Prompt Bank & Resources
Both are optional, both layer from district to school to evaluator, and both are best set up early.
How Prompts and Resources Layer
Prompts and resources both combine rather than replace (an additive pattern), following two paths down from the district:
- District → district evaluators. District evaluators see the district's items directly.
- District → School Admin → principals. A school's items layer on top of the district's, and principals see both.
- Evaluator prompts are visible only to the evaluator who created them.
:::caution What you inherit depends on your position, not the evaluatee's A District Teacher Evaluator evaluating a teacher at Lincoln Elementary sees the district's items — not Lincoln's — even though a principal evaluating that same teacher would see both.
So a school-level set reaches only the evaluators based at that school. If something needs to reach everyone evaluating your staff, it has to come from the district. See Settings Inheritance. :::
Prompts carry one extra condition: they aren't visible below until the level that owns them publishes them.
Prompt Bank
Where: Prompt Bank
Pre-define prompts that will be available during evaluations. Best done at the start of the year, especially for prompts that are auto-assigned to new evaluations.
:::caution Prompts aren't visible until you publish them Creating a prompt isn't enough — district prompts reach School Admins, district evaluators, and school evaluators only once they're published. Auto-assigned prompts won't appear on new evaluations until then either.
Publish early. Until you do, schools and evaluators can't see what the district already provides, and often build their own redundant versions of prompts you've written.
Prompts also require a fresh publish each school year — last year's published set doesn't carry over. See Publishing Prompts. :::
Prompt Types
| Prompt Type | Used In | Who Creates |
|---|---|---|
| Pre-Conference | Observation pre-conference | DA, SA, Evaluator |
| Post-Conference | Observation post-conference | DA, SA, Evaluator |
| Student Growth Goal Setting | Student growth goals | DA, SA, Evaluator |
| Student Growth Achievement | End-of-year growth review | DA, SA, Evaluator |
| Summative Reflection | End-of-year summative conference | DA, SA, Evaluator |
:::tip Why a school might build its own set Any evaluator can create their own prompts, so a school-level set is worth doing when you want a common set shared across the school's evaluators — most useful at a large school where three or four principals evaluate teachers and want everyone working from the same questions. :::
If you're an evaluator
Your own prompts come last, and that's deliberate. Wait until the district — and your school, if it's adding any — has published theirs, then look at what's already available before writing your own. Anything you add is visible only to you, so a prompt you duplicate is one the district was already providing to everyone.
Once you can see the published sets, add whatever's missing for the conferences you'll be running.
Timing Considerations
Set up prompts for every stage at the start of the year:
- Student Growth Goal Setting — the first activity of the year, so these are needed earliest.
- Observations — run throughout the year.
- Summative reflection — used in spring.
Prompts can be added at any time, but auto-assigned prompts only attach to evaluations created after the prompt is published, and a prompt added after a conference doesn't apply to it.
Resources
Where: Resources
Add optional resources that evaluatees and evaluators can access during evaluations.
What Are Resources?
Resources are links or documents that support the evaluation process:
- Framework reference materials
- District evaluation guidelines
- Professional development links
- Rubric guides
Related
- Prompts — full reference on how prompts work in evaluations
- Settings Inheritance — what a given evaluator inherits, and why it depends on their position rather than the evaluatee's school