Getting Real About Teacher Evaluation

Thanks to the Forum for Education and Democracy for inviting me to speak at their Oct. 22nd Capitol Hill briefing on "Effective Teachers, High Achievers: How Strengthening the Teaching Profession Can Improve Student Learning." I was part of a panel that included: Angela Valenzuela, Linda Darling-Hammond, and Kati Haycock.

My comments focused on what I believe are two closely related reasons why we do not have quality teachers for all students, particularly for those in high needs, high poverty areas: ineffective teacher evaluation and weak professional development/support.

I am, by whatever measure you might want to use, a highly effective teacher. And, I've done that while teaching in high needs schools. High needs schools are chronically understaffed in quantity and quality. In Mississippi, for example, we will annually have 1,000 more openings for teachers than all of our teacher education programs combined can fill with graduates. A constant turnover of new, underprepared teachers, most of whom will leave the classroom in three years or less, is damaging to the students, who often take these staff departures as a reinforcing sign of their own lack of worth. Meanwhile, those of us who stay, including those who have proven ourselves effective in these difficult settings, are pressured to do more with less and less support, little respect, and no additional time.

I have know from the results of my own work and from the research that highly effective teachers make tremendous difference for all students, but effective teachers are not just energetic missionaries. We are reflective, accomplished practitioners who know our subjects, know our students, and know how to teach those subjects to our students (yes, I just quoted from the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards). We're not superheroes from another planet; we're hardworking professionals, who have honed our craft. The really good news is: There are more of us than most people realize, and we could be the rule rather than the exception in public education.

To get to that point, we need to bust at least two myths.

Myth #1: Teachers are the problem. In its multiple variations, this myth asserts that the current teaching force of over 3 million is composed mostly of incompetents who should be replaced with younger, brighter, more dedicated persons. Truth: Even in the most dysfunctional schools or systems, quality teachers (of varying ranges) can be found. They are routinely ignored, their expertise wasted by administrators and education reformers alike. The largest percentage of teachers are mediocre; these include the defensive, the cynical, the frustrated, or as one recent survey called them the "disinheartened." They need either better professional development and/or to be disentangled from noxious learning environments that stifle them as well as their students.

Myth #2: We could get rid of all these incompetent teachers if it weren't for tenure and union contracts. This is a particularly urban myth behind which some administrators and politicians hide to avoid doing the work necessary to remove truly incompetent teachers. I work in an open-shop state where teachers have neither tenure nor collective bargaining. State law says a teacher may be fired by a school district for incompetence, and the procedure for removing them and striping their teaching certifications is relatively straightforward as compared to places like NYC or LA. Yet, in over six years on our state licensure commission, I have yet to see a case of incompetence brought before us for action. Either Mississippi (a) does not have any incompetent teachers, or (b) it's not tenure or union contracts that keeps incompetent teachers in classrooms.

The true culprit appears to be the what passes for teacher evaluation in most places. Apparently, we do not have systems that accurately identify teacher effectiveness or the degree of that effectiveness. Rigorous evaluation systems would not only identify quality teaching, but give each teacher a realistic, timely assessment of his/her work, identifying areas or strength and weakness; thereby, guiding professional development and support needs.

Teacher evaluation in most places, however, is a checklist filled out by a harried administrator during a drive-by walk-through visit of a classroom. In the districts where I've worked, the annual procedure was supposed to go like this: a pre-visit conference between myself and the principal to discuss my work since last year's evaluation, review any areas that were in need of improvement, note any changes or new conditions, and plan for the classroom visit. Next, would come the classroom visit itself; a full-period visit by the principal. The last step was a post-visit conference to review what the administrator saw, clarify areas of concern. Between the steps, the administrator would review my lesson plans (something that s/he should do throughout the school year) and other classroom evidence (student work, test data, etc.) that might shed light on the quality of my work. In over 15 years of high school teaching, I got that full procedure only twice, one of those being my rookie year. I have taught under five principals, one of whom has never seen me teach; three others saw me teach for half of one period. Most years, they simply filled out the paperwork and sent me a copy of my "perfect" evaluation.

