All-star roster of education researchers: Test scores unreliable, unfair and unhelpful in evaluating teachers
In the midst of a controversial LA Times series linking teacher performance in that district to test scores, a new briefing paper was released today by the Economic Policy Institute cautioning against the use of test scores, the Value Added Model, to judge teacher performance.
The 27-page paper — by a blue ribbon collection of educaion researchers including Eva L. Baker, Paul E. Barton, Linda Darling-Hammond, Edward Haertel, Helen F. Ladd , Robe rt L. Linn, Diane Ravitch, Richard Rothstein, Richard J. Shavelson, and Lorrie A. Shepard - lists many negative impacts from judging teachers largely on student test scores. They also point to studies that cite the unreliability of scores.
My first response to this paper is wonder if there is any school system with the time, resources or staffing to conduct the thoughtful and deeper evaluations that these researchers recommend. The comprehensive evaluation model they suggest could be applied in many professions, except that it calls for resources and time that I don’t think too many companies have any longer. And I certainly don’t think schools do in this current bleak climate that will likely persist for a few more years.
Here are key passages, but please read the entire paper. I think many of you will be applauding its position. Also, I have added the link to the LA Times investigation, which is a powerful piece of journalism and creating quite a stir. So, forget about the wash and the grocery store, read both of these and let us know what you think:
A review of the technical evidence leads us to conclude that, although standardized test scores of students are one piece of information for school leaders to use to make judgments about teacher effectiveness, such scores should be only a part of an overall comprehensive evaluation. Some states are now considering plans that would give as much as 50% of the weight in teacher evaluation and compensation decisions to scores on existing tests of basic skills in math and reading. Based on the evidence, we consider this unwise.
Any sound evaluation will necessarily involve a balancing of many factors that provide a more accurate view of what teachers in fact do in the classroom and how that contributes to student learning.
For a variety of reasons, analyses of VAM results have led researchers to doubt whether the methodology can accurately identify more and less effective teachers. VAM estimates have proven to be unstable across statistical models, years, and classes that teachers teach. One study found that across five large urban districts, among teachers who were ranked in the top 20% of effectiveness in the first year, fewer than a third were in that top group the next year, and another third moved all the way down to the bottom 40%. Another found that teachers’ effectiveness ratings in one year could only predict from 4% to 16% of the variation in such ratings in the following year.
Thus, a teacher who appears to be very ineffective in one year might have a dramatically different result the following year. The same dramatic fluctuations were found for teachers ranked at the bottom in the first year of analysis. This runs counter to most people’s notions that the true quality of a teacher is likely to change very little over time and raises questions about whether what is measured is largely a “teacher effect” or the effect of a wide variety of other factors.
A study designed to test this question used VAM methods to assign effects to teachers after controlling for other factors, but applied the model backwards to see if credible results were obtained. Surprisingly, it found that students’ fifth grade teachers were good predictors of their fourth grade test scores. Inasmuch as a student’s later fifth grade teacher cannot possibly have influenced that student’s fourth grade performance, this curious result can only mean that VAM results are based on factors other than teachers’ actual effectiveness.
VAM’s instability can result from differences in the characteristics of students assigned to particular teachers in a particular year, from small samples of students (made even less representative in schools serving disadvantaged students by high rates of student mobility), from other influences on student learning both inside and outside school, and from tests that are poorly lined up with the curriculum teachers are expected to cover, or that do not measure the full range of achievement of students in the class.
The paper concludes:
Although some advocates argue that admittedly flawed value-added measures are preferred to existing cumbersome measures for identifying, remediating, or dismissing ineffective teachers, this argument creates a false dichotomy. It implies there are only two options for evaluating teachers—the ineffectual current system or the deeply flawed test-based system. Yet there are many alternatives that should be the subject of experiments. The Department of Education should actively encourage states to experiment with a range of approaches that differ in the ways in which they evaluate teacher practice and examine teachers’ contributions to student learning. These experiments should all be fully evaluated.
There is no perfect way to evaluate teachers. However, progress has been made over the last two decades in developing standards-based evaluations of teaching practice, and research has found that the use of such evaluations by some districts has not only provided more useful evidence about teaching practice, but has also been associated with student achievement gains and has helped teachers improve their practice and effectiveness.
Structured performance assessments of teachers like those offered by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards and the beginning teacher assessment systems in Connecticut and California have also been found to predict teacher’s effectiveness on value-added measures and to support teacher learning. These systems for observing teachers’ classroom practice are based on professional teaching standards grounded in research on teaching and learning. They use systematic observation protocols with well-developed, research-based criteria to examine teaching, including observations or videotapes of classroom practice, teacher interviews, and artifacts such as lesson plans, assignments, and samples of student work. Quite often, these approaches incorporate several ways of looking at student learning over time in relation to the teacher’s instruction.
