A reader asks a question, and I ask the teachers who follow this blog to answer him.
I suggest he read the earlier posts on the subject, but please feel free to give him your answer based on your experience:
| What if metrics could be established apart from testing? Does anyone have ideas as to how metrics could be gleaned apart from testing? Seems to me the state (and its funding) want to frame teacher improvement within their own understandings of measurement.
If you could somehow assess another teaching aspect on a consistent basis, do you think that would help remove the otherwise normally applied incentive to good, hard work (salary or bonus compensation)? I don’t mean to be rude, just curious as to your perspectives. |
Diane Ravitch's blog 
If you compare the US educational system to those “higher achieving” systems we strive to measure ourselves against, you will notice that teacher professional development and lesson evaluation are highly stressed. In our country, professional development as treated as a throw-away item. Teachers should be encouraged to seek out opportunities to hone their craft, share new ideas with colleagues, and be evaluated in part on their professional development. Right now, there is no incentive to seek out opportunities to grow. Personally, I have been involved this summer with both the Advanced Placement Statistics reading, and a week-long Siemens STEM Institute in Washington. I will bring new ideas and approaches to my colleagues, and will impact classroom instruction directly. Yet, neither of these opportunities will be noted as part of my evaluation. Test scores rule.
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“teacher professional development”
Ha Ha, good joke!!!
Since the late 90’s, In the two districts I’ve been in for the last 18 years our professional development has mainly been in the form of “Professional Learning Communities” in which they have tried to indoctrinate us into using “Data Driven Decision Making to Improve Instruction”. In other words how to set up class and activities that “coincide” with the end of the year course exams.
Good thing I’m in my own subject area that is not tested so I go and actually do things like grade tests/quizzes etc. . . on the district’s time and not my time-Ha Ha!
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Somewhere earlier in this blog was a description of a method of manipulating a crowd to a predetermined conclusion by breaking them into small groups and making them believe they were reaching those conclusions themselves. What was that called again? I remember reading about that and thinking “holy —-! That is the format of every PD I have attended in the past ten years!”
What was that method called again?
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The Delphi Technique – that’s what it’s called.
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W. Edwards Deming made the observation that incentives and merit-based systems implemented within a business are counter-productive to the business itself, the product or service offered, and ultimately to the client or customer. He believed his teachings to be applicable to the field of education as well. Not everyone likes the idea of “applying business models” to education, but I think a lot of states have been trying to apply the wrong ones. Here’s an overview of Deming’s observations from the Deming Institute website: http://deming.org/index.cfm?content=66.
Perhaps not everyone of his ideas may transfer easily to education, and if a state or district were to adopt his suggestions in toto, it would probably be the biggest transformation that state or district ever undertook.
The difficulty is in the idea of assessing on a consistent basis. Each teacher is different, and develops differently, and each student is different as well–and no teacher controls the students he or she is assigned every year. Based on his observations and experience, Deming advocates sound leadership in place of merit-based systems as being much more effective. Training people to be good leaders is a much more challenging proposition than looking at snapshots of data and calculating merit based on mathematical formulas, but there is convincing evidence from Deming and other sources that it works better than incentives.
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I changed careers to become a teacher, teaching now for six years. My friend (ex Navy career-changer) are disgusted daily by the lack of professionalism in this field.
We were both pretty lucky for our first few years; we had a wonderful principal with a vision. However, with a change in administration, we have seen some of the worst “leadership” possible.
I WOULD PAY $100 A MONTH to simply be left alone to teach. I couldn’t be more serious. NOT ONLY can these incompetent fools keep their MERIT PAY, I would PAY THEM TO LEAVE ME ALONE, so I can teach my kids!!
I JUST WANT TO TEACH!! SUPPORT ME AND LET ME TEACH!! I DON’T WANT TO BE IN NUMEROUS MEETINGS that you call “COLLABORATION” WHEN I HAVE 150 STUDENTS. I DON’T WANT TO BE IN STUPID MEETINGS about endless data when I have THREE HUNDRED ESSAYS TO EVALUATE!
How dare THEY call FORCED MEETINGS COLLABORATION. Wow, only in teaching, do they FORCE collaboration!
Most teachers may be passive, but I have found them to be passive-aggressive. People don’t LIKE to be meddled with, and they find their ways to REBEL.
Do these administrators really think teachers are spending 40 HOURS a week SCRIPTING out their lessons like they are ROBOTS? It’s called copy and paste! And, the poor pitiful teachers that script out every move out of fear, they FIND WAYS TO do this during teaching time, meaning worksheets! And, I don’t blame them! we deserve a life too. We need to regenerate, so we can come back refreshed and alive for our kids!
Oh, I could go on and on… I stay for the kids, but I don’t know how much longer I can take it. What a shame! I am really good at my job!!
PS.. I am the same one who did not have time to proofread… 🙂 Still don’t… forgive… I’m a teacher, and my time is precious; yet, it is also so disrespected. It’s a snowball effect… Still trying to catch up and it’s summer time!!! Aaaargh!!!!
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…my friend and I are disgusted….
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Personally, I do not require any outside evaluation – I am far tougher on myself than anyone has ever been. Additionally, it is beyond insulting to have an “administrator” trying to “evaluate” me and my professional activities, when that so-called administrator has fewer years in the classroom, and is far younger than I. Not to mention not as highly educated and credentialed as I. I no longer sign those idiotic “evaluation” forms – to sign is to tacitly agree to the contents of the document, and I do not – the entire idea and process of “evaluation” is ethically, morally, and intellectually bankrupt.
