Jay Mathews has been a strong supporter of using test scores for teacher evaluation.
No longer.
He describes his change of view here.
Jay writes:
“I used to think student test score gains were a good way to rate teachers. I don’t think that any more. Grading individual teachers with scores is too approximate, too erratic and too destructive of the team spirit that makes great schools. Rating schools, rather than teachers, by test score gains is better, at least until we find a way to measure deeper indicators of learning.”
And more.
“We would be better off rating teachers the old-fashioned way. Let principals do it in the normal course of watching and working with their staff.”
But here is where I disagree with him, when he would make every principal an autocrat:
“But be much more careful than we have been in the past about who gets to be principal, and provide much more training. Give them the power to hire, compensate and fire staff members as they see fit. If student achievement lags, the principals should be in the hot seat. Give them warnings. Give them help. But if the school doesn’t improve, remove them.”
What is the evidence that schools soar when teachers have no right to a hearing? I don’t know of any.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
In my experience, I have found principals to be effective leaders. Often they are paranoid about keeping their jobs or wielding “power” over people who are equally or more educated and dedicated to the whole child. If the power dynamic were removed and teachers weren’t under “threat” of bad evaluations for not being beholden to them. In many situatuons, the principal creates so much stress that it is evident to students and parents. I have found that schools where the principal views the endeavor as OUR schiol rather than MY school have a better grasp of the dynamic of successful educational aspirations. There are plenty of stresses for everyone without adding to the problems. A goal of less stress would go a long way towards creating a better learning environment. Yet, we continue to scramble to jump through hoops that aren’t of proven value, that create unhealthy stressful situations, that treat children and teachers as robotic, emotionless cogs in the “business of education”. When will we wake up? I hooe it isn’t too late.
This is one of the most “spot-on” comments I’ve ever read. Thanks!
As a teacher who’s been primarily part-time – I’ve been in many situations where I travel to 4 different schools in the space of a week – I’ve seen a LOT of principals, and very VERY few of them have been strong and effective leaders, unless you count the ones who led by fear but (or because?) they were hampered by incompetence. I can probably count on one hand the number of truly good principals under whom I’ve worked, and the total is probably up to 20 (I’ve literally lost count). The good news is that the longer I stay in teaching, the fewer truly ineffective and downright bad principals I’ve encountered; most have retired or been removed (and in one case passed away over a summer before she could wreak havoc a second year).
I’d much rather see setups like PAR in place; had it been in effect while I was working in my second-last situation before I left for maternity leave, I might still be in that situation instead of a revolving door of music teachers, one of whom (my successor) left after only one year and another who left mid-year without warning. I’m sorry, but after those experiences, I do NOT want to rely on just the principal for my evaluation any more, even though my most recent principals have been much much better leaders IMO.
You don’t understand, pressure is good! Stress is good! Insecurity is good! It makes us work harder – can’t you see that?
After all, when Michelle Rhee was in charge of DCPS, she told us, “Pressure is good.” It was a bit like two decades ago, when Gordon Gekko declared, ‘Greed is good.’
The latter statement didn’t first come from Michael Douglas playing a fictional character, it was originally said by Ivan Boesky addressing students at the Columbia Business school. There was a presumption behind the statement, that greed was so good that it deserved to go unregulated. And so, too, testing.
All and all, we should link greed and pressure. Each is only one of many neo-liberal tendencies that continue to shape reform efforts in the education field. And they have a synergetic relationship – he concepts have in common dual presumption: for-profit enterpises show up how tenure hurts productivity and workers should be exposed to pressure in order to increase productivity.
Michelle Rhee’s ‘pressure is good’ statement is emblematic The full quote is, “People feel a little stressed out. They feel a lot of pressure. But that’s good. Pressure is good.” It assumes that educators are not under enormous pressure already, that more pressure will increase their efficacy. This is an argument transplanted from the for-profit/business world, where it was accepted that the efficient use of resources was among the most highly leveraged concepts.