Evaluation by competent supervisors and peers, employing such approaches, should form the foundation of teacher evaluation systems, with a supplemental role played by multiple measures of student learning gains that, where appropriate, should include test scores. Given the importance of teachers’ collective efforts to improve overall student achievement in a school, an additional component of documenting practice and outcomes should focus on the effectiveness of teacher participation in teams and the contributions they make to school-wide improvement, through work in curriculum development, sharing practices and materials, peer coaching and reciprocal observation, and collegial work with students.
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111 comments Add your comment
Mikey D
August 29th, 2010
2:17 pm
C’mon Maureen….
You know that these “researchers” don’t know anything about education compared to sonny perdue and his yes-man bert brantley. The governor should do us all a favor and make a proclamation that this study in its entirety is invalid. (Hope you’re picking up my sarcasm ’cause I’m laying it on thick!)
@thankateacher… I also teach in Douglas Co and am appalled by the use of the coach system this year. Douglas Co is sinking fast, and I will be out of here as soon as the market picks back up and positions can be found elsewhere. Douglas Co is the home of the WORST building-level administrators and most bloated and ineffective central office in the state.
Observer with no dog in this fight...
August 29th, 2010
2:28 pm
This vent is the worst PR for the teaching profession. Many teachers who comment (with a time stamp indicating they should be teaching students), will NEVER acknowledge there are BAD teachers who are destroying the lives of children daily. It is disheartening because you teachers teach next door to them. The students share with you teachers who they are. The parents share with you teachers who are not helping students. You hear about the parents who come by the school or call and BEG the administrator to not put their kid in that BAD teacher’s classroom.
You teachers tell your FRIENDS about the BAD teachers and how to navigate the system to avoid them. Yet, when you are on this vent, you fail acknowledge there are bad teachers in the profession. I suspect that because so many posters here have had a bad experience with an administrator, you may be the BAD teacher.
Because you only speak of yourselves as victims and do not speak out against the bad teachers, you are hurting the profession. The police have their code of silence. Well, teachers have their code of silence as well.
A hint for teachers, the victim argument will not work anymore. There is a LARGE segment of the country who are experiencing true victimhood. They are in no mood to hear about your few days in furloughs when they are losing jobs. They are in no mood because they are losing homes. They are in no mood because they and their children are losing peace of mind.
d
August 29th, 2010
2:36 pm
@Awful — you say the government gets in the way – so why do we, the voters, keep electing these clowns in to office? It’s our fault for falling in to party lines without actually doing any research on the candidates and demanding that the parties actually put forward quality candidates – just look at the clowns we have running for governor this year.
Kyle
August 29th, 2010
2:36 pm
Excellent Article. I will have to read the LA Times report and the full paper later, but I wanted to say that issues like these are really important. I am a Social Studies Ed. student at UGA and I wish we talked about things like this more in our university classes. We definitely have to get beyond standardized testing as the way to measure teacher performance, and I think it would be wise for any principal or school leader to invest time and money into measures like these. I think that evaluating teachers effectively and then providing the training and assistance necessary to help struggling teachers is the most important thing a school can do. This will directly affect student performance in the classroom. For some arguments about the importance of a good teacher, check out some of the work Teach for America has done and the research showing how much a good teacher can help struggling students. There was a good piece in the Atlantic Magazine at the beginning of the year.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/01/what-makes-a-great-teacher/7841/
Mikey D
August 29th, 2010
2:38 pm
Hey observer…
I’ll be the first to admit that there are some REALLY bad teachers. I don’t want them teaching my child any more than you do. But I don’t think that I’m playing a victim by insisting that I be judged on things I can control, rather than having my livelihood threatened by factors that lie entirely outside of my control. If you only look at test scores, then you are failing to see the dedicated teachers who give everything they have and more to special ed, EIP, and impoverished students on a daily basis. Those scores may not be as high as in other circumstances, but there’s no simple way to reduce a teacher’s effectiveness into a neat, clean, easy little number which is what perdue wants to do.
BTW, feel free to check my time stamp. Because even though I will be doing hours of work today, it is still Sunday, and I do have the right to be here.
HStchr
August 29th, 2010
2:39 pm
The problem is the decision makers want a quick, black/white, easy measure of teacher effectiveness, and it just isn’t there. Test scores have always been highly unreliable, and we see from APS how too much emphasis on a single test score influences people!! Yes, effective evaluation will be tedious in the short-term. But, standards-based evaluations conducted by a variety of trained PEERS and administrators could work and wouldn’t be that hard to develop. Face it, you know who the good teachers are in your building, and it doesn’t take a complicated, biased, subjective evaluation tool to prove this. We also don’t need to put so much power in the hands of a single administrator whose personal feelings heavily influence responses on evaluation instruments. There should be three- a building administrator, a colleague in the same department, and an independent evaluator- God knows we have plenty of overpaid county office people in most systems who could be given a real job for a change!
I teach all remediation style classes. I LOVE those kids and enjoy the detective work it takes to find out and address learning problems. However, if my effectiveness is tied to pass/fail rate on one standardized test, I’m doomed. My kids grow exponentially, but how can I be fairly judged? I move kids up at least two grade levels in reading/writing every year, but the majority are still not at high school level and may not be in four years of high school. Bring on accountability, but let’s find a fair way to assess it.
