Educator Preparation

Supervising Practitioner Eligibility Criteria

The purpose of this memo is to provide you with information regarding the identification of supervising practitioners for candidates currently enrolled in educator preparation programs. To qualify as a supervising practitioner, educators must meet multiple criteria. Recent regulatory changes now require that educator evaluation ratings be one of the criteria for eligibility.

What are the criteria for a teacher or administrator to be a supervising practitioner¹?

• Interest by educator

• Three full years of experience under appropriate license

• Appropriate initial or professional license for endorsement being sought by the candidate

• Summative performance rating of Proficient or Exemplary on most recent evaluation

• Commitment from school building administrator

How does this affect schools and districts?
Sponsoring Organizations (educator preparation programs) need to identify effective placements with qualified supervising practitioners for their candidates. In order to ensure effective placements, Sponsoring Organizations need to know which teachers and administrators are interested and qualified. Sponsoring Organizations may ask school district administrators to supply a list (the "list" may contain only one name) of the names of teachers and administrators who the school district recommends (who are both interested and qualified) to act in the role of a supervising practitioner. Sponsoring Organizations may also ask a school district administrator to confirm that a supervising practitioner meets the qualifying criteria.

How do we protect the confidentiality of individual educator evaluation ratings?
State legislation and regulations protect any data related to an individual educator's evaluation; such information is considered personnel information and is not subject to public records law. Therefore, schools and districts should not disclose the actual evaluation rating for any potential supervising practitioner. Confidentiality of individual ratings will be maintained if schools and districts confirm that interested teachers and administrators meet all the criteria listed above that serve to qualify them to be supervising practitioners. To ensure transparency, districts may want to consider communicating to teachers and administrators who are interested in being supervising practitioners that their most recent summative evaluation rating will be used as one of multiple criteria in order to qualify and reiterate the confidentiality of the rating.

What if our district does not yet have evaluation ratings for all of our teachers and administrators?
Per The Pre-Service Performance Assessment: Guidelines for Teachers (page 8), ESE recognizes that not all supervising practitioners will have evaluation ratings available for the start of the 603 CMR 7.00 implementation period; however, teacher preparation programs must comply when the educator evaluation system is implemented and ratings are available.

¹ Per 603 CMR 7.02, definition of a supervising practitioner