A reader in Maryland wrote to second the nomination of Joshua Starr as an outstanding superintendent who supports students, teachers, principals, and schools and resists harmful federal policy.
One of the outstanding features of the Montgomery County schools is the PAR approach to teacher evaluation. It is about 1,000 times better than VAM or VAA or any of the other test-based methods now dominating federal and state methods.
It’s an honor to serve under Josh Starr in Montgomery County, MD. He is a very approachable Superintendent (day one: call me Josh). He travels extensively to all the schools in the county, which is quite a feat. He knows the dangers of too much testing. He tweets regularly (MCPS and MCPSSUPER).
And yes, our PAR system is good. It’s detailed here:
http://www.mceanea.org/pdf/PAR2012-13MCEAGuide.pdf
One of the things I like most about PAR is this. If a teacher is found to be not teaching at an acceptable level, they aren’t just tossed under the bus. As we all know on this blog, there can be a multitude of reasons why someone is not teaching well, or maybe not as well as they used to. That teacher, once identified, gets help from a Consulting Teacher, who is a long time teacher of that subject. The two teachers work together for a year on helping the teacher become better, in whatever area(s) they need help in. At the end of the year, the PAR panel decides if the teacher has improved and can stay, or if the teacher should then be let go.
Bringing on new teachers is an expensive process and a big investment for the local community. Canning them after some bad test scores, without first trying to help that teacher correct any deficiencies, is a waste of taxpayer money. PAR helps preserve that investment.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Question: is the eval system based partly on test scores? Do the scores have to improve as well? And if not how did the district evade the draconian RTTT requirements?
Test scores are NOT factored in. Starr does not believe in that. If you do a search on Michael Winerip’s articles, read the one about Montgomery County. This is a collaborative method as well.
Leonie, In order to save the Montgomery County teacher evaluation system, the district had to forfeit $12 million in RTTT funds. Duncan told the former Supt. “You’re going where the country needs to go.” Yet the Montgomery Co. approach, which was collectively bargained and initiated by the teachers union, is exactly the opposite of where Duncan and federal policies have led the country.
I wrote a fairly detailed description of the PGS/PARsystem for Rethinking Schools here: http://www.rethinkingschools.org/archive/26_04/26_04_karp.shtml
The district had to forfeit $12 million in RTTT funds to preserve the Montgomery teacher evaluation system, which was initiated by the union and collectively bargained. Duncan once told the previous superintendent “You’re going where the country needs to go.” Yet the Montgomery Co. approach is exactly the opposite of where Duncan and federal policies have led the country. I wrote a fairly detailed description of how the PGS/PAR system works for Rethinking Schools here: http://www.rethinkingschools.org/archive/26_04/26_04_karp.shtml
And by forfeiting RttT money MoCo probably saved twice the amount they would have received. In that case, everyone won. That would include the students, parents, teachers, administrators, business owners and of course the taxpayers who fund the system.
Anyone who “won” Race to Top spent far more than they received
Diane
The district has a budget of $2.2 billion, so the $12 million forfeited did not have a large financial impact.
These budget sounds enormous, yet they are a drop in the bucket. So either teachers are laid off or programs like the Arts are eliminated. But companies like Pearson are making out pretty well given the number of tests students must take year year. NYC has a much larger budget, and Bloomberg still wants RTTT funding. We have yet to agree on an eval method to qualify. But look at the contracts awarded to people like Murdoch and Alvarez and Marshall. And the CityTime scandal contract that costs the city hundreds of millions of dollars. Education is now big business and these contracts are very expensive. Even hiring someone like Danielson to tell teachers how to teach (when she never taught) based on some nebulous rubric that doesn’t translate well to all topics. RTTT forces districts to pay these contractors. RTTT doesn’t say find a better way to evaluate teachers, it says evaluate teachers using these tests.
It is a lot of money. My state spends 5.5 billion dollars to educate 450,000 students in 512 school districts. Increasing my state’s expenditure per student to the level of Montgomery County schools would require a 20% increase in funding.
There is a good argument that funding in my state should be higher than Montgomery County, of course, because of the lower average income (average income in Montgomery County was over $92,000 in 2008 and my states average income is just under $50,000) and much lower adult education levels in my state (a higher percentage of the population of Montgomery country hold post graduate degrees than have graduated from college in my state.)
I take it that the cost of living is also higher in Montgomery than your state? The average salary you quoted is the population or teacher salary???
