This teacher says that, for him, teaching is a “labor of love.”
Can it be measured by standardized tests?
Can his value be reduced to a number, fed into a data storage warehouse and crunched?
The tests measure one aspect of what students have learned.
Only one.
The tests do not measure everything that was taught, or everything that matters.
They are limited instruments, not designed to measure the worth of students or teachers.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“Can it [teaching] be measured by standardized tests? . . .The tests measure one aspect of what students have learned.”
No, the tests don’t even “measure” one aspect of what students learn. These “measurements” are a chimera, a duende, they are “vain and illusory” to quote Wilson.
(See “Promoting Just Education for All” @ reviviningwilson.org to learn more about the illusions that standards and standardized testing really are.)
Again, according to all the major testing agencies and even the for-profit test making companies, using a standardized test score for anything other than what it was meant to test (even though it is a chimerical process to start with, which compounds the problem) is UNETHICAL. Using 5th grade standardized math test results (especially since they are unreliable and invalid) to “assess” the teacher is DEAD WRONG by any “standard” as the test was not designed to assess the teacher’s ability to teach math.
This ain’t rocket science folks! Open your eyes, pull back the wool, look around and understand you are being taken for being chumps by not standing up to this insane process.
Why should we, as teachers, submit ourselves to an UNETHICAL process. I won’t.
Diane, thanks for sharing my thoughts.
As I greet my new students tomorrow, I face a new challenge of gathering evidence of everything I do, to prove my worth as part of a frightful new social experiment that is sweeping across our nation.
“It can not be measured no matter how hard they try.”
That sums it up. Thanks for your post.
The question becomes; if not the test then how do we measure a teacher’s effectiveness? What does an effective classroom look like? Is it something, to paraphrase Justice Stwert, “we’ll know when we see it”?
We know we have ineffective teachers in some of our schools, we know testing the students isn’t the way to evaluate teacher effectiveness. How should we go about evaluating teachers in a “fair and even” way?
What makes you think this is the biggest problem in US education?
What if the tests are no good?
What if we have too many principals who taught for only two or three years or not at all?
What if we have too many non-educators deciding what teachers should do?
Maybe those are bigger problems.
Sean,
“The question becomes; if not the test then how do we measure a teacher’s effectiveness?”
One cannot “measure” teacher effectiveness. It is a logical contradiction to attempt to quantify, i.e., measure a quality, i.e., teacher effectiveness. Can there be, should there be a dialogue between an administrator and teacher concerning the teacher’s philosophy, practices and methods? Yes, but that is a dialogue and not a measurement.
Who the hell declared that we have to “measure” the teaching and learning process? Was that person a god or goddess? It seems so as most everyone is bowing down before the altar of “measurement”. Measurement is a false god/goddess.
Come join me at my blog mentioned above to find out just how absurd this whole measurement movement is.
Duane
One more thought, Duane. I have found that the least effective classrooms are the ones that are the cleanest, neatest, and are constantly quiet. I would observe those classrooms extremely carefully and do some spotchecks. Heavy discipline and total order belong in prisons, not schools. This is not to say that you do not teach your children how to behave in various settings. That is part of your job and if you cannot do it you need another type of class or a good paraprofessional and some professional development.
Classrooms should be about productive busyness and appropriate social interaction. I am always suspicious of a teacher who wears high heels and clothing that has to be dry cleaned, especially below high school level. (Even then, not in Moderate, Autistic or Severe/Profound.) She is inappropriately dressed for her job. How is she going to run after a student who suddenly takes off? We also had two severe disabilities teachers who had to get after a principal, a dapper dresser, who wanted all the male teachers to wear ties. Do you know what can happen if a Severe/Profound or Autism teacher wears a tie??? It’s called choking! (We also need a chain if we wear glasses.) And I don’t mean the student. Principal later got in trouble because he got on our APE for wearing a sweatsuit. Actually wrote her up! Got a firm visit from the Special Education Coordinator as well as a call from PE. Had to apologize in writing. She was itinerant and he did not know her and made a false assumption.
You cannot measure teacher effectiveness objectively because each teacher is different and her interactions with her students, colleagues and administrators are different. Test scores are only one aspect of effectiveness and not a very accurate one because students are all different on different days. Plus they forget what is rammed into their heads that is not related to other things they are doing. For example the least effective way of teaching vocabulary is to have the students write and define a list of unrelated words.
