I am an early childhood educator who has been working with children and families for over twenty years. I consider myself a life-long learner, and in the last four years have immersed myself in investigating what it means to be a “progressive” early childhood educator. Being a life-long learner lends itself to discomfort. This journey has been unsettling at times, but in my time at Hanhauʻoli, I found author Angela DiTerlizzi’s book The Magical Yet to be a helpful resource for both my students and I. It’s a book read to our K/1 students at the beginning of every year, and it explores all the fantastic goals you haven’t accomplished yet. For both me and my students, it serves as a reminder that we are all growing, learning, and just because you can’t do something now, that doesn’t mean that it’s fixed and that you can’t do something always; it just means you haven’t done it, yet. On even the most difficult days of teaching, the message in the books helps me realize that with practice, patience, and positive inner dialogue, I am in the process of becoming a progressive educator. 

Historically, progressive education schools and institutions have generally rejected traditional, high-stakes teacher evaluations based on standardized test scores. They tend to favor collaborative, qualitative growth models that focus on peer review, reflective practice, and portfolio assessment, rather than ranking or punishing teachers with rigid metrics. Today, this progressive education stance on teacher evaluation is increasingly supported by research, such as a national study from the Annenberg Institute at Brown University titled The Effect of Teacher Evaluation on Achievement and Attainment. In this study, Bleiberg (2021) and colleagues conclude that post-2009 state reforms instituting high-stakes teacher evaluations yield null effects on average, showing no measurable improvement in student test scores or educational attainment. Knowing that standardized accountability-based teacher evaluations or consequential performance appraisals tied to student test scores do not improve teaching and ultimately student learning, what might a more progressive approach to teacher evaluation look like?

In 1919, Vaughan MacCaughey, the Superintendent of Public Instruction for the Territory of Hawai‘i, wrote a letter to Sophie Judd Cooke about the small school she had opened in Honolulu in 1918. He wrote that he “heartily and fully” endorsed its “educational creed.” Then he added:

“One of the dangers to our democracy is the lock-step and effacement of individuality in the public system… . It is my hope, next fall, to arrange to have some of our better teachers visit Hanahau‘oli School, one by one, and to catch something of its spirit.” — Vaughan MacCaughey, Superintendent of Public Instruction, Territory of Hawai‘i, 1919