Median household income for both.
The cost of living is indeed higher. Montgomary county is one of the richest highest educated counties in the country. It would be difficult to replicate the infrastructure of a 140,000 student district in a state where most of the school districts have fewer than 1,000 students.
I think PAR would work well in any district if run properly.
I am certainly in favor of peer evaluation and mentoring, but when I suggested it in an earlier post, there was strong opposition. One frequent poster argued that any peer evaluation would destroy the community of the school and only administrators had the training to do proper evaluation of teaching.
Dear Diane,
This program was started under then superintendent Dr. Weast. Weast said he would not take the money because the grant required districts to include students’ state test results as a measure of teacher quality. “We don’t believe the tests are reliable,” he said. “You don’t want to turn your system into a test factory.”
Teachers still have their contractual rights. This is a collaborative process. The principal is not the deciding factor on a teacher’s dismissal. A committee decides that at a hearing where both sides present their case. In many cases, these committee give the teachers a chance through the PAR rather than tossing them out the door. Over 200 teachers were fired under this process. A process that both teachers and administrators agreed upon.
I sincerely hope in future interviews when asked about the best way to evaluate teachers, you will bring this model up as a fair and balanced method. A method that should be used in all states rather than VAM. Obama should be embracing this method. Unfortunately, Pearson is a powerful lobby and will soon be the only decider on a teacher’s career. They now have control over certification in many states, and this is so wrong. I also hope this process will be highlighted in your new book.
Thank you for printing this teacher’s comment and highlighting this program. I don’t think many people across the country, including teachers and parents, know there is an alternative to evaluating teachers that is not only fair and balanced, but works to the student’s advantage. You can see that with Leonie’s comment. And I consider her someone who is very informed on these matters. I hope she also prints something about this method in “Class Size Matters” and the PAA Newsletter. Montgomery County stood up against the $$$$ and pressures of RTTT to keep this method.
Your blog has to be the most important page out there in terms of content and reach. And the media and pundits do read you!! CNN still has egg on it’s face thanks to you pointing out the absurdity of their facts. And they proved that by editing out that portion of the interview. After all, they cannot make Michelle Rhee look bad.
Thank you again for your courage.
So why isn’t Jerry Weast the US Secretary of Education?
http://www.nist.gov/baldrige/mcps_weast.cfm
On June 30, 2011 school administrators, PTA officials, and board President Christopher S. Barclay gathered in Rockville at a ceremony (see the video on RockvillePatch.com) to recognize Jerry D. Weast’s last day as superintendent of the Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS), a 2010 Malcolm Baldrige Award recipient (profile in PDF). During the ceremony the Baldrige Award crystal was unveiled, noting a crowning achievement to Weast’s 12 years at the helm of the county school system. MCPS is the largest school district in the state of Maryland and the 16th-largest school district in the nation. Located in suburban Washington, D.C., MCPS serves an extremely diverse community, with its more than 144,000 students coming from 164 countries and speaking 184 languages. Weast launched the use of the Baldrige Education Criteria for MCPS shortly after taking the reins as superintendent in August 1999. At the event, Weast spoke about the school system’s journey towards performance excellence.
The problem in schools isn’t with teachers anyway; what real problem there is involves the unaccountable administrators beginning with the principal level.
We have PAR in Providence, Rhode Island. The teachers will be evaluated like any other, but are supposedly entitled to some support. I think this program is a way to get teachers to do the work for admin by recommending termination for teachers. When the teacher complains that they are getting fired, the person blamed with be a fellow teacher. This is not professional control over the teaching profession, it is a dirty tactic abetted by the AFT.
I have yet to see the AFT even bring up PAR. Weingarten has instead supported VAM. She did in NYC and was part of the deal with Cuomo that is even worse since VAM can get a teacher fired even though it counts for 40% of the evaluation.
Teachers know who the ineffective teachers are. And they know who the struggling teachers with potential are. There will always be elements of any evaluation system that are not perfect. But an ineffective teacher who just teaches to the test will secure their job over teachers who are good, but a percentage of a point off with VAM can result in being fired. This will effect teachers of the gifted as well as teachers with special needs and ELL students. A gifted class will not show an increase in VAM. Hence, the teacher score will be low. Is this any better??? Also outside principals are part of the Montgomery County system, and they always don’t agree with the school principal.
Whatever is wrong with your system, get teachers together to fix it. But what alternative would you suggest??