Teacher Performance Evaluations
Teachers have a strong effect on student achievement
Researchers agree that teachers and teacher quality is one of the most, if not the most, powerful way to create better schools. According to a 2009 report from The New Teacher Project, "A student assigned to a very good teacher for a single school year may gain up to a full year's worth of additional academic growth compared to a student assigned to a very poor teacher." Having a series of good teachers can therefore multiply the impact. The report further asserts, "Give high-need students three highly effective teachers in a row and they may outperform students taught by three ineffective teachers in a row by as much as 50 percentile points" (Weisberg, Sexton, Mulhern, & Keeling, 2009).
Teacher evaluations are of uneven quality
Research is showing that in the majority of schools, if teachers receive a poor performance rating, not much action is taken. Specifically, in many urban districts only a handful of teachers are terminated due to poor performance. A 2007 study conducted by Research for Action for the Philadelphia School District found that over the previous three years, on average, only four teachers out of 10,000 were terminated due to poor performance (Useem, Offenberg, & Farley, 2007). Davis Guggenheim highlights in his controversial 2010 film, Waiting for Superman, that over the course of their careers, approximately one in 57 doctors in Illinois lose their licenses to practice medicine, one in 97 lawyers lose their rights to practice law, but only 1 in 2,500 teachers loses his or her right to teach. Yet 43 percent of teachers across districts believe there is a tenured teacher in their school that should be dismissed for poor performance (Weisberg et al., 2009). Granted, Diane Ravitch, research professor of education at New York University and author of The Death and Life of the Great American School System, notes in her critique of Guggenheim's film that many low-performing teachers are "counseled out" of their jobs and nearly half leave the profession within five years (Ravitch, 2010).
Evaluations typically offer little guidance for improving teacher performance
Connect student growth to teacher effectiveness through formative assessments throughout the school year Ensure high-quality evaluators, such as peer reviewers or unplanned leader observations Communicate research on teacher evaluations that support student achievement
Commenting on Colorado’s evaluation system, Kim Ursetta, president of the Denver Classroom Teachers Association noted that principals often wait until the end of the school year before hurriedly filling out evaluations of teachers. She said that “the evaluation is meant to be used as a tool for improving instruction and instead we use it as a final exam” (Mitchell, 2009). In addition to being rushed, most teacher evaluations are based on two or fewer classroom observations totaling 76 minutes or less. When they do conduct teacher evaluations earlier in the year, it seems school leaders spend the same amount of time on all teachers, whether they are low-performing, high-performing, or tenured. Teachers receiving low ratings report the same number of observations and the same amount of feedback as their more highly rated colleagues (Weisberg et al., 2009). Sixty-four percent of tenured teachers said they were observed only once or twice for an average total of 75 minutes in an entire school year (Weisberg et al., 2009).
Teacher evaluations are often inaccurate
Nancy Mitchell of Education News Colorado writes, "Nearly 100 percent of teachers in Colorado's largest school districts received satisfactory ratings in each of the past three years, an indication the state's system to improve classroom instruction is broken." Equally important is the inaccuracy of evaluations. One national study by Mathematica Policy Research, conducted for the U.S. Department of Education, found that in one year's worth of data, a teacher was likely to be misclassified 35 percent of the time. With three years of data, the error rate was 25 percent. With 10 years of data, the error rate dropped to 12 percent (Schochet & Chiang, 2010).
States are beginning to play a larger role in teacher evaluations
Currently, roughly 16,000 school districts and 5,000 independent public charter schools in the United States design and implement their own teacher evaluations (Brown Center on Education Policy, 2011). However, that type of local autonomy is decreasing, as states play a larger role in ensuring the quality and effectiveness of teachers.
Trend toward teacher evaluations based on student performance raises concerns
Basing teacher evaluations on student test scores raises several issues. First, students' successes and failures are often forces outside of teacher control, such as parental support, student effort, or social problems (Varkas et al., 2003). Another serious concern is accuracy of student data and whether or not teachers are being tied to their own students (Otterman, 2010). Most likely, the Atlanta (Ga.) Public Schools cheating scandal—in which 178 teachers and principals changed individual students' test answers to inflate school scores—was in response to teacher accountability pressure (Jonsson, 2011). Also, the work of some school staff, such as the art teacher, physical education teacher, or a guidance counselor cannot be measured on student performance as there are often no standardized exams in those areas.
References
Brown Center on Education Policy at Brookings. (2011, April 26). Passing muster: Evaluating teacher evaluation systems. Retrieved from http://www.brookings.edu/reports/2011/0426_evaluating_teachers.aspx
Goe, L., Holdheide, L., & Miller, T. (2011, May). A practical guide to designing comprehensive teacher evaluation systems. Retrieved from http://www.tqsource.org/publications/practicalGuideEvalSystems.pdf
Guggenheim, D. (Director). (2010). Waiting for superman. [Motion picture]. United States: Paramount.
Jonsson, P. (2011, July 5). America's biggest teacher and principal cheating scandal unfolds in Atlanta. Christian Science Monitor. Retrieved from http://www.csmonitor.com/content/search?SearchText=America%E2%80%99s+biggest+teacher+and+principal+cheating+scandal+unfolds+in
Medina, J. (2008). Brain rules: 12 principles for surviving and thriving at work, home, and school. Seattle: Pear Press. Mitchell, N. (2009, July 21). Numbers show teacher evaluation system broken. Education News Colorado. Retrieved from http://archives.ednewscolorado.org/resources/1/evaluation%20story.pdf
The New Teacher Project. (2010, October). Teacher evaluation 2.0. Retrieved from http://tntp.org/publications/issue-analysis/teacher-evaluation-2.0/
Otterman, S. (2010, December 26). Hurdles emerge in rising effort to rate teachers. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/27/nyregion/27teachers.html
Ravitch, D. (2010, November 11). The myth of charter schools. The New York Review of Books, 57 (17). Retrieved from http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/nov/11/myth-charter-schools/
Schochet, P.Z., & Chiang, H.S. (2010). Error rates in measuring teacher and school performance based on student test score gains (NCEE 2010-4004). Washington, DC: National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education.
TeachPlus. Teachers' views on measuring effectiveness: Principles for implementation of state and district reforms. Retrieved from http://www.teachplus.org/uploads/Documents/1294359253_Aspen%20NLNS%20brief.pdf
Useem, E., Offenberg, R., & Farley, E. (2007). Closing the teacher quality gap in Philadelphia: New hope and old hurdles. Philadelphia, PA: Research for Action.
Varkas, S., Johnson, J., & Duffet, A. (2003). Stand by me: What teachers really think about unions, merit pay and other professional matters. Retrieved from http://www.publicagenda.org/files/pdf/stand_by_me.pdf
Weisberg, D., Sexton, S., Mulhern, J., & Keeling, D. (2009). The widget effect: Our national failure to acknowledge and act on differences in teacher effectiveness. New York: The New Teacher Project.