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| What is a fair way to evaluate the effectiveness of teachers?; DetNews-June 30, 2011 | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Jun 30 2011, 10:38 PM (292 Views) | |
| Administrator | Jun 30 2011, 10:38 PM Post #1 |
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What is a fair way to evaluate the effectiveness of teachers? Ron French/ The Detroit News Dan Quinn has given out a lot of A's and F's to students over the years as an economics teacher at Grosse Pointe North High School. But assigning grades to his fellow teachers is proving to be a challenge. "There is no good teacher evaluation system out there," said Quinn, 35, who is helping Grosse Pointe administrators cobble together what amounts to a teacher report card for the district's educators. "Just using test scores (of students) is no good. And just using classroom observation is no good either." How do you measure the quality of a teacher? It's a question legislatures in Michigan and dozens of other states are wrestling with as momentum builds for teacher accountability. It's highly likely that some form of teacher evaluation reform will pass the Legislature, according to Republican and Democrat leaders at the capitol. But just how those teachers will be graded, and whether those evaluations improve student achievement, is up in the air. "Teachers have no problem being evaluated," Quinn said. "But we're running headlong into a cloud and not knowing what we're doing." American students do poorly on standardized tests compared to those in many other developed countries. In a recent international math and science study, U.S. fourth-graders finished 12th out of 26 countries; seniors placed an abysmal 29th out of 31 countries, beating only Cyprus and South Africa. The Obama administration's Race to the Top program offered $4.3 billion to spur education reform in states, predicated partly on states' willingness to hold teachers accountable for the academic growth of their students. Rep. Tim Melton, D-Auburn Hills, has spearheaded legislative efforts to reform Michigan's teacher evaluation system. He uses an example of a school in his district where MEAP tests revealed 5 percent of the kids were at grade level in math and 11 percent in English. Yet every teacher in the school was rated exemplary. "When you want to be treated like a professional," Melton said, "you have to be evaluated like a professional." In the past two years, 14 states have made evidence of student learning the preponderant criterion for teacher evaluations. Louisiana, Colorado and Florida now base 50 percent of teacher evaluations on student growth. Measurement is tricky How that growth will be quantified won't be as simple as stapling Johnny's Michigan Educational Assessment Program score to his teacher's evaluation form. The MEAP is given once a year, in October, so it would have to be used to measure the performance of the previous year's teacher. Such a system would be unfair to teachers, because students lose a portion of their academic growth over the summer, and that loss varies wildly between socioeconomic groups, says Sandi Jacobs, vice president of National Council on Teacher Quality. "We have treated teachers interchangeably for too long, and it doesn't work," she said. The current incarnation of the state's proposed teacher evaluation calls for a pre-test in fall and a post-test in spring to measure growth. A governor's panel assigned to work out the details of a state evaluation system would determine what those tests would look like. In Olivet Community Schools, a new teacher evaluation protocol calls for students to be given Northwest Evaluation System tests twice a year. "When you're talking about data to evaluate teachers, there's a lot of nuance in that," Olivet Superintendent Dave Campbell said. "We're not producing widgets. Sometimes there are things beyond our control. But there's also the truth that, doggone it, if you teach them really well, you can make progress." As those tests aimed at weeding out bad teachers and some proposals giving merit pay to good teachers are added to the school year, academic time will inevitably decline. "Those tests make more sense in elementary school, where a teacher has the same students for all subjects all day, than in high school," where teachers see students for one hour a day, sometimes for just one semester, said Rep. Steve Lindberg, D-Marquette, a former teacher. "There are some who are life-changers, and some who should not be in the classroom," Lindberg said. "But how do you evaluate that? How do you evaluate a teacher in a school where 30 percent of the students don't have permanent addresses compared to a teacher (in a wealthy district)?" To adjust for that, Jacobs recommends adjusting raw scores (post-test score minus pre-test score equals growth) by using a "value added" system of measurements that uses a complex computer model to try to weed out factors such as socioeconomic status to distill the actual impact of the teacher. New development "There are many variables that play a role in student achievement," Jacobs said. "A teacher who gets a year's progress from students who might not normally get a year's growth may be doing a far superior job than a teacher whose students would achieve a year's growth while barely teaching." The movement to grade teachers on their student's achievement is so new, nobody knows yet whether it will increase student learning. A few small studies have found no impact on student learning. "The idea is appealing, it makes intuitive sense," said Robert Floden, director of the Institute for Research on Teaching and Learning at Michigan State University. "But either it doesn't work or we haven't figured out how make it work yet." In Washington, D.C., a program that rewarded teachers for high student growth and fired teachers for low growth resulted in increased standardized test scores, but also resulted in widespread cheating, according to an analysis by USA Today. A key component of using test scores to grade teachers is the concept of firing teachers who don't measure up. Those teachers will need to be replaced by new teachers, and there needs to be a comparable effort to improve the quality of teacher candidates, said Michael Van Beek, director of education policy at the Mackinac Center. In Finland, touted as having one of the best education systems in the world, nearly 100 percent of teachers come from the top third of students taking international standardized tests; in the United States, only 23 percent of teachers scored in the top third. "If you set the bar higher, you may filter out teachers who don't perform well," Van Beek said. Incremental progress Bob Howe is a former principal who knows that a weak evaluation system and strong tenure laws sometimes handcuffed school administrators. But he worries the "pendulum is swinging too far the other way." "We can talk about the science of teaching, but you also have to talk about the art of teaching," said Howe, now the executive director of the Michigan Elementary and Middle School Principals Association. "What about the teacher who inspires young people? How do you measure that?" Legislators, teachers and parents need to view this as the first step on a long road to reform, Jacobs said. "Is this going to solve our problem? No," she said. "But is it going to help? Yes. If five years from now, if all we've done is identify the truly indefensible teachers and get rid of them, it will help." rfrench@detnews.com (517) 371-3664 Subscribe to Detroit News home delivery and receive a SPECIAL INTRODUCTORY OFFER. From The Detroit News: http://detnews.com/article/20110630/SCHOOLS/106300328/What-is-a-fair-way-to-evaluate-the-effectiveness-of-teachers?#ixzz1Qojp5eFW |
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