Walker writes "Who decides if a teacher is effective and how is that determination made? School systems across the United States are struggling to answer that question as they try to design and implement teacher evaluation systems that are fair and accurate. It’s no easy task and is not limited to public schools in this country. School systems around the world are tackling the same issue and are finding consensus among education stakeholders to be elusive." Read more at http://neatoday.org/2013/03/25/how-do-high-performing-nations-evaluate-teachers/
What do you see as constructive ways to evaluate teachers in general and writing teachers in particular?
Bill Gates had an interesting NYTimes opinion piece on this topic, titled Shame Is Not The Solution (2/22/13). His opinion was well stated and generated thoughtful responses from varying points of view.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/23/opinion/for-teachers-shame-is-no-solution.html?_r=0
Teacher effectiveness, the question of the age. If I have 3 students that pass the standardized test and 2 that do not am I a 60% teacher since 60% of my class passed?
ReplyDeleteWhat if I am a 5th grade teacher and the students who have come to me with poor foundations from their elementary years are slipping behind, should I be able to make up that deficit? Can I make it up? Statistics state that for every year I am behind it takes 3 years to catch up. (I read this in a class I took last year.) At that rate I will never catch up. Who is to blame, my lower level teachers, my middle school teacher, the parents, the student?
This cartoon does speak volumes: (Bummer, it didn't show. I will put it up on my blog.)
I remember when I brought home bad grades, my parents didn’t run and blame the teacher, they asked me what I wasn’t doing. Now, as the cartoon shows, the parent blames the teacher. Respect or no respect for education is reflected at home. This reflection is a huge determinate as to how the student will think about their own education. I know that in a lot of residences school is free babysitting. One example; Homework is done after school with the teacher. I have a student who comes up everyday after school to do his homework, it is the only way he will do it. The other kids do theirs at home and their parents are very supportive. How is their progress? Great! How is his progress, minimal. He is very bright, but his work is so, so.
We have the best elementary teacher ever. I have a lot of respect for her teaching. She has a student who has missed over ½ of the year. Some medical, most not. She is not progressing, as she should be. Can we speculate why? Her mother wants to know why her progress is slow. I know the teacher is intimidated by the mom. She is an intimidating woman, but should she be. Where does the responsibility lie? This teacher is at school from 6;30 am until after 4pm. She is dedicated, she is aware of students needs, but there is not much she can do when the student never comes.
As stated, in the article referenced in the blog, countries such as Singapore, “a top performing nation disavows test scores, they emphasize teacher collaboration in their evaluation system, they have rigorous professional development programs which focuses on how to evaluate, mentor and coach newer educators.. Teachers are entitled to up to 100 hours of professional development every year and often work in teams. Their, the nation, priorities reflect the countries philosophy that the key to a first rate teacher force is to provide educators with the right incentives.” We should have such a system.
Provide educators with the right incentives, hum what would that be for you? I am sure it would be different for each of us. I want better equipment to save me time. I would like meaningful words of appreciation once in a while from the upper echelon. Success in my students, which I see on occasion. Parent involvement would be great.
Well, all of what I have written doesn’t answer the ultimate question of how do we evaluate teachers. I don’t have the answer at present, but I know test scores are not the answer.
Just an update on the teachers in Seattle, Washington
ReplyDelete“The Seattle Education Association (SEA) and Seattle Public Schools struck an agreement on a new contract Wednesday night, breaking a stalemate over the issue of teacher effectiveness. While the two sides agreed on a new, more sophisticated evaluation system, SEA succeeded in excluding key provisions of the district’s proposal to directly tie teacher evaluation and pay to student test scores.
“This is a big victory for our teachers,” said SEA President Olga Addae. “It’s an historic change. ”Under the current system, Seattle’s teachers are rated on a two-level scale: satisfactory and unsatisfactory. Staff will now be evaluated on a four-level scale: unsatisfactory, basic, proficient and innovative. Even though test scores will not be a part of teachers’ final evaluations, truly abysmal scores might be used to trigger a more comprehensive evaluation and additional support. “That is the one caveat,” said Addae.”
I think this a historic move for teachers as test are not a measure of how good a teacher is there are to many variables. Here is the link if you are interested in the article.
http://neatoday
Great article, Thanks Julie for putting up the link.
ReplyDeleteI am appalled by the NY court of Appeals and their decision to make teacher evaluations public, whether good or bad. To think that our society is moving even further into publishing the faults of individuals in it’s country is beyond comprehension. Soon, they will make some sort of reality show out of evaluations and the effect that it is having on schools and teachers as individuals. Perhaps there is already one and I am not aware of it. I don’t watch TV as I believe most of it to be trash.
I am also a strong proponent of measuring teachers’ effectiveness. Companies evaluate their employees and their pay increase is contingent on their work. A merit system. But, do they make them public? Our senators, representatives, presidents, vice-presidents etc., decisions are made public, as well as they should be, as they are voted into an office to make decisions that effect our country and individual states. Unfortunately, their private lives are scrutinized as well. But, this is radically different. We vote them into their public office to make good decisions for our country and individual states. ‘Public’ being a key word. So, we are the evaluators, in a sense. Teaching isn’t an office that is used to determine the welfare of a country or state. Teachers didn’t take a public job, but one within their/a district. In the article that I addressed in my last post, I referred to Singapore and how they used incentives for their teachers. I addressed how they are concerned with their teachers furthering their education and how successful this system has been. They also admit that test scores should not be a factor. There are too many variables to take in consideration. I am not going to dwell on this as I am just preaching to the choir, I just wanted to share my thoughts about the article where Bill Gates recognizes the importance of an evaluation system that works and will make a difference. It would be interesting for Tampa Fla. to make public what they are doing and how it has been successful, instead of publicly shaming teachers.
