Historic vote by teachers union: Student performance should be factor in teacher reviews
The National Education Association, the largest teachers union in the country, adopted a new policy Monday that for the first time calls for student learning/performance to be part of teacher evaluations.
The policy states: Such indicators must be authentic, reflect that there are multiple factors that impact a student’s learning beyond a teacher’s control, and may include the following indicators or others chosen by a local or state affiliate: student learning objectives developed jointly by the teacher and principal/evaluator; teacher-created assessments; district or school assessments; student work (papers, portfolios, projects, presentations); teacher defined objectives for individual student growth; and high quality standardized tests that provide valid, reliable, timely and meaningful information regarding student learning and growth. Unless such tests are shown to be scientifically valid and reliable for the purpose of measuring both student learning and a teacher’s performance, such tests may not be used to support any employment action against a teacher and may be used only to provide non-evaluative formative feedback.
In a statement, NEA President Dennis Van Roekel said, “NEA members have stated loud and clear that they will no longer allow the voice of educators to be silenced and marginalized by people who don’t have a clue what teaching is. This policy statement puts NEA on the record in calling for a comprehensive overhaul of both teacher evaluation and accountability systems and it affords the association’s members the opportunity to take responsibility for ensuring the development, implementation, and enforcement of these high quality systems.”
According to the New York Times story about the NEA shift in policy:
In passing the new policy at its assembly here, the 3.2 million-member union, the National Education Association, hopes to take a leadership role in the growing national movement to hold teachers accountable for what students learn — an effort from which it has so far conspicuously stood apart.
But blunting the policy’s potential impact, the union also made clear that it continued to oppose the use of existing standardized test scores to judge teachers, a core part of the federally backed teacher evaluation overhauls already under way in at least 15 states.
The policy calls for teacher practice, teacher collaboration within schools and student learning to be used in teacher evaluations. But for tests, only those shown to be “developmentally appropriate, scientifically valid and reliable for the purpose of measuring both student learning and a teacher’s performance” should be used, the policy states, a bar that essentially excludes all existing tests, said Douglas N. Harris of the University of Wisconsin, a testing expert.
–From Maureen Downey, for the AJC Get Schooled blog
Tell us what you think about the site
Customer Care »
Vacation stops, manage subscriptions and more
AJC Services
Sections
Other Editions
Visitor Agreement | Privacy Statement
© 2013 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
67 comments Add your comment
Dirty Harry
July 5th, 2011
12:36 pm
The NEA…a liberal POLITICAL organization…..nothing more, nothing less.
Cliff Claven
July 5th, 2011
12:54 pm
MiltonMan, give us the power to clean it up and we would in a heart beat.
NEA Reality
July 5th, 2011
1:14 pm
@ James Respectfully
If competition is the main answer to improvement in education,
why were consumers in the airline industry consistently complaining
about service since deregulation and the increased levels of competition ?
thomas
July 5th, 2011
1:27 pm
@ Darko,
“The APS scandal shows us what happens when teachers (or even worse, administrators) are in charge of overseeing the results of their own evaluations – cheating. Same as grade inflation or passing kids who should be failed to the next grade.”
Were the teachers in charge of overseeing the results of their own evaluation? Not sure if you understand. What do you mean by “overseeing”? They weren’t grading the tests or anything. In fact, there are thousands of teachers, many of whom were in Atlanta, who did not cheat. In fact, the proportion of those who engaged in this terrible act is rather small to generalize to the rest of the teaches. You should be actually arguing how good the job teachers in general did.
Second, as far as we know, these teachers (those who cheated or otherwise) weren’t being evaluated by the result of the CRCT – at least not yet. So, I don’t know why you say they were in charge of “their own evaluation.”
I let the others decide who is more inclined to “bash teachers.”
thomas
July 5th, 2011
1:31 pm
I’m just amazed (maybe “amused” is a better word) by those simpletons who think “competition is the answer” to everything. I guess I am also getting tired of their ignorance and blind faith, too.
BillM
July 5th, 2011
1:44 pm
Now the educators tell us that they will control the debate. Mostly its that they demand to control how they spend OUR money and how much more of it we need to pony up. The educator union and related lobby have been feasting at the public teat for so long they have utterly lost touch with reality.
Reality is that the educators have failed to develop solutions that keep pace with the changes in society. The NEA has been clear that they exist to support the teachers, not the kids. If the NEA were in the real world they would be fired for poor results.
Title1Educator
July 5th, 2011
2:00 pm
@Gandalf the Wise “The NEA is one of the big things that’s wrong with this country! Why write drivel about them?”
Learn your history. The NEA has been around for over 150 years, generating ideas that have democratized education so that all American children receive a free and appropriate public education until adulthood (google the 1892 NEA The Council of Ten). Former president Albert Shanker was one of the first proponents of charter schools. I’ve been an active member of teachers unions in 2 states without GA’s “right to work” law, and know that I wouldn’t have made it past my 1st year without union counsel, professional development and mentoring. While they protect the rights of adults, at many meetings I saw teachers weep and appeal for better conditions for their students. Also, look at union membership in states (CA, NJ, MA, NY) and countries (Finland, Canada) that outrank GA and the USA. I found that union membership allowed me to have a voice for reform in my school without fearing reprisals–the opposite of my GA experience. Don’t you see that teachers would’ve have spoken freely to the GBI if they were protected from Beverly Hall’s antics?