The desire for a true and accurate evaluation of my professional work was my primary motivation for seeking National Board Certification in my 10^th year of teaching. As my TLN colleagues who reviewed the numerous research studies on the National Board commented in their findings: "Teaching is difficult and important work, it deserves equally complex and thoughtful assessment."

National Board Certification stands out as a model upon which we can build truly rigorous but adaptable approaches to teacher evaluation. The NBPTS process contains the key elements of comprehensive and accurate assessment of what teachers should know and do:

1. It is an advanced certification for examining experienced teachers (not the same as what we might use for novices)
2. It examines both teachers' knowledge of their subject matter AND their skill in teaching that subject matter
3. It is peer evaluated
4. It is based on well-developed standards of teaching
5. It looks at student performance (test data, classroom work) 
6. It looks at teacher performance in context (school conditions, student characteristics, support systems)
7. It requires multiple forms of representation of teacher's work (visual, written, audio) as well as supporting evidence from the teachers' own classroom, students, and peers.
8. It looks at contributions and work the teacher may be performing outside the classroom (community, schoolwide, contributions to the profession, etc.)

These are elements upon which we could build more flexible and rigorous teacher evaluation processes that could take into account the wide variations in teaching styles and situations.

A little side note on item #5 above: Contrary to misperception, Board certification process does look at student's standardized test data if that data exists for the candidate. Remember, most teachers work with subject areas and grade levels that are not tested; and the certification is available to public and private educators. I submitted test data as part of my NB portfolio and so do most candidates for whom such data is available. I believe this is the best way to use test data in teacher evaluation--by combining it with other measures and setting those in the specific context of the teaching situation. This is in direct contrast to those who tout "value-added measures" alone as an accurate gauge of teacher performance.

I know there are some teacher (and administrator) evaluations that are more effective than the ones I've experienced. North Carolina, for example, has recently changed its teacher evaluation system, based in large part on ideas from NBPTS (love for some of you to share about that here).

Anybody working with an effective teacher evaluation model? Know of one? What about the administrators perspective?

Comments

[David B. Cohen]

I'm so glad you posted this, and glad that you've had the opportunity to speak to this audience on this topic. Charlotte Danielson's model for teacher evaluation is one that has attracted some followers. Her website is here:
http://www.danielsongroup.org/index.htm

The TAP System is also a model that has gained some traction and some schools based on that approach:
http://www.tapsystem.org/

There are others that are linked to different approaches to the teacher career ladder, and some performance pay models. Denver's ProComp system and New Mexico's 3-Tiered Teacher License program each involve some improvements to what some of us call the "drive-by" evaluation.

Accomplished California Teachers will be publishing a teacher-researched and teacher-authored policy brief suggesting improvements to the typical teacher evaluation approach in our state. Stay tuned - hopefully not too much longer.

[TeachMoore]

Thank you, David. I believe you are really a journalist at heart; always a source of great information. Can't wait to see that ACT piece on teacher eval.

[Claus]

Wonderful posting, Renee. A related note: The Broader Bolder group is recommending that school accountability programs include site visits to schools. If done right, the site visits could strengthen common-sense evaluation programs. If done wrong, they could just be more of the same....

[Nancy Flanagan]

Great post, Renee--and thanks for capably representing teachers at the Forum.

I especially appreciate your Myth #2 these days, as we struggle to keep public education afloat in depression-ravaged Michigan, where-- if you read the newspapers-- you'd think that teacher unions were formed for express purpose of destroying public education. I advanced a debunking of your myth #2 in response to a particularly nasty newspaper column about the union's "talons" despoiling communities, blah blah.

The response I got: "We're not Mississippi. We're better than that." Which, in essence, is yet another myth that formerly well-heeled northern states repeat. Sigh.

Thanks for writing this.

[TeachMoore]

Nancy, Being a native Detroiter, I got a special chuckle out of that one. It might shock some of those self-righteous Yankees just how much like Mississippi they really are. Hope my point came across clearly, though: blaming tenure and union contracts for keeping poor teacheers in the classroom is a straw man for the real problems.

[full torrents dl]

A related note: The Broader Bolder group is recommending that school accountability programs include site visits to schools. If done right, the site visits could strengthen common-sense evaluation programs.

[kiralık devremülkler]

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