(For Rhee quotes, see Leadership: A Challenging Course, Episode 8, PBS, Original airdate January 13, 2009, accessed at http://www.challengingcourse.org/dc/segment8.html#transcript)
In my 17 years as an educator I have had only one principal that was an effective leader. I am not sure where you have taught but my experience varies from Colorado, Washington State and California. A good administrator inspires teachers not to be confused with conspiring against teachers. This one administrator that I thought was successful made me feel like the professional that I am. All the others made me feel like one of the students to be watched and punished accordingly. Very few schools provide appropriate evaluations of the administration. I am a proponent of peer evaluations along side self evaluations. Many administrators barely remember what it was like to be in a classroom so how can they evaluate? I do agree with you on the collective thought of school and less stress. There needs to be more training not only for teachers but administration. I am sick of the vendicitive, immature, back stabbing, macho ways of so many administrators. What happen to remediating teachers instead of compiling a file against them? What happened to approaching learning as a team..modeling to the students exactly how we want them to behave and act? Yes, we need to wake the hell up.. I am leaving this profession as soon as I finish my degree. From something I just read recently, I am not leaving the teaching profession, it has left me a long time ago..
‘Give them (principals) the power to hire, compensate and fire staff members as they see fit”. This principal says….bad idea. As is doing the same for principals. That is still putting evaluation by tests scores in a primary place. It will also make schools more political than they already are and create more “Atlantas”.
The better answer is to put in place systems of supervision and evaluation like PAR. This obsession that we can ‘fear and fire’ our way to excellence, is nonsense.
nice to see Jay Mathews change his mind– and Bill Gates last week with whatever that Op-Ed meant . . . but there is a long way to go. For every Bill Gates or Jay Matthews column indicating a change of whim there are legions of bad ALEC-inspired bills being
passed all over the country, usually involving more standardization, more escape hatches for middle class families, more testing, less investing and of course, less professionalization of teaching.
Change starts at the top. There are good and bad principals, just like every other position. Stop patronage jobs and cronyism. Hire the best qualified regardless of who they know or what they are owed. Principals are the most important component of a school. They set the tone, the goals for the school with the help of the entire staff. Districts have a good evaluation procedure in place if the principal uses it responsibly. Don’t rubber stamp evaluations because the teachers have been there for a long time. Use the evaluation as a tool to educate, set goals, and improve. If the teacher doesn’t, then they should consider leaving or lose a step or raise.
I would say change can be facilitated and enabled from the top, but giving a principal too much power is a dangerous thing.
Jay obviously has a sensitive antennae: having been a major tout for Michelle Rhee and KIPP early on, he now seems to be hedging his bets as opposition to the testing regime gains strength.
What Winston Churchill reportedly said about the Germans -“They’re either at your feet or at your throat” – is doubly true for the media.
Whatever it might say about him, it’s good for the rest of us.
Principals? What a farce. Take a garden variety teacher, have an “educator” at a university confer the title of administrator, after having completed the courses that are replete with CYA of course, and then they can play the role of educational leader, and rule over their subservient staff. It’s a corrupt system and needs to be revamped to give 20 plus year teachers the helm on a rotating basis, to void the kind of adversarial relationship that exists today. Remove the tile of administrator, and replace it with support position. Do not pay them anymore than the highest paid teacher, and eliminate all the fuedal-like districts, each with their own potentate and courtiers. Why do think Afghanistan is ungovernable? Read my book “New Money for Old Rope,” and uncover the corruption and unsustainable fiscal nightmare for the public, brought about by self serving administrators who are obfuscating reality, and imposing an atmosphere of fear and intimidation upon the teaching staff.
Ian Kay
In the UK, they refer to the principal as “head teacher.” What a wonderful way of looking at it. It would also keep non-teachers out of principal’s chairs (yes, I once taught for a principal who never was a teacher! This was a public school in the state of FL. The guy was in it for the money.)
Right on, Ian!