8th grade teacher
August 29th, 2010
2:46 pm
Dear “Observer…Fight” – please say that you are not blanketing us all w/ your statements. I, for one, am the first to admit that there ARE bad teachers – just as there are bad parents, doctors, dentists, lawyers…well, you get the point. The so-called Peter Principle (that folks rise to their level of incompetence) wouldn’t be as funny if it weren’t indeed often true. I see more comments that acknowledge poor teachers FROM TEACHERS than comments stating that all teachers are perfect. Maybe you’re reading a different blog (or both our biases are showing – oops).
Malpractice insurance wouldn’t exist if every doctor were a miracle worker. There wouldn’t be kids in the neighborhood with whom the other kids’ parents don’t want them to play if every child were an angel and every parent the perfect blend of John Rosemond and Dr. Spock – there also wouldn’t be post after post on the Momania blog about parents who let their kids run wild in the ______ (fill in the blank with the location of your choice).
We know who the bad teachers are – they are the ones for whom we are expected to pick up the slack. However, outside of being willing testify at an appeal (which I have done), the classroom teacher has absolutely no control over a peer’’s evaluations – it’s all on the administrators. If a bad teacher is still at a school, it’s an administrative problem, not a teaching problem. I have been lucky to work at two different schools with strong administrators who weren’t afraid to go through the processes to get rid of bad teachers. Sadly it’s apparent that not all teachers can say the same.
Get off your high horse about the “victimhood,” please – we are ALL victims of this bad economy, and to try to say that others have it worse simply because they are in the private sector is ignorant. Teachers are not immune to having spouses or other family members lose their job. Teachers may have had two jobs to make ends meet, and lost one. Teachers are being “RIFed,” furloughed, and having paycuts and insurance increases. To think that anyone deserves less sympathy than another because of their vocational choice is just ridiculous (and I’m not complaining – I’m explaining).
BTW – what did your rant have to do with the question of the validity of testing? Or was “get in a little teaching-bashing” on your list of things to do today?
Atlanta mom
August 29th, 2010
2:57 pm
Observer,
You expressed my thoughts, exactly. According to this blog, all/most/85% of teachers are good. All administers are bad. There’s not a parent out there who cares. We can’t evaluate teachers because it’s too hard.
My experience has been: most teachers were good until we hit High School. At our HS, maybe 50% of the teachers are good. And I’m not the only parent who believes that. A group of involved parents were talking about this topic and the feeling was somewhere between 33 and 60% of the teachers at our high school are competent. It’s a good year at our HS if your student has 2 good teachers and only 2 bad teachers (and 4 middle of the road teachers)
I don’t believe I have sufficient knowledge/ experiences with administrators to express an opinion about them.
I haven’t had a chance to read the articles referred to in this article, but is there anything about parent input for teacher evaluation?
8th grade teacher
August 29th, 2010
2:59 pm
Upon reading the LA Times article, one thing that stuck out was that they used SEVEN YEARS of data from testing. One of the study’s concerns was sample size – the larger sample size of seven years helps that. However, that leads to more questions: how many new teachers leave before seven years are up? How many teachers change subject or grade levels during those seven years, and how does that affect the sample size?
Addressing teacher quality, I do think that schools of education have to be more picky about who they let in – systems need to have better training and mentoring in place for new teachers. Still, I would be concerned if I were a new teacher, that this type of evaluation would have a detrimental effect on my career right from the get-go. It is often said that teaching is one of the few professions where a newbie is expected to perform at the same level as a 20 year veteran. How do we account for a learning curve (not to mention new teachers are usually stuck in either the “undesirable” schools or given the toughest kids).
Teacher/Learner
August 29th, 2010
3:09 pm
@Maureen, what are the chances of you getting this article into the hand of the DOE, the State Board of Education, the sitting Governor, the governor to be, AND ON THE FRONT PAGE OF THE AJC?
MomandTeacher
August 29th, 2010
3:13 pm
Every teacher knew what the article addressed before they were done with their research. The question is: do the superintendents, principals, and lawmakers read these pieces/comments? That’s what this inquiring mind would like to know.
duke
August 29th, 2010
3:18 pm
This stuff is not hard; education bureaucrats have made it hard. The problem is John Dewey’s progressive education, which began in experimental classes in 1904. American education has gone downhill ever since. The more money we spend, the worse it gets. It does not take anywhere near $10,000 per student per year to do this job. It takes a quiet place to study, and good textbooks. Period.
An international socialist and an atheist, Dewey did not believe in absolute truth. Everything changes, so there is no point in memorizing things. His first graduates could not use a dictionary or a telephone book because they had not memorized the alphabet. There is no point in teaching the absolutes of morality, government, and ethics. There is no point in rigorous intellectual content. The purpose of education is to inculcate social skills, and to develop the attitudes of good world citizens. Students must learn to renounce the primitive religious beliefs and national loyalties of their parents. Individual excellence is discouraged, because it separates a child from the social group.
