One day soon, my name and performance evaluation could be printed in your morning newspaper. It will tell you that I'm a teacher who has clear strengths and weaknesses in helping my students advance academically.
But as valuable as my so-called "Teacher Data Report" is in helping me identify these areas, it really doesn't say much about the overall quality of my teaching. And printing the results -- as an NYC judge just gave the city the right to do -- will do little to make me, or any of my colleagues, better teachers. At least, not right away. What will help is the Department of Education and the teachers' union putting aside their differences and improving these reports so that teachers like me receive good information about our performance and clear steps towards achieving our classroom goals.
As an educator, I want to be evaluated. I know that my students' success hinges on the quality of my teaching. The Department of Education is actually on the right track with the "value-added" method it uses to calculate the impact teachers have on their students' academic growth. Value-added compares a student's predicted performance on standardized assessments with how he or she actually performs. I, and many of my fellow educators, support this approach as one measure of our overall performance for several reasons:
1. Value-added methodology is one of the most accurate tools available to gauge a teacher's contribution to student learning. It is useful especially because it accounts for the many things a teacher cannot control, such as a student's past academic history, English language proficiency, poverty level, or class size. Furthermore, teachers are only compared to other teachers who have similar amounts of experience and teach similar populations of students.
2. Value-added provides us with meaningful feedback as to our strengths and weaknesses in the classroom. The Teacher Data Reports help us analyze how we are doing with certain sub-groups of students. For example, a teacher might learn that he is particularly adept at making progress with English Language Learners, but did not perform as well with Special Education students. Using this information, teachers and administrators can set instructional goals to push all students forward.
3. Value-added results can add a lot to the current teacher evaluation system. The existing system rates more than 98 percent of teachers "satisfactory." This binary "satisfactory/unsatisfactory" system does not account for range in teacher performance. It provides little to no feedback to teachers and most certainly does not help students. These evaluations are based primarily on administrator observations of teacher behaviors; value-added, on the other hand, focuses on how much students learn.
However, value-added results alone do not tell the full story of a teacher's performance, which is why the publication of these scores in their current form would be misleading. Only a small percentage of teachers actually receive these reports, and they currently only measure performance in math and reading. Teacher evaluations, especially ones that are made public, should provide the full picture of a teacher's ability to help students gain knowledge. A comprehensive evaluation system must also include other measures such as rigorous observations by well-trained administrators and/or peers.
And of course, the information is only as good as how it's used. It's only helpful when principals discuss the evaluations with each of their teachers and use them to set meaningful goals for progress. Furthermore, administrators and the Department of Education should support targeted professional development for individual teachers to address weaknesses the Teacher Data Reports reveal.
I want an evaluation system that helps me to help my students. In other words, a meaningful system that doesn't just lead to headlines, but to real results for kids.
Tapping into teacher evaluation
Rethinking Evaluations When Almost Every Teacher Gets an 'A'
Illinois Attempts to Link Teacher Tenure to Results
The New Republic: Keep Teacher Data Private
The biggest flaw in Gates value-added study
Judge Opens NYC Teacher Evaluations to the Public
The Answer Sheet - The hype of 'value-added' in teacher evaluation
Teachers comment on their value-added evaluations - Los Angeles Times
Rating Teachers: The Trouble with Value-Added Analysis - TIME
Imagine that you are working an assembly line. If the screws for your part of the assembly are bad, you have a choice? Assemble bad components, but make your quota. Or correct the problem, but miss your quota. What do you do? If you are successful, you play the game. You do what you are evaluated to do, quota or quality makes no difference. But, you have no input on the system in which you work.
Teachers do not control the curriculum. They don't control the facilities. They don't control the administration. They don't control state and federal legislatures. They don't control parents, students, or peers. So, we are simply going to ignore all of those issues, and pin the problems on the teacher. Good job!
Why not use evaluations to identify really good teachers, and then let others learn from them? Why not use evaluations to define the truly defective teachers (and there are techniques for finding these), and removing them from teaching? No, we'd rather play this game of averages and scores that are cloaked as numbers and grades, but are essentially meaningless.
Grace, I commend your intent. It is actually how evaluation should be used. Improve thyself. But, with education (as with any other political issue), improvement takes a backseat to using those evaluations to pummel you over the head.
No it isn't but you have spoken like a true TFAer. Try doing some independent research instead of swallowing the party line brought to you by the privatizers. Teachers who have researched this topic do NOT support VAM. And where do you get your statistic that 98% of teachers get a satisfactory rating?
Recently, I've been going through some of the most intensive evaluations of my entire career. My administrator believes me to be unclear with my students about their "learning targets".
Mind you, I evaluate my students at the University of Washington standards, well above the state or district standards for reading and writing. I calibrate to make certain I am assessing them at that level.
It appears, that 85% of my students will pass with a C or better. Further, it appears that approximately 1/2 of my students will earn a grade in the B range.
Not clear? I beg to differ.
My administrator is evaluating me based on standards that have little to do with what my students are actually learning.
