As a young principal early in his career, Heath Morrison understood the concept of evaluating teachers while observing a German 4 class.

“I thought, ‘I don’t know what they’re saying,’ but what it forced me to do was focus less on what the teacher was teaching and more on how the students were learning,” Morrison said. “It was obvious the entire lesson that the students were engaged, they were doing multiple activities and there was assessment.”

Today, as superintendent of the Washoe County School District, Morrison is

entering his fourth month on the job and is still learning about Nevada’s system of evaluating teachers as required by state law. However, speaking from his daily visits with teachers and principals, Morrison said the outlook on teacher evaluation needs to change.

That may need to happen if Nevada wants some education stimulus dollars.

In July, President Barack Obama’s administration announced a “Race to the Top” initiative, an offer of $4.35 billion in federal money to help improve education in the states. The effort is targeted at boosting student achievement gaps for minorities and low-income students and holding school teachers accountable by tying student achievement to teacher effectiveness. Ultimately, teachers would have to be even more vigilant about being graded themselves.

But when it comes to teacher performance, there’s a catch that may push states like Nevada, which currently cannot get in on the stimulus funding, to reconsider certain laws and provisions.

According to Kristen McNeill, WCSD director of state and federal programs, Nevada does not meet two requirements to apply for Obama’s coveted funding.

“We have not been contacted because we’re not eligible for Race to the Top,” McNeill said. “I think the district would have a good idea (of what to use the money for) as far as what we could bring to scale and how we can further support student achievement.”

One requirement was approved by Nevada lawmakers in 2003 during an attempt to grab dollars from the No Child Left Behind Act. The Silver State had to establish a program to collect data on students’ academic achievement, attendance and dropout rates. A stipulation that specifies that this data cannot be used to evaluate teachers counteracts Nevada’s ability to collect a share of the Race to the Top funding, money that the Washoe County School District desperately needs in hard economic times.

Race to the Top is intended to be a competition among those states most willing to embrace reform by increasing the quality of charter schools, enforcing rigorous academic standards and holding teachers at a greater level of accountability, which has a profound impact on how well students perform in the classroom.

But Morrison said the benchmarks of teacher performance should not be limited to infrequent observations in the classroom.

“Performance evaluations shouldn’t be an event,” Morrison said. “They should be ongoing. They should be about multiple sources of data. It shouldn’t just be about, in the essence of a teacher, a single test and it shouldn’t be based on a single observation.”

At Reed High School, teachers are graded in four areas based on observations. Planning and preparation, instruction, classroom environment and professional responsibility are all part of a checklist in which observers, or administrators, deem the teacher satisfactory or unsatisfactory. However, a teacher’s performance isn’t based solely on observation in the classroom, said Reed curriculum assistant principal Jeana Curtis. Parent conferences, professional development and disciplinary evaluations all come into play.

“I think (the evaluation method) needs improvement,” Curtis said.

Curtis said parent conferences, professional development and collaboration also should be taken into consideration, not just student test scores.

There is also a fear among special education and English Language Learner classes, Curtis said, that could put added pressure on teachers based on how students of those demographics perform.

“Teachers get scared if they have a class makeup of ELL or special ed and they’re compared to Honors classes or (Advanced Placement) classes,” Curtis said.

Finding a system that works is a challenge when so many factors can be subjective and when finding qualified teachers to fill positions is already competitive.

Morrison said when he was working in Montgomery County in Maryland, teachers there performed peer assistance reviews, or PARs.

“Teachers knew teachers who were underperforming, so they not only got observatons from their principals, but from a consulting teacher and then ultimately, as a professional plan of growth was developed with that teacher, there were lots of opportunities for colleagues to give suggestions and feedback,” Morrison said.

He added that colleagues can be tougher on their peers than anyone else.

“There’s certainly a role in evaluations for peers to weigh in as to how they’re doing as a team,” he said. “It shouldn’t be a private business. It’s better when it’s done in teams.”

Curtis said she believes many teachers would be open to such a grading system for educators.

“I think that the process we have now with the checklist really doesn’t do the teachers justice because teachers are doing so many wonderful things out there and this process really doesn’t show that,” Curtis said.

Reed has about 120 teachers, with about five of those newly hired this year, an impressive number given the state of the economy, she said.

Curtis said she considers Obama’s initiative fair.

“We have to follow the process,” she said. “If (the funding the (Nevada) Legislature says is worth having, we would be having to think about that as well.”