Just find good textbooks, the ones produced without Dewey’s meddling, and teachers who will teach the content of those textbooks. It will soon become clear which teachers are failing. The fifth grade teacher will notice that graduates from his predecessor’s class are ill-prepared, etc.. But what we have today is the blind leading the blind- teachers themselves have not been taught competently- complicated by the fact that the powers in charge of the curriculum are not really interested in education, but in socialistic revolution.
Dr. John Trotter
August 29th, 2010
3:25 pm
@ ECHO: If this crazy and arrogant principal messes with you, you know what to do. Our slogan is very simple and direct: “MACE Devours Administrators Who Abuse Teachers.” This year, we have planned the “MACE Invasion.” It is completely legal but very high profile. Of course, we continue to use our customary strategies and tactics. In letters, hearings, rebuttals, pickets, grievances, and administrative evaluations on our website (www.theteachersadvocate.com), no one comes close to us. (In fact, our lawyers have been kicking some a_s in hearings this summer — winning a few and some headed straight to appeal…because of the biased and jaded format. Just ask a few law firms which represent school boards if they feel like they have been in a dog fight when MACE defends a teacher.)
PAGE and GAE are better than MACE when it comes to doing fluffy stuff like Spelling Bee Contests for kids and giving out tote bags for their members. Also, they send out some legislative updates (but they make very little difference when it actually comes to influencing the legislation — just look at the furloughs). I will, however, give GAE and PAGE some credit about fighting the merit pay push from the Governor Perdue. MACE fought like heck against this too! We wrote many articles against it. Organized with teachers who were not even MACE members and staged a public protest. I was even on the local news speaking out against this flawed concept. MACE picketed against merit pay for teachers at the Capitol — and I was almost arrested again. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gg10TwV-y5U
MACE knows its mission…protecting and empowering classroom educators…one member at a time. You’ll be hearing about the “MACE Invasion.” No arrogant and abusive administrative wants to see the “Normandy Forces” scaling the “Walls of Omaha Beach” at “his” or “her” school.
The “MACE Invasion” is a different twist than the very popular (with teachers!) pickets. By the way, last school year, MACE staged 29 pickets — in Cobb, Gwinnett, Atlanta, DeKalb, Clayton, and Fulton. Right off the top of my head, I think that these were the school systems which saw MACE Pickets this past school year. In the past, MACE has also staged pickets in Muscogee, Bibb, Newton, Gilmer, Henry, Griffin-Spalding, and Greene school systems (and perhaps a few more). I think that a MACE teacher loves a good picket more than anything else. We at MACE do many, many other activities, but this is our most public service for the teachers — and also our most popular service. The teachers just love to see their arrogant and abusive administrators squirming, sweating, and crying. They love it! (c) MACE, August 29, 2010.
8th grade teacher
August 29th, 2010
3:33 pm
From the article: “For example, if a third-grade student ranked in the 60th percentile among all district third-graders, he would be expected to rank similarly in fourth grade. If he fell to the 40th percentile, it would suggest that his teacher had not been very effective, at least for him. If he sprang into the 80th percentile, his teacher would appear to have been highly effective.”
While those assumptions might be valid, they don’t take into consideration the effect of the norm group. Two different students in two different years could theoretically get the identical score on a test, but be in a different percentile depending on how the norm group performed. A single question can result in as much a 10 point difference in percentile. At what sample number are we comfortable saying that we have eliminated inconsistencies enough to determine a trend? Three years? Five years? Seven?
Atlanta mom – are you reading the same blog I am? “According to this blog, all/most/85% of teachers are good. All administers are bad. There’s not a parent out there who cares. We can’t evaluate teachers because it’s too hard.”
IMHO, that’s not what is being said. At best that’s an oversimplification and generalization of some of the posts. I’m sorry your high school doesn’t have good teachers – that is an administrative problem. Most parents don’t deal w/ administrators unless there is a problem with their child, but if a school isn’t being run right, what does that say about that school’s leadership?
My daughter was in 9th grade when I began teaching – I am in my 10th year of teaching – so between my two children, I have more experience as a parent than as a teacher. My kids (both now graduated) had about 15 EXCELLENT teachers, a majority of good to above average teachers, and less than five truly poor teachers (none of whom are currently teaching anymore, BTW). I truly think that the really bad teachers do generally get weeded out if the administration is good. I also truly believe that teaching is no more or less likely than the general public to have its share of bad apples (pun not intended). Every job/career/profession has its poor performers, and I’m of the opinion that it runs at about 5 to 10% – bad waiters, salespeople, policemen, lawyers, doctors, etc. If you have an average, than 49% will be below that, right? This ain’t Lake Woebegon.
Devil's Advocate
August 29th, 2010
3:35 pm
Yes! Look at how MACE “devours” such administrators with rallies of 2, 3, sometimes 5! people in attendance!
http://www.theteachersadvocate.com/id87.html
Oooooh….scary.
money
August 29th, 2010
3:35 pm
What makes a bad teacher?
