We're about to get some good evidence of a real Lake Wobegon effect in education. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has asked states to provide, as part of their teacher quality assurances due for stimulus funds, the number and percentage of teachers scoring at each performance level on local evaluations. (Read a write-up of the story at Education Week here.)
These numbers will surprise the general public and embarrass teachers and districts. The new Secretary of Ed. knows a thing or two about this. His administration commissioned the New Teacher Project to analyze its personnel policies, and one of the results was the chart at left. It shows the results
of 36,000 teacher evaluations from 2003 to 2006 in Chicago. Over a four year period, 93 percent of all evaluations resulted in a rating of either "superior" or "excellent," while only .3 percent were deemed "unsatisfactory." In a district with its share of failing schools, less than one in twenty gave an unsatisfactory rating to any teacher in four years. Catherine Cullen thinks the data will be taken in stride, but I doubt such Wobegonian evaluation systems will resonate with the average taxpayer, especially as unemployment hits 25-year highs.Evaluation systems, ideally, would not be just some abstract measure on which everyone scores well. They should be used for real asssessment and improvement, but they're often just drive-by formailities. Yet, ones that are done well can help document a case for dismissing an ineffective or negligent teacher, while ones that are done poorly serve as a major impediment. If a principal makes a mistake on a teacher's evaluation, that too can hamper a district's ability to rid itself of poor teachers.
And, to be honest, there are poor teachers. Evaluation systems that fail to recognize that fact deserve sunlight and scorn.
4 comments:
You are absolutely right that the numbers receiving unsatisfactory evaluations are embarassing, but I wonder what the benchmark is in other knowledge industries? How many unsatisfactory evaluations are given to engineers at a given firm, etc.?
We have reduced student "profiency" to arbitrarily set cut-scores on ungrounded statistical scales.
We have "qualified" teachers defined in terms of college course work, which has been repeatedly been shown to be unrelated to the attainment of any instructional outcome.
Now we are going to add teacher
"efficiency" defined "any way you like."
Where's the "Change we can believe in" when we really need it?
Kristin makes a good point. However, a good rating system might expect that entry-level teachers still have something to learn. Perhaps a rating system might identify such teachers by some kind of "probationary" rating with explicit goals to be established in order to move up to a first floor level--say journeyman, or something that implies that learning is expected, rather than that the teacher is deficient, per se. Moving upwards to a Master level might include both advanced degree and minimum years of experience, as well as some specific accomplishments--such as students advancing in knowledge.
This would seem to be more in keeping with an expectation of lifelong learning than the identification of "deficiencies," although there should be a provision for this as well--just don't expect it to be widely used.
Whether they would be competent evaluators or not, when would principals have time to observe their teachers? I've hardly ever met a principal who has teaching experience relevant to high poverty schools. We could invest mega-bucks training them. But I've hardly met a principal who isn't working 80 to 90 hours per week already.
Yeah, we need tougher evaluations. And we should be firing more teachers and administrators. But we shouldn't kid ourselves. Until we improve the learning culture in high poverty neighborhood schools, we won't find qualified people who will stick it out.
I could repeat my recommendation of the Toledo Plan, but I won't. The first step is a moratorium on ridicule. We face enormous problems with the talent shortage in schools, and we don't need more of the blame game.
"Reformers" can get started devising quality teacher prep and administrator prep programs, testing them out, and seeing if they really work in high poverty neighborhood schools. Then we can change this mess in a generation or so - if their theories work out.
Or we can stop the blame game, bring teachers into the evaluation process and follow our lead in upgrading the profession.
We can't improve without moving beyond drive-by evaluations. But we can't have meaningful evaluations without addressing some real problems - like the refusal to enforce discipline thus driving teachers out of the profession and robbing administrators of the time they would need to learn about instructional leadership.
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