to become better educators.
The FFT has been adopted to measure teacher practice across the United States over the past two and a half decades. It provides clear rubrics for administrators to use when evaluating and assigning teacher ratings.
The FFT is organized into four "domains," each with its own guidelines and rubrics for assessing teachers.
The four domains are:
Planning & Preparation
Classroom Environment
Instruction
Professional Responsibilities
Domains 1 and 4 (Planning & Preparation, Professional Responsibilities) are evaluated based on teacher activity outside the classroom - Your prep, lesson planning, professional development, etc.
Domains 2 and 3 (Classroom Environment, Instruction) are evaluated based on what your admin witness inside your classroom, usually during an observation period.
In general, Danielson's FFT is based on the concept that teachers should be facilitators of student-driven learning. It greatly rewards student involvement in instruction and punishes the old-school chalk-and-talk mentality.
Danielson FFT Domain 1: Planning & Preparation
Domain 1 is all about how well you plan your lessons. It factors in the quality of your lesson plan, content knowledge, and application of accepted instructional practices in your content area.
The Bottom Line
Domain 1 focuses on the planning you do OUTSIDE the classroom. Danielson wants you to have detailed unit and lesson plans incorporating differentiation and student choice into learning activities and assessments.
What Does Highly Effective Look Like in Domain 1?
Your curriculum is well-designed and aligned to your curriculum standards
Your lessons align with one another and your unit plan
You differentiate and plan instruction based on your students' needs
You incorporate student involvement and choice into learning activities and assessment
What will your evaluator look at?
Your lesson plan
Your instructional outcomes (aims) and how aligned they are to your content area curriculum and to one other: Do the lessons in your unit plan hit the important content points AND follow a logical sequence?
Your planned learning activities: Do your activities allow for student-centered learning and discussion?
Your planned formative assessments: What formative assessments will you provide, and how will you use the data to inform your instruction?
Your planned summative assessments: What summative assessments will you provide, and do they allow students to demonstrate understanding in multiple ways?
Components of Domain 1 of Danielson FFT
Domain 1 has 6 components on which you will be evaluated. The most focused on in many states, including NY, are 1a (Knowledge of Content & Pedagogy) and 1e (Designing Coherent Instruction).
Component | Summary | Highly Effective Indicators |
1a: Knowledge of Content & Pedagogy | Teachers should deeply understand their content and how to teach it. |
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1b: Knowledge of Students | Teachers should know their students and provide individualized instruction that fits the way they learn best. Danielson says this is through "active intellectual engagement with content." |
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1c: Instructional Outcomes | Teachers should set appropriate instructional outcomes that indicate what students will learn from instruction and assess them in multiple ways. Teachers should use the instructional outcomes to inform their instruction and resources used in the classroom. |
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1d: Knowledge of Resources | Teachers should be aware of the resources available for their subject and use them in class. |
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1e: Designing Instruction | Teachers should provide differentiated instruction that allows for student choice and direct student involvement in curriculum development. Instruction should be aligned to the curriculum standards. |
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1f: Designing Assessment | Teachers should create assessments and rubrics with student input. Assessments should incorporate real world application and provide opportunities for student choice. |
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Danielson FFT Doman 2: Classroom Environment
Domain 2 evaluates how your classroom looks and feels, as evidenced by teacher-student and student-student interactions.
The Bottom Line
Domain 2 focuses on the atmosphere and interactions between people in your classroom. Danielson wants your classroom to run like a well-oiled machine, with everyone displaying an openness to learning, respect for one another, and adherence to the class norms.
What Does Highly Effective Look Like in Domain 2?
Students are respectful of the teachers and other students in the room, actively listening to one another, waiting their turn to speak, and engaging in respectful dialogue
Students know the classroom rules and norms - They follow them and remind one another of them when necessary throughout the lesson
The teacher cares for the students and has taken the time to get to know them as people with real lives outside the classroom
Students are comfortable sharing their ideas and speaking during discussion
Classroom routines are established and followed without difficulty by the students
The classroom arrangement and technology use is appropriate for the students and lessons
What will your evaluator look at?
The way students treat you and one another during your class
Student behavior and misbehavior, and how you address it
The way your room is organized and how you incorporate technology and the physical space into your learning activities
The classroom routines and norms being implemented in your room
Components of Domain 2 of Danielson FFT
There are five components of Domain 2 that you will be evaluated on.