There is a teacher I know of that has the best EOCT scores in the county. However, this teacher will only explain the answer once and if a student happens to ask a question due to not understanding is hammered with “I just explained it; too bad”. Admin now only puts the top 10% of students in this teachers classes. Another teacher gets the lowest of the low; what I have heard refered to as “sweet and low”; has low EOCT scores, but has great classroom control, and progresses these “sweet and low” through the material the state mandates.
Which is the bad teacher?
Neither; a good admin will use the strengths of the teachers and manage.
Echo
August 29th, 2010
3:47 pm
Dr. Trotter, I have been in contact with MACE reps since May. I would like to see MACE come to my school, like PAGE and GAE, to talk with teachers…you may be surprised at what you hear.
Mickey D, and thankateacher…would you like to second this on MACE coming to Douglas County?
Echo
August 29th, 2010
3:50 pm
Devil’s Advocate = administrator. Your true colors are showing. It’s not the pickets, it’s the paperwork that scares administrators. But you already knew that.
Jordan Kohanim
August 29th, 2010
3:58 pm
This is a 3 minute video about the problem with linking test scores to teacher evaluations and pay.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uONqxysWEk8
Devil's Advocate
August 29th, 2010
4:11 pm
Whatever you need to tell yourself echo…
Old Physics Teacher
August 29th, 2010
4:12 pm
I am SO GLAD I’m retiring in 3 years. There have been no positive aspects of politicians, and business executives, getting involved in education. I started teaching 18 years ago after dropping out of the “private sector” (I cut my pay 50% and never looked back) due to the ignorance of “executives” . You know, business school graduates drawing high pay for cutting costs to the bone and increasing profits to the detriment of the economy. These people destroy an entire sector of the economy, take their golden parachutes, move on to a new company, buy themselves more expensive politicians to act as “soiled doves,” and then destroy other companies. Now these “business executives” (Yes, I’m talking about Bill Gates too) want to apply the same criteria to teachers they applied to their employees, and the public, bless their ignorant hearts, agrees.
They first told us that the solution to our education problems was to hire “better people” to be teachers. That meant higher pay, because higher pay would attract “better” teachers. Now they complain about our pay, and want to talk about “Value Added” teaching, as if that will fix education. Well, when they allow me to decide which students I’ll teach, the same as any Quality Assurance Manager is authorized to refuse shipments of defective parts, I’ll be glad – actually THRILLED, to be judged on my quality of teaching. Until then, they need to shut up and learn about our profession, before they start telling us how to do a job they’re unqualified to do themselves.
As far as what to teach them, we’ve outsourced our low-level jobs to Malaysia, et al, and we’re out-sourced our high-paid programming jobs to India and Pakistan, not to mention the electronics industry being taken over ( due to our government’s and business community’s unwillingness to sue for patent infringement) by Asia. Our economy now is based on “consumerism,” whatever that is. We don’t make anything any more; we just buy things. What do they want us to teach our students – how to buy things? They already know that. Heck, they have credit cards of their own!
Who’s are these idiots going to get to work under these conditions? My youngest son, while an undergraduate at Georgia State, with a GPA closing on 4.0, was considering changing his degree to become a math teacher. When he told his fiance, she screamed at him, “Over my dead body, you’ll become a teacher! You better come up with a better idea than that!” I heartily agreed; he’s making over 95k a year, and no politician has any control over him. I feel sorry for the guys coming out of school now wanting to be a teacher, and I weep for my profession.
Atlanta mom
August 29th, 2010
4:17 pm
@8th grade teacher
You are correct, this blog on this day does not support my statement, “all/most/85% of teachers are good”. It certainly is a theme I have observed oftentimes in these blogs.
As for my statement: “All administrators are bad”, here a just a few quotes from the blog:
95% of the leaders I have worked under the last 20+ years in the classroom, should never have been appointed as leaders. Competent supervisors do not exist in education.
I have met a handful of “competent” administrators
Most administrators I’ve worked for only taught for a few years and have nothing constructive to say to me.
Where are the good administrators and how do we get them in our schools?
Very hard to find anything nice about any administrator, ever, in these blogs.
Dr. John Trotter
August 29th, 2010
4:19 pm
Devil’s Advocate: No, our standard picket is about “five guys” (like the hamburger place!). But, sometimes we send eight or nine. When you have guys in suits and ties with florescent color signs and bold statements on them, you don’t need to send him an army. MACE just sends sends in a strike force…sort of like the Navy Seals. In fact, we call our picketers “The MACE Strike Force.”
The particular link which you put up shows a picket in the pouring down rain at Atlanta’s Douglass High School. This principal also had a Complaint filed against him by a MACE teachers (assisted by MACE, of course) with the Professional Standards Commission (PSC). This principal mysteriously resigned in the middle of the school year…after this picket and the PSC Complaint. We also picketed his replacement, the interim principal, who told the Douglass teachers that they had to teach on Saturday; this illegal activity was also stopped by the picket. Furthermore, the principal before the one who resigned abruptly in the middle of the year also announced surprisingly in the Spring that he would not be back at Douglass High — after MACE had picketed him three times that year and had filed four PSC Complaints against two administrators — one was him — a counselor, and the Registrar. The PSC found against all four of them. I also send and 11 page letter to the superintendent, the school board, and thrroughout the State about one of the counselor’s threat on my life. You can read this letter on our website…it may be in the “Archives” section.