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” I no longer sign those idiotic “evaluation” forms ”
So far my district has had an evaluation process that I considered okay, even though, as you point out, having someone with hardly any teaching experience and many years my younger attempting to do so was a joke. I make it a point to discuss many things informally with my supervising principals so that they know what I actually do in class. I try to outline in detail way before the formal evaluation process what I am doing with each chapter and what the year is like and the pedagogical reasoning behind what I’m doing. Since Spanish is a subject area that most have no clue about my evaluations are usually fine (until I piss off the admin by questioning and challenging the idiocies they try to pawn off on us-ha ha), although my current supervising principal believes that no one should be marked exceeding expectations in all areas on principle alone-not that I strive for that anyway. My focus is on the teaching and learning process.
But “the times, they are a’changin” (Robert Allen Zimmerman)and it looks like next year there will be instituted some kind of VAM process (it’s part of the RATT waiver for the state and they are “piloting” it in select schools-poor suckers-this year). If they attempt to use VAM as part of my evaluation, I will not cooperate both by not doing pre and post testing and then I will be forced to not sign the evaluations either. Hopefully, my supervising principal will just quietly put the evaluation without my signature in my file and not get bent out of shape. Trying to just make it to retirement at that point.
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–Talk to the kids; they know.
–Walk down the hallways; you can “FEEL” good teaching. You don’t even have to
come into the room. All of us that work in schools, all of the students in our schools,
know who the FEW teachers in need of serious development are…
–Administrators need to get out of their offices. Stop spending hours documenting
dress code violations, documenting student not wearing belts! Get INTO the
classrooms. Teach some lessons!
–Evaluate students (we have our degrees) on PRODUCT not worksheets.
–Evaluate students through portfolios, through their CREATIONS, not their ability to bubble. Students will continue to suffer, and the testing and textbook gurus will become wealthier if we keep blaming teachers. Teachers are a SCAPEGOAT. I’ve seen it, and it sickens me.
My country, this country, sent men to the MOON without weeks of testing torture, without daily torture of teachers. How did we do it? How did we become a world leader, a superpower without weeks of testing and benchmarking? How did we ever make it without multiple choice tests?
Let’s put the “training” focus back on the kids: Teachers have degrees. Teachers actually enjoy productive professional development that is NOT held on Saturdays by bully administrators (I DON’T go when I am being bullied).
I recommend a moratorium, an executive ORDER, on TESTING and a moratorium on teacher evaluations. Those of you who think all is the fault of the teacher, you have been BAMBOOZLED. Ask yourself, who MAKES THE MONEY by blaming the passive teacher? Follow the money folks, and you will find the answer.
Let’s put our money towards paying independent evaluators to peruse student portfolios. This will immediately stop all the teaching to a test. Out of fear, many teachers are teaching to a test. I have heard countless teachers say they DON’T teach writing because they are tested in READING. What the heck? How can leave out writing. Reading is invisible. Unless a kid writes or speaks, the OUTPUT, how do you know they GET it!? You don’t! And you never will with a multiple choice TEST!!! It’s about CREATION America! When you do, you remember. When you create, you use imagination. When you use imagination, you are thinking. There is no thinking or creating going on with a multiple choice TEST and being all consumed with a teacher’s evaluation!
It’s a double edged sword–teacher performance is being based on kids’ test scores. How dare you place a test score on my teaching for some of my students who only come to school ONCE a week! How DARE the SYSTEM do that!
If teachers were FREE to teach on the foundation of a LITERATE society (it’s all about the reading and the writing folks!), you would kick yourselves for being so worried about all the “HORRIBLE” teachers who come into this field to hurt children and take abuse and have to listen to the rants of administrators who ran out of the classroom at the first opportunity.
Leave us alone! Evaluate administrators on their leadership, on their ability to retain teachers, on their ability to coach, on their ability keep their teachers happy. Hello? If teachers are happy, then the kids will get the best of us. Help administrators who are afraid of the “hard” conversations. They are so weak; we get mass emails over the silliest things because they don’t want to confront the “few” below mediocre teachers.
I don’t have time to proofread, but I have never been more disgusted in my life, and I don’t have TIME…school is about to start… But, all of you who are NOT teachers…all of you who are teachers that have been lucky enough (I was for three years) to have a good administrator…all of you who have never taught, just give it a try before you delude yourself into thinking you have a clue.
Oh, and by the way. Just because YOUR KID CAN PASS a multiple choice test, JUST BECAUSE YOUR school district has “TOP” performing schools, your kids and your district and your school are simply MEDIOCRE.
It’s called dumbing down the curriculum!! The curriculum is too shallow! Instead of depth, our kids will not be the orcas of the ocean, will not be the sharks…we are a becoming a nation of guppies, hanging out in the shallow end.
ALL OF YOUR KIDS ARE BEING UNDER-SERVED, regardless of economic level. I know several brave teachers that SHUT THEIR doors and SIT on all the curriculum BS, teachers who draft bogus lesson plans and continue to sketch out their lessons, differentiating instruction instead of following a SCRIPT, but you can’t blame those wonderful, amazing teachers who are afraid. They want to make sure their kids can pass that TEST or their EVALUATION will be TRASHED.
Woo hoo, your community has a 100% pass RATE on a multiple choice test (I’m so angry, I am laughing out loud, scaring my poodle)!!!!
I am afraid for my country, a country that sent men to the moon with NO standardized testing!!!
SHAME on all of you who have fallen for the HYPE.
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