Components | Summary | Highly Effective Indicators |
2a: Creating an Environment of Respect and Rapport | A teacher's classroom should be a place where everyone respects one another, follows the rules, and participate in activities. Teachers should care for and get to know their students. |
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2b: Establishing a Culture for Learning | A teacher's classroom should be a place that fosters an interest in the subject and inspires students to WANT to learn. |
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2c: Managing Classroom Procedures | A teacher's classroom should run through effective routines that are seamlessly initiated and followed by students and teachers. Struggling with this? Check out our post on establishing routines in the classroom. |
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2d: Managing Student Behavior | Students should behave appropriately without obvious intervention from the teacher. |
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2e: Organizing Physical Space | A classroom should be organized in a way that makes learning accessible to all students. The teacher should use all appropriate physical resources, such as computers or technology. Struggling with this? Check out our post on how to effectively arrange your classroom. |
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Danielson FFT Domain 3: Instruction
Domain 3 concentrates on your actual instruction as your evaluator witnesses it.
The Bottom Line
Domain 3 focuses on the methods and delivery of your instruction. Danielson wants your students to be able to explain the learning goals, the learning activities, and the content itself.
What Does Highly Effective Look Like in Domain 3?
The lesson aim and objectives are clear and available to the students
All directions and procedures for the learning activities are clear and communicated well to students
There are no confusing communication or content errors in explanations or classwork
Academic language is present throughout the lesson
What Will Your Evaluator Look At?
The language and communication style you are using with your students
Interactions between you and your students when explaining content, directions, or anything unfamiliar
The questions you are asking and the amount of discussion in your classroom (they want to see effective discussion!)
The formative and summative assessments you provide, the criteria for them, and student understanding of what high-quality work looks like in your classroom
Components of Domain 3 of Danielson FFT
Domain 3 has five components for your evaluator to use when assessing your instruction.
Component | Summary | Highly Effective Indicators |
3a: Communicating with Students | Teachers should effectively communicate the learning goals, strategies, and content to their students |
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3b: Questioning and Discussion Techniques | Teachers should ask quality questions that require students to think critically and reflect on their learning. Teachers should also promote effective student discussion as a learning strategy, while making sure all students participate. |
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3c: Engaging Students in Learning | Teachers should provide instruction, learning activities, and resources that are engaging to students. Teachers should intentionally group students and structure/pace the lesson in ways that promote learning in all students. |
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3d: Using Assessment in Instruction | Teachers should monitor student learning through assessments that have clear criteria for success. Teachers should provide opportunities for self and peer-assessment. Teachers should use evidence of student understanding in instruction. |
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3e: Flexibility & Responsiveness | Teachers should adjust accordingly when a lesson isn't going well or when there is an opportunity to incorporate something unexpected but beneficial to learning. |
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Danielsson FFT Domain 4: Professional Responsibilities
Domain 4 examines what you do OUTSIDE the classroom to continue growing as an educator.
The Bottom Line
Domain 4 focuses on your actions outside the classroom to improve your practice and contribute to the profession. Danielson wants you to participate in self-reflection, join professional communities, take classes in content/pedagogy, and place student interests above all else.
What Does Highly Effective Look Like in Domain 4?
You can accurately assess a lesson you've taught and determine specific improvements you can make in the future
You remain updated on your content area by taking classes, reading professional literature, and participating in professional communities
You participate in school community events and initiatives
You collaborate often with colleagues and take an active role in meetings
What Will Your Evaluator Look At?
Your conduct during the post-observation meeting, specifically your ability to accurately assess a lesson you've taught and determine specific improvements you can make in the future
Your role in school community events or initiatives
Your participation in professional communities related to teaching or your content area
Your participation in meetings and level of collaboration with colleagues
Components of Domain 4 of Danielson FFT
Domain 4 has six components for your evaluator to use to assess your professional responsibilities.
Component | Summary | Highly Effective Indicators |
4a: Reflecting on Teaching | Teachers should reflect on their lessons and accurately assess their success in various areas. Teachers should use their reflections to improve future instruction. |
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4b: Maintaining Accurate Records | Teachers should keep accurate records of work completion, student learning progress, and noninstructional records related to their classes. |
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4c: Communicating with Families | Teachers should actively communicate with student families about the instructional program and their child's progress. Teachers should provide opportunities for families to engage in the learning process. |
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4d: Participating in the Professional Community | Teachers should contribute to their professional community by maintaining collaborative relationships with colleagues, taking part in school community events, and continuously working to improve their practice. |
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4e: Growing and Developing Professionally | Teachers should actively work to remain updated on their content area and the best ways to teach it. |
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4f: Showing Professionalism | Teachers should remain professional in conduct and always place their students' interests above everything else. |
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Highly Effective Classroom Practices (Do's & Don'ts)
Let's break it down into a simple list of actions you can take to earn a highly effective - and those that will bump you down the Danielson scale.
