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Cambridge Public Schools has doubled its staff since 1998, while the district’s student population — and their test scores — remain largely unchanged.

“All of our educators are great, and yet there’s been no change, relatively little change — basically no change — in test scores,” Elizabeth C.P. Hudson, a Cambridge School Committee member, said. “How are all those things possible? Something here isn’t right.”

Hudson offered a simple solution to understand the discrepancy — improving the effectiveness of teacher evaluations.

“If the purpose of the school is to educate the student,” she said, “then everybody from top to bottom, left to right, should be evaluated as to the degree that they make that happen, or to help make that happen.”

The district currently evaluates its teachers based on standards in the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education’s 2018 rubric. The five-step process includes self-assessment, goal planning, and observational eventual evaluation from an administrator in the classroom.

Hudson is not the only district leader invested in reimagining teacher evaluations in the district. CPS teachers, School Committee members, and parents have all called for changes to the current evaluation process. Now, as the School Committee voted to increase spending on teacher evaluations by $300,000 in the fiscal year 2026 budget, the district is poised to revamp the process.

Implementation and Transparency

While teachers reported generally positive experiences in their evaluations, Cambridge Education Association leadership say the district has failed to implement the standards consistently throughout the district.

CEA President Dan Monahan said that while he felt that the current evaluation system is “pretty fair and comprehensive,” he said “that implementation is a whole other question.”

“They’re just not implemented as well as they could be, because it takes time,” Monahan said.
“Teaching is a complicated position, complicated job, and so to evaluate it properly is equally as complicated.”

Incoming CEA President Chris Montero said that he thinks the system of teacher evaluations is not “living up to what it was supposed to be.”

“It’s used really inequitably and unevenly, I would say, across the district,” he added.

Montero said that the inequitable implementation across the district is a byproduct of overburdened administrators who are tasked with evaluating the educators.

“It’s not surprising to me that there are administrators who simply don’t have the time and the capacity to evaluate everyone that they’re assigned,” he said.

Despite union-level criticisms of the teacher evaluations, multiple teachers reported satisfaction with the system. Rachel Williams-Giordano, a history teacher at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, said she has had a largely positive experience with her evaluations.

“I feel it’s pretty fair, it’s effective,” she said.

Williams-Giordano, who has taught at CRLS for nearly six years, said the evaluation standards are “much more transparent than what they were when I was first hired.”

Sarah B. Rosenberg, an elementary school instructional technology specialist in the district said that while she still has many reservations about the system, her personal experience with evaluations has been “really positive.”

“The bottom line is, teachers want to be evaluated, we want to get better at teaching,” she said, noting she would appreciate “more open communication and consistency” about the evaluation expectations.

‘Calibrating Our Evaluation Practices’

Hudson, a fierce proponent of teacher evaluations, said the district must recommit itself to rigorous evaluations of its educators.

“Our goal is to teach kids core skills that they will need to be citizens of democracy and that they will need to survive in a modern economy,” she said.

Hudson proposes developing evaluations that focus on test scores and tracking student outcomes as clearer measures for teacher evaluations. Specifically, she wants to see a system that will ensure student performance will be included in their evaluations.

“If that’s our primary deliverable, primary product, I think it’s kind of silly that people aren’t evaluated in terms of the degree to which they move the ball down the field towards that line,” Hudson added.

Interim CPS Superintendent David G. Murphy responded to Hudson’s concerns in an interview with The Crimson, saying the district’s “educators are working hard every day, and they are having a very positive impact.”

“We’re taking on a very complex challenge to try to cultivate generations of citizens who can contribute to the community and to the world. And that’s a tall order, but again, we are more well-positioned to fulfill that mission than most school districts,” Murphy said.

Murphy said that given the district’s robust resources, CPS has heightened expectations and standards “that we are extremely well positioned to serve students.”

“Over time, the Cambridge Public Schools have invested in some very healthy staffing models, and so our responsibility as those administering the school district is to make sure that those resources are being deployed in a way that have a direct and significant impact on students,” he added.

In response to teacher concerns over implementation practices, Murphy said the district needs to think “more deeply about how to implement that evaluation system here in Cambridge in a way that builds our capacity as an organization to serve students.”

“It means making sure that we are properly calibrating our evaluation practices,” he said, “so that our administrators are able to provide useful, constructive feedback that our educators can incorporate into their practice, so that they can ultimately serve students better.”

Upcoming Changes

With concerns across the district on the teacher evaluation process, district leadership presented their strategic plan to improve teacher evaluations in the district at a Tuesday school committee meeting.

Chad Leith ’92, CPS’s Chief Accountability Officer, outlined the district’s plan to improve teacher evaluations through onboarding new evaluators, reviewing their coaching model and by Enhanced induction and mentoring program.

The most significant change in the district’s plan in the upcoming school year is the introduction of a new position entirely focused on new educator training and development. The manager of new educator development will help provide professional development to educators within their first three years in the district.

“It’s something that we’ve been working towards, but really are excited about launching a new phase of the support mechanisms that we have as a district,” Leith said.

During public comment at Tuesday’s meeting, many residents raised concerns that the district was focusing a disproportionate amount on teacher evaluations, and did not have adequate evaluations for administrators.

“All licensed educators, including administrators, need to be evaluated under Massachusetts law, and as the district will continue to comply with the law,” Murphy said to The Crimson in response to these concerns.

In addition to the district’s presentation of their plan to improve the teacher evaluation system, the School Committee unanimously passed a motion to launch an evaluation process for Murphy. This move aligns with continued calls for more administrator evaluations.

In response to the motion, Murphy simply said that he has “always enjoyed being judged.”

— Staff writer Ayaan Ahmad can be reached at ayaan.ahmad@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @AyaanAhmad2024.

— Staff writer Claire A. Michal can be reached at claire.michal@thecrimson.com.