Developing Better Teacher Evaluation Systems

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In the article, Grover "Russ" Whitehurst says, "Right now, if I were a teacher, I wouldn't know how I was doing...." Maybe as a college professor like Russ has been, you have larger class sizes and fewer interactions with students so you do not know how well you are doing. Maybe college professors are more focused on research than on teaching. But personally as a high school teacher, I have a very good idea how well I am doing. Periodically throughout the year, I give my students opportunities to conduct anonymous written evaluations of me. I use this feedback to inform my teacher and make adjustments. I give formative and summative assessments throughout the year to gauge student learning. Almost every day I engage my students in discussions that I can use to assess student learning and student engagement. I have informal discussions throughout the school with my students before school, after school and in the school library during my planning period. The idea that me and my school district need to be required by the state or the Federal government to comply with some bureaucratic, one-size-fits-all teacher evaluation system is ludicrous. http://americansocietytoday.blogspot.com/

American Society Today of OH 11:16AM September 05, 2011

Why are fat cat business men with billions of dollars and government officials making decisions for us teachers? I have been in sales, and I understand the benefits of "value-added" evaluations. But as teachers, we are not sales people. We are not in the business of teaching and caring for children. Many of the things we do do not show up in evaluations, nor can they. Teaching is like no other profession I have ever been a part of. I didn't get into it to get rich. If this sort of philosophy is implemented in schools, who would ever share beneficial teaching practices with other teachers, especially those the most vulnerable - first through third year teachers? There are teachers out there that if money is at stake, they become less worried about others and more worried about ONLY their students.
And why do I want an administrator controlling anything to do with my pay? Most administrators cannot fairly and adequately judge teachers, especially when pay is involved. Can you image all the insider, unethical behavior that could become possible in the future if teachers are paid based on their evaluations or how their students perform? Can you imagine an administrator evaluating a friend or buddy they used to teach with? Think about it.
Teaching is not parallel to other professions when it comes to commission or "value-added" evaluations. We are not engineering and designing widgets. Widgets don't decide to perform one day and they have their girlfriend break up with them the day of testing and completely shut down.
Widgets also do not have drunks for parents nor are they tempted with drugs, drink, and criminal activity.
Wake up Brookings Institute, really.

tom white of NC 9:35PM May 24, 2011

If we want to know how the teacher is doing, why not ask the students? With electronic devices readily available for instant feedback, why not ask the students what they did in class? I designed a simple 20 items self-report inventory that asks the students to state what they did -- Did they take notes, talk to a classmate, ask questions, etc. -- all the standards could be put into self-report items.

Beth Satory of WI 2:31PM May 02, 2011

One essential component of effective schools is the collaboration between teachers. If we put teachers in competition with each other to get a set amount of bonus funding, what will happen to collaboration?
Did anyone read the book Drive, by Daniel Pink? If you give teachers enough pay to take that issue off the table and time to collaborate, you will be better off than offering a bigger carrot to some than others. Most teachers get into the field because they care about children and want to make a difference. Give them the opportunity to do this by giving them more time to plan together like they do in other countries.
Stop trying to micro-manage us by putting everything we do under a microscope.

Nancy Cook, Ph.D. of NY 3:52PM April 30, 2011

Missing in this question-answer performance is a highly important element as to how competent teachers are, or can be. In this regard, it is clear that teachers who work with children from upper-income homes are routinely determined to be better instructors than are teachers who deal with youngsters from lower-income families. This clearly indicates that any judgement of teachers that fails to include these factors are useless. In fact, the only way to fairly resolve this matter is to assign teachers to instruct both kinds of students, for equal amounts of time. For some strange reason public school officials vigorously refuse to make that adjustment. This doubtless is the reason that huge numbers of teachers who instruct children from low-income homes are fired each year, while almost none of the ones assigned to work with economically privileged children suffer that indignity. What a atrocious situation!
Dr. Patrick Groff, Professor of Education Emeritus, San Diego State University.

Dr, Patrick Groff, Professor of Education Emeritus, San Diego State University of CA 6:47PM April 29, 2011

Value-added modeling itself isn't a "bad" thing, but there are a large number of statistical nightmares that come around because of the way it is calculated. It, most often incorrectly, assumes that 100% of teacher effects on student achievement are due to the teacher of record in that subject. In elementary school, it's not so big of a deal, as there often is only one teacher a student interacts with (or maybe two at most). In secondary school, a student's ability to read is heavily impacted by instruction in other subjects (say, history or math), and as of right now there is no way to statistically account for multiple teachers affects on one student outcome score.
This eliminates special education co-teachers from value-added model scores (many studies that use value-added scores ignore co-teaching, for an example see Feng and Sass, 2010 found here: http://www.urban.org/publications/1001435.html).
While value-added is often a far superior predictor of future student outcomes on standardized testing than either number of years of teaching experience or subjective principal evaluations, it requires some sort of standardized test to be used. A commenter above mentioned that "certifications and evaluations are the culmination of years of invested money, time, and selfless effort", while this is true, certification is not linked to student achievement outside of some specific areas (Special Education, but the link is still relatively weak at that). Currently, there's about 69% of teachers who are not tested by a standardized test. Also, what does a standardized test look like in a kindergarten classroom?
I also find it interesting that this article largely ignores Sander's work in Tennessee (the man who basically invented teacher value-added), New York and California's value-added system, and improperly implies that Cincinnati's system is mostly based on Value-Added. Cinci's teacher evaluation system is highly subjective and based on a proven model of Effective Teaching, written by Charlotte Danielson (1996). It perturbs me, as well, that Whitehurst says this, "Right now, if I were a teacher, I wouldn't know how I was doing, if my failures were due to a student's background or due to things I have no control over. This is not all about performance pay or management—it's also about giving teachers real information about the jobs that they're doing," which I whole-heartedly agree with, then states that teacher evaluations need to be used for high-stakes evaluations. But, at the same time, were he a teacher, he'd probably have a pretty good idea why his kids weren't being successful.
While I am an advocate for improved levels of teacher evaluation, we cannot strictly use value-added (which correlates, at best, weakly with a proven evaluation framework like Danielson's, around 0.28). If value-added is used, it HAS to be paired with another system, and less than 50% sounds about right to me (30% sounds better).