How about this radical concept: Let's begin to TRUST teachers!
ReplyDeleteWe have difficult and stressful jobs. With society declining (we have more people living in poverty than in any period since the Great Depression, we face a growing ecological catastrophe from global warming--more severe storms like those we've been seeing in Anchorage--with attendant impacts on our children, more households are being crushed by soaring health care costs, more kids doped up on pharmaceutical drugs than ever before and so on and so on) we are the overwhelmed corps of battlefield medics.
Indeed, we have two jobs, one as teacher, one as social worker. Maybe our pay should be doubled!
So all this bullshit about evaluations from people who have never spent a day in a classroom as an educator, people who live well, who feel entitled, who represent a privileged class.
(This just in: check out who was appointed to Anchorage's stunningly idiotic school board! A perfect case-in-point)
Obviously, there are all sorts of great programs to evaluate teachers. Our current arrangement, the model proposal avenue where teachers are supported in research, in collaboration, and in planning, is excellent (of course, we need more time, we need more time, we need more time).
But we are now in a position of defending ourselves and our job conditions thanks to the machinations of anti-union corporate reformers and their political allies.
Why aren't we discussing ways these people are evaluated? They make POLICY, for crying out loud!
On Tuesday, people will go to the polls to put in charge more people to oversee policy in our Anchorage Assembly and on the School Board.
Hope that we get at least some sane people--Eric Croft and Bettye Davis--in. Hope for an end to Parnell's lackluster reign. And let's recall Anchorage Mayor Dan Sullivan.
Plans of improvement? How about placing the majority of office holders we have in our state on them?
As I have considered the new teacher evaluations I came across the following collections of articles on Scoop.it. http://www.scoop.it/t/teacher-evaluation-in-the-news. It has articles about what is happening around the country with the new teacher evaluations. Some that I noticed discuss the release of teacher data reports publicly in New York. Reading about the repercussions of this taking place in New York makes me imagine the parallel problems that it may create here in Alaska. My hope is that seeing the negative effects of releasing this evaluation report publicly, and ranking teachers by standardized test scores, those in power in Alaska, or other states, may decide it was not such a good idea after all.
ReplyDeleteI have been following the story in the news right now about teacher and administrators falsifying student scores on standardized tests. It is interesting that we were just talking about what could happen if the standardized test scores are publicized and used to evaluate teachers. One idea in my mind was that teachers could end up cheating on the tests. And now I am hearing about that very thing happening.
ReplyDeleteI am shocked that we have not had more serious and wide-spread conversations about teacher evaluation in this district. I am, frankly, professionally terrified by what we have coming down the pipe and how that will likely play out.
ReplyDeleteWhen I taught in New York recently, before the changes addressed in the article, we had the Regents high school exam for our component of NCLB. This was an easy hurdle for student because of incentive. At our district, 20% of a student's year-long grade was based on that test. If you did great all year, you had better do well on that test to keep your "A." If you underperformed, you had better step up to save your bacon. With that incentive, students did well. Therefore, if you were to base 50% of my evaluation on my students' performance on that test, I would welcome it.
Such is not the case in Alaska. In Fairbanks we allow students to sleep during the state tests, we are not to encourage them to keep going. Their scores are not tied to their grades in any way, and yet in two years half of my job performance review will be on their scores. To further complicate this, many Alaskan teachers have taken the short road to being highly qualified and so are increasingly being placed in classes where they passed the PRaxis but have no real expertise. And not half of their job will be determined by a content they do not know and by test takers who have no incentive to do well. Colleges are never going to look at Common Core scores.
This is the best we have? On a bad day we can do better with a post-it note and five minutes.
All,
ReplyDeletethe latest news at ASD is that--and I may be spilling beans, but so be it--the state is considering this computerized assessment model underway by a program called PARCC.
The program comes from $186 million grant from Obama's "Race to the Top" ("Face to the Mop"?) initiative awarded to, so far, 22 states.
This is bigotry institutionalized. The PARCC assessment, ultimately to be used for "grading" teachers with student test scores, asks unsophisticated, shallow, "right-there" style questions. It will use a computer program to "grade" student writing.
I just received the email about this all yesterday and spent a few hours researching PARCC. Reading the b.s. on its website is straight science fiction, or, worse, plain and simple corporate school reform.
Taxpayer money is funneled through PARCC to, who else? Pearson and ETS, the Proctor & Gamble of education (or the "Monsanto of School Deform?"
There is a, get this, "Request for Information for Artificial Intelligence." within the solicited bid packages.
Let's make it easy: Use technology to create cheap, fast measurement tools to evaluate student and teachers.
Teachers cost money. Education takes time. How can companies make a profit by fixing those two "problems"?
Want to see the end result of this mad, corporate orgy? Just Google "Chile" and "schools" and "Camila Vallejo." You'll be delighted.