I believe, like the NEA, that if assessment tools are properly created and administered then quality teachers could show an overall value added to their students. The only way to fairly add “value added” data into teacher evaluation is to have entry and exit testing for each grade level, using an identical testing instrument. This is done in California for English Language Learners. You are able to measure each student’s progress during those months of instruction with that teacher–not compare them to a previous class or another school completely. If I help a struggling middle school reader gain more than year in proficiency in 8 months that should count more in my evaluation than a proficient student maintaining the same level of success.
@SoGAVet You are so right. Transparency is key. When I taught outside GA, my peers and I were able to see and use the old state tests during PD and planning sessions. We would isolate which standards received the most coverage and which our classes failed to master in general. GA gives you a summary report, which is much less informative.
@ BillM
July 5th, 2011
3:05 pm
Great another real world tard to save the day. And how would you save our system?
Moving in the wrong direction...
July 5th, 2011
4:01 pm
“The more you know about how children learn and what standardized tests tell you, the less likely you would ever be to cite a test score as an indication of anything that matters” – Alfie Kohn
@ Paddy O
July 5th, 2011
4:16 pm
“NEA is rather parasitic – especially in non-right to work states. The teachers in those non-right to work states are mandated to join the union, and the dues are relatively high.”
I must correct you:
Having taught in Missouri – a non right to work state for over 25 years, teachers were never mandated to join NEA. Missouri does not have collective bargaining. Also, many Republican TEACHERS were members too! The NEA engaged the BOE in win-win negotiations regarding salary and working conditions. NEA does receive voluntary DONATIONS to its PAC. (political action committees) However, public education in the Midwest is not so polarized by those who want to destroy education as it is in Georgia.
d
July 5th, 2011
5:14 pm
I am sitting on the floor of the NEA Representative Assembly as I type this. I am looking around. I don’t see anything about protecting bad teachers. In fact, I’ve heard several times we need to help bad teachers find other lines of work. The 10,000 professional educators in this room are dedicated to making the teaching profession better so that students can be more successful. As I look around, the major theme I am seeing is “Standing strong for our students, for our schools, and for America.”
The policy statement does not say we are relying solely on test scores. Maureen, we’re getting back to work, but I’d be happy to share more information at a later time.
NTLB
July 5th, 2011
5:45 pm
@to all of the above—NEA’s statement is on point; HOWEVER, since Georgia is a non union state, it will have little effect on me as a teacher.
Paddy O
July 5th, 2011
9:16 pm
not sure Missouri is a typical non-right to work state. It just barely avoided seceding.
National Education Association grudgingly agrees that student achievement matters
July 6th, 2011
11:56 am
[...] earlier this week, the National Education Association finally faced reality and agreed that student achievement and academic growth should be part of the teacher evaluation [...]
bkworm
July 6th, 2011
5:08 pm
As I read these comments, I am amazed at how little non-educators really know and understand about what we do. If you spent ONE full day in my classroom, I guarantee your attitudes and opinions would change. It’s difficult to teach the chronic absentee, the hungry child, the tardy child or the child whose parent refuses to have him/her tested because in my professional opinion, this child has a learning disability. It’s also difficult to teach the child whose parent refuses to consistently give them their ADHD medication, or if opposed to medication, refuses to take said child to behavior modification counseling. It is also difficult to teach and assess children whose parent does their homework for them, or rarely shows up for parent teacher conferences. I also have children whose parents are going through a divorce, and no one tells the teacher so that drastic changes in behavior can be explained. This is a small sample of what I see, and I am NOT describing my experiences as an urban teacher in an impoverished area of the country!! So if you want to use my standardized test scores to assess my effectiveness as a teacher–have at it! but you better have a darn good assessment tool to take into account ALL that I do.
KentuckyHorseman
July 6th, 2011
5:13 pm
Standardized test results should be one of a number of tools used to evaluate teachers and administrators. I would include peer reviews where the evaluator would have to rate fellow teachers conforming to a bell curve. Evaluations should also include class room tests, papers, and projects. I can speak from personal knowledge of working and teaching in GA, FL, and KY there were a significant number of high school graduates who could not write in an intelligient thoughtful manner….let-a-lone….. use correct grammar and spelling.
The NEA should be at the fore front of seeking punishment for the Atlanta cheaters. A true profession is one that self-disciplines its’ members. But, we all know the NEA is just a political fund raiser for the Democrats so they will do nothing but speak in gross generalities of a never never world.
As another poster has stated….”thank God for private schools”.
Fellow teachers and administrators know who the poor teachers are and should have the means to swiftly remove them from the classroom and employment. I dare say there are more than “one or two” as another poster has said who do not measure up to standards. Unfortunately the union has caused the process to be so long and complex that a teacher does little to nothing and gets paid while the process is completed. You wold think those teachers whose students achieve or exceed the standards would be in the forefront of the effort to eliminate those teachers whose students do not meet the standards. Before any teacher says if you haven’t taught you don’t appreciate the challenge facing teachers……I have taught to include college level. I have seen the results of students who have been passed on without having achieved what would be expected of a high school gradute. This is not an isolated situation it is pronounced and is basic to my contention that college undergradute degrees are the equivalent to what high school degrees were twenty (plus) years ago.
Eric
July 7th, 2011
9:48 pm
Sorry, RGB, you’re way off base. You make it sound like public education is a public investment that must yield dividends, etc. This is a human endeavor, not the stock market. Have you heard of the SAT? Did you know that in 1980 a score of 1000 was considered good? By 2011, you have to have a 1200 to enter many colleges. And more students are attending college than ever. That would indicate our schools have been doing a great job over the years (if we’re going to rely on standardized tests).