But, Devil’s Advocate, thanks for the opportunity for me to demonstrate to our readers just how the process works. By the way, I also had the principal (who had the three pickets against him in one year) in a Grievance Hearing downtown at the Taj Mahal Building on Trinity Avenue and…well, for those teachers who have even witnessed me engage in my “thorough and sifting” cross examination of an administrator, you can imagine how this made him feel. Devil’s Advocate, I’ve got a feeling that you have witnessed one of my cross examinations, eh? LOL. (c) MACE, August 29, 2010.
Echo
August 29th, 2010
4:20 pm
Atlanta mom – shouldn’t it tell you something when several people in the same profession in different locations are saying the same thing?
Dr. John Trotter
August 29th, 2010
4:27 pm
Good people: Forgive the typos. I was just pecking away, and I need to check more thoroughly before I submit.
Ed Johnson
August 29th, 2010
4:58 pm
Dear LAUSD Teachers (and US K-12 public ed teachers, everywhere):
RE: For example, http://tinyurl.com/2b9qjmt
Please forgive me.
I voted for Barack Obama.
I will not do so, again. I promise.
Again, please forgive me.
Sincerely,
Ed Johnson
Advocate for Quality in Public Education
Atlanta GA
edwjohnson@aol.com
http://www.ChangeTheSchools.ning.com
Dr. John Trotter
August 29th, 2010
5:04 pm
Teachers “Teach” The Students, Not “Learn” Them.
RTTT. Race To The Trough!
By John R. Alston Trotter, EdD, JD
CRCT, TPAI, NCLB, QBE, GTOI, GTDRI, APEG, Minimum Foundation, A+ Program, RTTT, and on and on. None have or will significantly improve education here in Georgia. What we need is Discipline In The Classrooms (DITC), Motivation From The Students (MFTS), and Decent Parents At Home (DPAH). But, how do you fund these essential components? Harping on these essential components will not secure politicians any votes, so they think. But, I think that they will secure votes! Nonetheless, President Obama and Arne Duncan, like most politicians (George W. Bush and the late Ted Kennedy included), continue to adhere to Blame The Teachers First (BTTF). Added to this is the destructive program called Let Administrators Run Roughshod Over Teachers (LARROT). Educational Rot. This educational stench is so strong to every fair-minded and intelligent nostril. But, the masses will continue to eat the slop until someone points out that this slop is really for educational swine. RTTT? Race To The Top? No, Race To The Trough. Teachers “teach” the students, not “learn” the students. Physicians “treat” the patients, not “heal” the patients. Lawyers “defend” the accused, not “acquit” the accused.
Until our politicians and policymakers start holding the students and their parents responsible for the learning facet of the educational equation, then improving education is like spitting into a tsunami. Other countries and cultures understand this simple concept, but in our “wisdom,” we have become educational “fools.” (c) MACE, August 27, 2010.
Private School Guy
August 29th, 2010
5:42 pm
Administrators need to be judged and paid in relation to school success more than teachers. Principals need to be demoted or fired based on poor results. But results should be based on far more than test scores. Sadly most public schools administrators would not have a clue on how to really evaluate teacher performance. They need to have a real understanding of what is going on in each and every classroom, they need to look at and be able to understand data and be able to make qualified decisions about the teaching staff. From my personal experience most administrators would not be able to begin to draw qualified conclusions regarding the performance of their staffs.
All educators need to keep in mind that the real results of a quality education can not be known until the student becomes an adult.
Real Reformer
August 29th, 2010
5:42 pm
@ Hmmmm, your comment ” until we get fair minded administrators, I really don’t want to be arbitrarily judged by someone who may have a vendetta against me!” my mother was a teacher, and I heard this argument for years. I was a teacher for some years, and have worked in the private sector and for a nonprofit. I’ve never understood why teachers think they are the only ones who might have to work for a poor administrator, “who would have a vendetta” against them. Any time you have a manager/supervisor/boss out there in the private sector, you have to figure out how to get along. I don’t know why this argument is always advanced by teachers.
Please understand, I believe teachers need more support, higher pay, more cooperation from students and parents, and they should not be evaluated solely by test scores. At my son’s high school, everyone knows who the good teachers are, and we don’t have to look at test scores to know it. But we are all evaluated by our superiors in the workplace.
Mikey D
August 29th, 2010
5:49 pm
@Real Reformer…
So, teachers should be subjected to poor administrators simply because others in the private sector also are? Turn about is fair play? Just because it happens in one place doesn’t mean it automatically has to happen everywhere.
Echo
August 29th, 2010
5:54 pm
In the private sector, management has very good reasons to keep the most productive members of their team “happy”. A manager is only as good as the team they manage, if productivity declines, the manager is on the hook. In schools there is no reason for a principal to keep good or productive teachers “happy”. Teachers are replaced at a much faster rate than the typical private sector employee. In the private sector experience is typically prized and companies will pay top dollar for top producers. This same model doesn’t exist in public education. There is no valid way to determine “top producers” in education, the pay scale also restricts the pay. Many schools see new teachers as cheap labor, you can fill 2 positions with 0 years experience & a B.S. for the same cost as one Ph.D. with 25 years in.