Teacher Quality Researcher of FL 3:12PM April 29, 2011

Mike of MD, I agree the picture you paint is ideal. The reality is not everyone in a large population (i.e. thousands of teachers, in this case) is going to perform at a satisfactory level. Contrary to what Technology Educator believes, education and training, while important, are not the only essentials for an effective teacher. Motivation, understanding students, complete mastery of subject matter are all critical factors that not everyone can or wants to master.
Technology Educator, if you believe admin does its job properly, I'd suggest you read some St. Petersburg Times (FL) articles about principals now being required to thoroughly evaluate their teachers; many of them, seasoned administrators, are just now learning the skills needed to provide effective input and corrective action. And one of the great things they are doing here is actually HELPING the teachers by supporting them with feedback, coaching, etc. so they CAN improve, if they want to.
Sheila, can't agree with you more; we fall into a major trap assuming all kids can, should, and want to be taught the same information at the same pace. That's a no-win scenario, but very convenient for the number-crunchers.

Max of FL 2:42PM April 29, 2011

The questions arises...what about us...those of us who teach the lowest of the low and are lucky to see growth over a year period of time. Interesting that teacher evaluation is the crux of these talks when there are evaluative systems in place. Education is one of the few 'businesses' that are given a raw product that is not standard (some damaged, some rare and expensive, some with major flaws or holes) and asked to produce a standardized product - a child who passes all the standardized assessments at grade level at the appropriate time.
And then the seniority issue. There are mechanisms to get rid of ineffective teachers - there are protocols (just as in the business world). Why would we take those who have the experience and have the added education and compare them to the novice educator - it doesn't make sense.
The issues in education are real - especially when the mandates are for standardized education for all students - whether they are capable, whether it is valued by the family, whether the student shows up to school or not - these human characteristics seem not to matter.

Lynne of MT 2:40PM April 29, 2011

It boggles my mind to read and hear all over the country that people in the highest levels of state governments are talking about "teachers."
We wonder why our kids are not ranked on an international level among the best in the world. Well here's a thought. Just maybe we quickly lose focus when there appears to be a crisis, that it is and it should be all about the kids.
Yes we should look at teacher quality, but we also need to look at what is happening in society that contributes to students coming to school hungry, without enough sleep, worried about a parent that is incarcerated, or about where they are going to sleep that night.
In America today we have a "two party" education system, one for the poor and middle class and one for the wealthy. Until and unless this two tiered system is changed we won't see the kind growth that I know is possible with our student's in this, the greatest nation in the world.

virginia of KS 2:12PM April 29, 2011

I agree that we need a valid system for evaluating teachers. Theoretically it sounds great, however, logistically it is a nightmare.
So much emphasis has been placed on test scores that our goal becomes teaching a student to pass a test versus actually teaching them knowledge and skills. We are teaching students calculator skills and tricks to beat the test not true problem solving.
If you have not read the new Harvard Study, it is a must read. As a nation we have missed the boat about preparing students for life after high school. We are so busy trying to teach EVERY child the same standard that our academic achievers are being held back (research shows the impact it has had on our college and university students) and our underachievers are learning how to graph a line in a coordinate plane instead of vocationally related math skills that would prepare them for the work force. We spend inordinate amounts of time preparing students for tests because we are evaluated on their scores. There is no room for the humanistic side of this evaluation which takes poverty, sickness, natural disasters, motivation, and low IQ into account. It should not be about a test, it should be about this is where they were when they came to me and this is where they are now.
We have a wonderful Technical School on our campus that provides a myriad of opportunities for students. I would love to teach a math course in conjunction with a Technical instructor in which they taught the skill and I taught the math. NOT A CHANCE. We are so consumed with students having to take exams on which their graduation hinges that we are keeping them from vocationally relevant classes. How do you explain to a student why they need to learn the equation of a circle when all they want to do is construction? They would learn problem solving skills and be happy to do it if they could see the true relevancy and how it would help them achieve their goal.
We have somehow gotten into our heads that every student wants to graduate..hmmmm..no..they are required by law to be here and many are biding their time until they can get out and be a part of the workforce. And yet, we are not equipping them with the skills they need to be successful. No wonder they don't want to be here.
My favorite soap box: We are so concerned about test scores that we cannot take the desperately needed time to teach students about financial math. Not a crash course, but in-depth financially relevant classes to help them understand the complexities of the real world and the financial burdens with which they will be faced. We send them unprepared into a world where they will be required to make life altering and long term financial decisions without the skills and knowledge they need to truly make wise choices - but they can graph a line given the slope intercept form of the equation :)

Sheila of TN 1:41PM April 29, 2011