85% of your students remembered something you told them in the past 9 months. B. What does that B mean? Did the students really learn anything? Define "learn." How long should the student be expected to retain that knowledge? If they forgot everything you told them by Next September, is that okay? What is the goal of those 12 years of grade school? If a student graduates only remembering the last one or two, is that okay? Then after 2 years out of school, it's as if they never went?
These are the sorts of questions we need to be asking ourselves. Quite literally, trained chimps can regurgitate material on a test. It doesn't matter if it's true/false, multiple choice, short answer, essay. I can't tell you a single thing I learned in all of English class, and I was an A student. Does that make my teachers a failure, a success, or somewhere in between?
While existing metrics can easily point out the extremes (Very good teachers from very bad teachers) what about the middle?
I do not test. I do not believe in tests. They measure very little.
I have modeled my course after two University of Washington freshmen English courses. They are assessed based on a representative body of work from a portfolio submitted at the end of the semester. Students must do ALL of the work I assign in order for me to accept the portfolio and 70% of their grade relies on that portfolio.
I don't teach knowledge. I teach skills and ask my students to puzzle over essential questions that I expect they'll revisit for years or even decades to come. I now hear from hundreds who years later tell me what I taught them more than anything else was how to be a self-directed lifelong learner.
That is my job. Whether they left loving Shakepeare or Vonnegut or Twain is beside the point.
I care that they leave knowing how to thrive on their own.
Oh yeah, and teachers who are not requested get fired. Make room for good teachers who may not be currently working.
We need to change something with the education system and this is a great start.
Value-added is absolute junk science.
Multiple choice tests are the least informative and least reliable form of assessments.
Remember, half of the people are below average so of course 50% are failing.
American public education is being damaged by the "deformers" but it is still the most successful education system in the world and there are not a bunch of bad schools and teachers out there.
Our teachers are not teaching our children well. But if you ask yourself why, you get stuck. Teachers take lower pay, higher stress jobs... because they DON'T want to help children? That doesn't make any sense. The kicker is that many have no idea that they're doing it wrong, both because they're not educated in HOW to educate, but also they're not evaluated by any concrete metric.
I'm sure that most teachers, if we were able to point out the things they are doing wrong, they'd make an effort to fix it. I would almost say ALL teachers would, otherwise they wouldn't be teachers. And our EDU major cirriculum is horrible.
I do not believe that any teacher's poor performance is a result of lack of ability or desire. However, how are they supposed to do their best when they don't know what "best" is, or how far from it they are?
If only 20% of your students retain the knowledge of what you taught them 2 years later, that is a quantitative objective performance evaluation.
Critical Feedback is a method to actually improve on that 20%. How you can change your lesson plans, the format of your cirriculum, or even the layout of your classroom? Once things are changed, see how that affects that 20%. Woah, 50%? Must've done something right.
Furthermore, you're basing this off the assumption that the people providing the feedback are actually giving quality feedback. Someone may say that a particular teaching style is the "best", but how do they know that when that's all THEY have done? Their results are satisfactory- but satisfactory by what standard?
A good way that is used now are AP exams. My AP Calc class, all except for 2 students received a 5 on the AP Exam. This is consistent performance for said (unfortunately, retired) teacher.
Not all teachers are teach to a standardized exam, nor do I think every one should. But some metric is needed so that good ideas with proven results (such as those of Miss Nailos) will flourish, and those with proven failures (Shall Not Be Named) are not passed on
There's the problem. Teachers and parents are the only ones who care about meaningful change. The media and politicians just want the headlines.
My advice is to educate yourself about the real purpose behind the push to use these tests and to tie them to teacher evaluations.
Many institutions are failing across the nation, including many K-12 schools. It stands to reason interested parties such as governments and parents are keen to weigh in to see what can be done to shore up performance.
My DW teaches highschool in the best school district in the Southeast.
BUT, 2 years ago, they got a new drama teacher, fresh out of college. My DW noticed she was very close to one of her female students. She found the teacher laying atop the student in a makeshift bed under her desk one day. She found them sleeping together holding hands. They went on rides in the drama teacher's van together in the off hours. She reported this (on my advice, as if the affair did come out it'd look bad if she knew and had not reported it) to her principal, who promptly swept it under the rug. Who got in trouble? My DW did. Since she reported this, the Vice Principal, who is also a lesbian, has been after my DW's scalp, and the principal has pretended nothing is going on but is going along with this harassment. Now my DW fears for her job because she was trying to do the right thing.
Congratulations. What you and like minded teachers, presumably union members, should do is form a competing union, one that is reform minded and supported by the highest achieving teachers in your district. Leave the existing union with the dead wood you all know is being protected.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/research/new-analysis-challenges-gates-.html".
That's an unproven assertion. Unproven, and unprovable.
You can try to control for a hundred variables--but how do you assign numerical values that are valid and reliable?
It's guesswork, disguised as science.
Sorry but I couldn't resist ;)