Hey Teacher
August 29th, 2010
5:54 pm
Atlanta Mom — the problem with administrative positions is that you don’t have to be a good teacher FIRST to become an administrator. There are many exceptions to that rule, but they are few and far between. I worked for an AP who had only 2 years of experience in a gifted classroom — no regular ed experience whatsoever. That is like the equivalent of a doctor only doing 1/3 of a residency, missing the surgical rotation, and then being asked to supervise the operating room. For every good admin, I’ve worked for 3 more that were totally clueless — and I’ve worked in 4 different counties over a 20 plus-year career.
Public Teacher
August 29th, 2010
6:06 pm
When will people understand that the ‘teacher quality’ component of a child’s education is very small. However, the politicans continue to spend time and our tax dollars on this to ride the public opinion and get votes.
There is no real research at all that connects student performance on any standardized test to teacher quality. Until that connection is made, this is all just pi$$ing in the wind.
Tony
August 29th, 2010
6:07 pm
The report is a good one based on sound interpretation of research that is readily available. Unfortunately, our politicians do not want sound research nor do they want to back down from the testing agenda. The current federal DOE is insisting on developing “even better assessments” to use for teachers’ evaluations. In our state, the leaders are still trying to “better define the teacher of record” in order to isolate variables related to determining teacher effectiveness. In other words, it doesn’t matter how unreliable test results are in evaluating teacher effectiveness, we are going to do it anyway. Now with Race to the Top in place, Georgia will be required to do so. Maybe there’s hope for sanity to prevail.
Laurie
August 29th, 2010
6:17 pm
I have never liked stansardized tests, and sent my child to alternative private schooling until her 3rd grade year because of it. Evaluating teachers based on student performance is a difficult thing, considering all the variables at play. I think a 360 degree style assessment would be good, getting feedback from students, parents, co-workers, and administration regarding a teacher’s abilities.
Fericita
August 29th, 2010
6:17 pm
Like ScienceTeacher671 said, the Class Keys assessment is very thorough, but it is unlikely that administrators truly have time to be in a class enough to be as thorough as the evaluation demands. For example, the assessment section asks for evaluation of the teacher’s use of formative, summative, and diagnostic assessments. If an administrator is evaluating me for 45 minutes (and usually it is more like 20), they certainly won’t see all 3. That doesn’t mean I don’t know how to use all 3 correctly, but that they aren’t observed in the time frame of my evaluation.
I think the key to keeping good teachers and weeding out bad ones is to have qualified observers in classrooms making fair judgments for longer than just 20 minutes. Perhaps, like William Casey said, we should have retired teachers do it. I can understand that administrators don’t have time to be in my room unless there is a problem. But I want feedback!
I’m thankful that I haven’t had problems with administration, but I have heard some horror stories. I know a math teacher whose evaluator wrote down that he was teaching the “Aquatic Equation,” and had some misguided suggestions on how the teacher could do it better. Really? If the evaluator didn’t even understand the name of the concept (the quadratic formula) how likely is it that he could critique how it was being taught?
#atlanta mom
August 29th, 2010
6:20 pm
but what I can’t understand – instead of lamenting how bad your high school teachers are, why aren’t you moving to a different district with stronger high schools?
Echo
August 29th, 2010
6:22 pm
“Aquatic Equation” …now THAT is funny.
J.B. STONER
August 29th, 2010
6:47 pm
I’ll tell you why teachers fail. Look at the students of today. Pant’s on the ground, smoking dope ,carrying guns, robbing people.
Give em something to teach.
Grammar
August 29th, 2010
7:00 pm
LOVE “aquatic equation” – Must be a relative of one of our administrators. This lady is the SFA (reading) coach and comes out with all kinds of gems – Like when we had to read outloud from a handout during a faculty meeting: “savior the cheese.” She was talking about Who Moved My Cheese – I know it sounds like typ-o but it isn’t. This woman also says things like “we seen them coming.”
I work for APS. This person has a job coaching teachers – for teaching READING. She can’t even speak, not English anyway.
teacher&mom
August 29th, 2010
7:04 pm
My current principal has never observed me. I’ve been teaching in this school for FIVE years. He has delegated that responsibility to our AP. He really has no clue as to what goes on behind closed doors. He just assumes that because we have good test scores, everyone is doing a super job. The AP always observes and to his credit, he does try to offer a fair evaluation. However, every time he has sat down in my room to observe, someone is paging him to come to the office. I think the longest he ever sat in my room was 10 minutes. He wears too many hats at our school and is spread way too thin to adequately observe teachers.
I like William Casey’s suggestion about using retired teachers for teacher observations. I would also recommend that current teachers be included in the group. One of the best ways to hone your skills as a teacher is to observe other teachers.