It is true that you know an effective teacher when you see it and you know an effective classroom when you see it. However, even this is clouded by the opinions and backgrounds of the evaluators. I had a principal who complained that my room smelled. Well, she usually came in when I was changing diapers! What do you expect with 5 out of 6 in diapers? This same principal also did not call in the grief counselor when a student died until I asked for her because she “didn’t think my students would even notice he was gone”. By the way, they responded exactly as I expected, crying and sadness and the verbal one tried to change the subject to pizza. These were severely retarded middle school kids by the way. An assistant principal picked up on the warmth and caring of my classroom as well as their involvement in the lesson. (another school) The principal, the next day, who did not like me because I had tried to let him know that his “pet” was a bully, complained about lack of involvement by the students and a supposed deficit of paperwork that the bully, whom he had told me to get along with, had told me we did not have to do.
I have actually found a Teach for America whom I think is family. I think she is an effective teacher because of the way she talked about the life lessons she learned from her autistic students and her parents last year when she preached at church. She also had bothered to do some research because some of the behavioral techniques she used are advanced special ed. and cannot be used without getting hurt unless you really know what you are doing. Then you still might get hurt. This also seems to be confirmed by the fact that she has completed her 2nd year and is voluntarily into a 3rd, is working on a Masters in Education (great sign) and intends to remain in education. She could also have switched to a better school system but has not. She knows that to be a teacher she needs that degree and she is getting it in special ed! That is a sign of an effective teacher. She seeks further education, whether through degrees, national certification, or professional development.
To conclude, there is no one way to evaluate teacher effectiveness, but you know it when you see an effective teacher. And effectiveness is going to look a lot different in high school, middle and elementary school as well as in the various types of special education, which should only be evaluated by special educators trained in the same area, by the way.
I believe it was Thomas Sowell (spellling) who responded to the “what’s the alternative?” question with…”when a house is on fire, and you put it out, what do you replace the fire with?” or something like that. We don’t have to replace bad stuff with anything…get rid of it and then figure out what the good stuff is. Luckily, as teachers, we already know what a lot of the good stuff is. Most of it doesn’t have much to do with “meter sticks”
Sean, most administrators know if they have ineffective teachers, and they know who these teachers are. I’ve been fortunate enough to work for a few who aren’t afraid to fire these teachers. Most don’t, however, because the ineffective teacher is a coach, near retirement, a friend, or the admin just plain lazy, or some other reason I don’t get……. The process is in place. I’ve seen teachers fired and out of the building within 2 days. We just need admins who have the guts to either fire these people, or the skills to give them the help and support they need to improve.
Sometimes what happens, though, is that ineffective teacher gets promoted in order to get her out of the classroom. And they often get sent as principal to the worst schools with the lowest functioning students. We had one in Atlanta who was put out of special education because she was “not smart enough” and sent to regular. She quickly rose into administration and was on her way to becoming a principal. The woman spoke Ebonics (once used the word “conduced” describing what she did to make a half-day workshop fit into an hour ) and did not write any better but she was extremely attractive and dressed in ways that men like. Plus she was single and had the appropriate professional connections.
A strict philosophical behaviorist might say yes because if a student responds to a stimulus in a prescribed way, as he or she has been taught, then he can be said to have learned. However, Skinnerian and its predecessor, Pavlovian behaviorism does not address that which is the humanity of the child. If test scores measured the quality of the teacher then every student could be put through a behavioral program for all basic subjects that did not involve original or creative thinking and it could measure the students’ achievement precisely and therefore the quality of the teacher. But we all know, at least real educators do, that education is so much more than reading vocabulary, putting the periods where they belong, working math problems and reciting the periodic table and the species and genus of various animals.
In special ed. we often teach behaviorally, “this is the correct response to that stimulus” but those of us who know what we are doing go well beyond that just like regulars do. If all we do is train behaviors, i.e. standardized testing, we have done only half our job. Thus, test scores cannot measure the quality of a teacher in a full sense, only her ability to modify behavior. A computer can do that. But what has the student actually learned with behavior modification. Certainly not to be an educated, functional individual who makes decisions by thinking through, applying known concepts and their relationships to other things he knows and his or her own value system. That takes guidance from a teacher.