DO | DON'T |
Create detailed lesson plans that include planned questions, anticipated responses, and potential misconceptions | Take a "short-cut" in lesson planning. Example: A lesson plan on a post-it might fulfill your contractual obligations, but it sure as hell won't earn you a high rating |
Keep your learning student-centered - Think: 90% they do, 10% I do | Plan to lecture for most of the class period |
Differentiate everything from your instruction to your learning activities, to your classroom setup to meet the individual needs of your students | Take a "one size fits all" approach to instruction or assessment |
Allow for maximum student involvement and personal choice in curriculum planning, learning activities, and assessment | Rely on one textbook or resource for your entire curriculum |
Incorporate issues or topics related to your students lives to increase engagement and encourage participation | Seat your students by last name or other arbitrary factor. This is okay when you are just getting to know them but switch to a more intentional method ASAP. |
Establish clear and consistent routines so students always know what they are supposed to be doing and why | Assume that your students will understand what to do and when to do it without explicit instructions |
Remain professional in conduct in post-observations, meetings, etc....Even when you disagree with the subject-matter or feel it is a waste of time | Use the same curriculum year after year without regard for changes in your content area or student body |
Take feedback like a champion - Accept it, question it professionally if you must, and learn something from it - even if you don't like what you hear. | Lower your expectations or keep your classwork lower-level to ensure student success |
Remain actively involved in your school and professional communities | Be a negative force in collaborative or staff meetings |
Is the Danielson FFT Effective for Rating Teachers?
Okay, the big question: Is the Danielson FFT effective in improving teachers and the overall quality of a school?
Unfortunately, there is little research specifically regarding how effectively the Danielson FFT improves teachers and student outcomes.
However, there is plenty of available research about whether or not administrators and teachers like the FFT and its impact on students with disabilities. Let's get into it.
What Do Teachers and Administrators Report?
Overall, the Danielson FFT appears unpopular among teachers and administrators, especially at the secondary school level. This does not mean the framework is entirely wrong, but it does seem that many find it ineffective in its current application.
A survey of principals in Illinois found a dislike of the Danielson framework after it was implemented as the teacher-rating system throughout the state.
The principals surveyed did not necessarily feel the framework was incorrect, but rather that its application as the teacher rating system was too time-consuming, required unnecessary paperwork, and made observations take so long that it hurt their job performance in other ways.
Those findings were echoed in this survey of school leaders, who also reported detrimental impacts of the FFT due to the amount of time it now took to complete teacher observations.
Another survey of administrators and teachers also unearthed negative feelings about the framework - Though for different reasons. These administrators reported that evaluations based on the FFT were not representative of a teacher because they only considered teacher actions at the time of the observation.
Teachers added that it provided extreme stress, although they also acknowledged the effectiveness of having clear guidelines for success.
Danielson FFT and Students with Disabilities
Perhaps most concerning of the research I sifted through for this post was this analysis of the Danielson framework completed by Morris-Matthews, et. al. in 2021.
Their analysis focused specifically on students with disabilities. They found that teachers employing accepted best practices for teaching students with disabilities score lower on the Danielson rubric. This is concerning for obvious reasons.
The analysis identified the following problems with relying on Danielson when teaching students with learning disabilities:
Danielson's focus on student-centric learning assumes that all students can learn in a constructivist model. However, many students with learning disabilities benefit greatly and need more direct explicit instruction and guidance from an instructor.
Danielson's emphasis on conceptual learning results in only superficial participation and low comprehension for students who cannot engage with new content independently
Danielson mentions many specific practices throughout the FFT but does not include most of the proven strategies (such as explicit instruction) for working with students with learning disabilities in the higher-rated categories.
Essentially, the analysis found that if teachers use proven strategies for working with students with disabilities, they will score unfavorably on Danielson. As Danielson is the rubric for assessing special education teachers throughout the country, this is a significant problem.
Personally, I think this study raises a significant point that many classroom teachers have experienced. Student-centered learning is extremely effective for most students, but some students will need direct, explicit instruction before they can be successful on their own.
Does Danielson Herself Believe the FFT is Effective In Schools?
Finally, I wanted to include a few notes from Charlotte Danielson herself. These ideas are from a commentary she published in 2016, twenty years after US states began using her framework as the teacher rating tool.
Danielson clarified that her framework was not intended to be, nor should it be, the sole mechanism for teacher evaluation and improvement in a school building. Instead, she wrote, schools should focus on creating safe but challenging environments with an expectation of learning from another.
Danielson also noted the importance of administrators supporting teacher leadership instead of a strictly top-down model of observations.
My Thoughts on Danielson (Before You Go)
I don't want to wrap this up without quickly throwing in my two cents for my readers.