Lee
August 29th, 2010
7:05 pm
It’s called PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT folks. Done correctly, you recognize the high performers, provide needed feedback / tools / training to the below average to average performers, and the low performers, you make a decision whether or not they need a helping hand to improve — or a helping hand out the door.
Performance Management is not easy. It takes more than just two or three fifteen minute evaluations during the course of the year. Actually, a good manager has an almost continuous feedback loop – they don’t wait until mid-year or end-of-year evaluations to give feedback.
Finally, the biggest failure I see is the manager who doesn’t deal with the poor performer.
This trend in education to rate teachers is merely a ploy by weak administrators who do not want to make the hard decisions required by effective Performance Management. They are looking for the magic bullet that takes the decision making out of their hands.
Sound familiar? That same weak administrator also hides behind the school handbook as though it were a Roman Gladiator shield. They absolutely abhor having to make a decision.
teacher&mom
August 29th, 2010
7:08 pm
There are so many problems with how GA plans implement teacher pay-for performance. Here’s a short list:
• Teachers are never given significant feedback from CRCT and EOCT scores. Released test questions IS NOT MEANINGFUL feedback. If you plan to tie teacher pay to test scores, an item-by-item analysis should be provided.
• If you want teacher buy-in to this process, you are going to have to figure out a meaningful way to allow more teachers to sit at the table. Sending out a nebulous survey or posting an item on the DOE web site asking for input is not effective. Georgia teachers feel shut out of this entire process.
• The elimination of the NBCT stipend will haunt this state for many years. Teachers found out that contracts weren’t worth the paper they were written on. The state will have a hard time earning back that trust.
• 50% for test scores is too much.
• The Class Keys does a good job of defining what makes a good teacher. Short, classroom observations will not identify all the keys. So, how does a teacher “prove” s/he implements strong formative assessments, HOTS, etc? Right now, it looks like the teacher will submit a portfolio (paperwork) for someone to evaluate. If a teacher is deemed “proficient” or “exemplary” do we really need him or her to submit a mammoth document every year? Will that lead to more burnout? How many times does an effective teacher need to prove their worth?
Sped Red
August 29th, 2010
7:12 pm
I don’t see any consideration for parental involvement. This should be weighted in some manner.
HStchr
August 29th, 2010
7:19 pm
“Aquatic Equation”– ROFL! Just like I witnessed in the private sector, you don’t have to be the best to get to be in charge. Here’s a joke for all:
A man’s body was debating one day about which part should really be in charge. Of course, the brain assumed that since he managed and monitored all nervous system activity that he was the only one qualified. The arms argued that since they carried everything and delivered food to keep the body alive, they should be in charge. The legs spoke up and demanded their respect for being the ones to carry all the weight around, so they should be in charge. Finally, after much debate, the a$$hole spoke up and said he should be in charge. Well, of course, the body just fell into a fit of laughter. I mean, really, who could accept such a ridiculous orifice being in charge?!!
Well, the hole got mad and plugged up tight. Needless to say, after a few days the legs were wobbly, the arms just hung there, and the brain was completely fuzzy and unable to handle the simplest management tasks. The body wasn’t laughing anymore.
The moral of the story: you don’t have to be management trained, strong, or talented to be the boss…
Ready?
You know it already, don’t you?
You just have to be an a$$hole!
Paulo977
August 29th, 2010
7:25 pm
#Atlanta Mom…or move to another state
Atlanta mom
August 29th, 2010
7:30 pm
@#atlanta mom
It’s a good question, why did we stay in the city schools? My husband and I believe that there’s more to education than academics. They learned many valuable life lessons, and understand about people who come from less fortunate circumstances.
Additionally, we supplement with summer programs. But mostly, I find it hard to believe that all/most/85% of teachers are good to excellent. Perhaps if we’d gone to a different school I would have a different perspective.
@ Atlanta mom
August 29th, 2010
7:49 pm
“But mostly, I find it hard to believe that all/most/85% of teachers are good to excellent. Perhaps if we’d gone to a different school I would have a different perspective.”
Yup. You most likely would have..
Maureen Downey
August 29th, 2010
7:50 pm
@thankateacher, Nothing in the filter today. I saw at least one comment from you. Are you missing another? Maureen
MrNumbersMan
August 29th, 2010
7:53 pm
Dr. Trotter – We run in common circles. I know your dad, sister, and nephew. Small world.
I survived TPAI, the TCT, and later the Praxis for administration. None of this made me a better teacher. Now, as one who has to observe teachers and attempt to make them better this is a really tall task. Management theory tells us we can only effectively supervise 10-12 employees at one time. Many schools there are 100+ teachers with only 4 or 5 administrators. Now, not all of these teachers need intensive development but they all need supervision and regular development.
To make this even more difficult there are the added responsibilities of school improvement plans, various meetings, discipline situations, parent conferences, etc. And then administrators are supposed to be the lead educators in the building. Many of them I speak to are just happy if they can “Keep it between the lines” to borrow their expression.
Now, ClassKeys is going to require even more of administrators for something they don’t have time to do. Brilliant!