My personal opinion about the Danielson FFT can be summed up in three sentences:
For the most part, I agree with the FFT's guidelines and descriptions of what makes a good teacher.
I do not believe the framework is effective as an observation tool in its current state, based on my experience in the NYC high schools.
I believe the FFT would be more effective as a teacher-teacher evaluation tool than a supervisor-teacher tool.
I cannot speak for every area, but I think there are four major issues with the way NYC uses the FFT to evaluate teachers:
The FFT does not align with other expectations
The FFT is extremely subjective in practice
The FFT does not work well for short observation periods
The FFT uses a one-size-fits-all approach that is not always effective
The Danielson FFT Does Not Align with Other Expectations
The Danielson Framework does not align with the state-mandated expectations and demands placed on New York high school students and teachers. For example, the FFT requires that students create their own assessments and respective rubrics, yet we must prepare them to pass the Regents exam, which, of course, has its own set-in-stone rubric established by the state.
Should a teacher use student-created rubrics to score highly on Danielson or the state-mandated rubric to better prepare students for their exams? It's one of many questions posed by the non-alignment of the FFT with other expectations.
The Danielson FFT is Extremely Subjective in Practice
The Danielson Framework is too subjective in practice.
Any classroom teacher can tell you that two administrators can watch the same lesson and generate wildly different ratings. For example, I once had an AP mark me "developing" for the exact same thing the principal and superintendent marked me "highly effective" for. Not only are these discrepancies extremely confusing for new teachers, but they also show how subjective the rubric is in practice. This problem may be exacerbated because evaluators choose which domains/components to focus on. It might also be related to the poor training of the evaluators. I don't really know why the FFT is so subjective in practice, but it is.
The Danielson FFT Does Not Work For a Short Observation Period
The current observation system applies the Danielson framework to an extremely short window of time (15-45 min, usually). Evaluators may only use what they witness to determine the ratings. For example, let's say a teacher plans a standard lesson in the following format:
Do Now
Mini Lesson
Independent Work
Group Discussion
Exit Ticket with Peer Review
If an evaluator visits during the first 15 minutes of class, the teacher will likely earn an ineffective or developing because the class begins with direct instruction. If the observation occurs in the final 15 minutes of class, now we are looking at an effective or highly effective, as it is hugely student-centered. Aside from being misrepresentative of the teacher/lesson, the ratings and feedback in this situation become somewhat worthless. An evaluator who only saw the mini-lesson and independent work period will likely provide feedback that the teacher should incorporate discussion, which occurred right after they left. Not only did this waste the evaluator's time writing and presenting information the teacher already knew, but it also provided zero helpful feedback to that teacher, who already knew to incorporate discussion.
If administrators were not tied to the black and white "direct instruction is bad" style of the FFT, they could provide more individualized feedback regarding how to improve the Mini-Lesson or Independent Work in this scenario (beyond "this is too teacher-centric)."
Some administrators will naturally account for this because they are talented and good fits for their roles. But that is not always the case, making this a significant systemic problem.
One-Size-Fits-All is Not How I Teach
For all the focus in Danielson on the importance of individualized instruction, it is, in itself, a one-size-fits-all approach to teacher assessment and improvement.
What works for one teacher might not work for another. I've been bored to tears by a teacher giving a 5-minute mini-lesson and completely enthralled by another giving a 30-minute lesson on the same topic. Expecting every teacher to teach the same way is borderline insane, especially as we all work in different schools in different situations.
Even more importantly, what works for one student will not work for all of them. The research regarding Danielson being ineffective for students with disabilities speaks to me and aligns with my experience. We need to teach for all the kids, not just the ones capable of thriving in a student-directed environment.
Danielson as a Tool for Teacher-Teacher Observations
I wish we could repurpose the Danielson FFT as a tool for low-stakes teacher-teacher observations. There is so much value in the FFT's clear descriptions of what great teaching looks like, and I think this could be a great application of the Framework in practice.
I would love to see administrators (or other evaluators) rely on a rubric that allows them to evaluate a teacher based on the specific situation rather than one that only values one type of instruction.
I would also like to see a rubric that removes some subjectiveness by eliminating the randomness of which factors are considered in an observation. This could be achieved by providing a rubric with fewer, more concise components and evaluating all of them for each observation.
Wrapping Up
The Danielson FFT is a rubric used in many states to evaluate teachers in the following categories: planning and preparation, the classroom environment, instruction, and professional responsibilities.
If you want to score highly effective on Danielson, you must provide student-centric instruction that gives students an active role in planning, learning activities, and assessment.
While there are not many studies on whether or not using the Danielson framework improves teacher quality, the research is clear that many administrators and teachers do like using it as the rubric for teacher evaluations.
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