“Rating schools, rather than teachers, by test score gains is better, at least until we find a way to measure deeper indicators of learning.”
He still doesn’t get it and shouldn’t be trusted further than he can be thrown. There is no reason to “rate” schools at all, since rating is inherently competitive, yet schools don’t all start from the same point. All a school “rating” shows is the socioeconomic status of the parents of the students in the school.
He sounds like he is rethinking his ideas. He is not yet there; he appears to be shifting his micromanagement, autocratic directives up the ladder to principals. Any principal that wields power in the manner suggested is not going to be able to mold a cohesive, effective staff. I would like to see his criteria for an effective principal and the training he thinks they need. How does a principal promote the creativity and vitality Matthews proposes when his/her job depends on test scores? Don’t we need vital, creative principals, too?
2old2tch: while there are some other excellent comments on this posting, from my POV you went right to the heart of the matter. I always read your responses. You keep ‘em comin’ and I’ll keep learnin’.
While I agree that the modest change in position of Jay Mathews deserves support, he still is clinging desperately to what might charitably be described as a “more enlightened” form of the stacked-ranking/yank-and-rank/forced-ranking/burn-and-churn model of education.
If Mr. Mathews feels I am unfair, please refer him to the comments above by a real expert in education who happens to be a well-respected principal, i.e., carolcorbettburris. Her concluding lines: “The better answer is to put in place systems of supervision and evaluation like PAR. This obsession that we can ‘fear and fire’ our way to excellence, is nonsense.”
So, Mr. Mathews, I suggest you put in the circular file [an ed joke, meaning “wastepaper basket”] that poster hanging prominently over your head: “The beatings will continue until morale improves.” Hint: substitute words like “quality” or “educational achievement” or whatever else you like for “morale.” I am sure most of the readers of this blog will get my point.
Just my dos centavitos worth.
🙂
The fish rots from the head is an old Sicilian saying and it is sooooo true. In schools it starts with the board of education, then the superintendent because the board puts them in place and then down to the administrators which includes principals. Every turn around school I have seen it has been the principal. Sun Valley Middle School is an example I know well as my former employees has children there before the turn around when it was a pit. They only changed the principal and the two vice principals. In two weeks 200 tardys went to 20, graffitti stopped and trash all over the campus stopped. The people from the Calif. Dept. of Ed. responsible for watching this school said they had never seen anything like it. Then after a few years they removed the principal and put them downtown and the school immediately went into the drink. They do not want success. They are totally corrupt. What else do you expect out of a board of education which will vote for a superintendent with a phony PHD and they knew it as I made sure of it and spoke about it at the board meeting before they voted and it was on T.V. They did not care. This is how it is today all across the country.
It’s still the same old paradigm and his argument is still steeped in the idea that is is largely the people and not the system. Performance is design driven. Our schools are designed to spread out and to sort and select based on time and by using mechanical system measures like standardized test scores to make the decisions. We don’t have learning systems we have production systems. Transformation only happens by choice, not mandate. “Reform” is a dead-end road – our system of education isn’t broken, its obsolete.
To Trace Pickering, what if I told you that our system of education is neither broken nor obsolete, but that our federal education policy is broken and obsolete?
He’s still drinking the Kool Aid. He just switched to sugar-free.
I found that many others’ comments about principals match my own experience. In my 20 years at the same school, I would characterize only 1 of the 4 principals I’ve had as competent. Two of them did no harm as far as I could tell, and the one we have now is downright poisonous. I have never seen morale as low as it is now, and this is a place where for the past 10 years, so many kids qualify for free lunch, the entire student body gets it. When did we (teachers) become the enemy? I wasn’t as dialed in to the vagaries of educational policy early in my career, but I don’t remember there being such an adversarial relationship between administration and faculty. Our superintendent texts while teachers and community members speak in front of the board, he berates the high school students who came forward to express concerns about developments on their campus, and evaluations are increasingly being reduced to “How many items on the list of in-vogue jargon can I check off?” I love teaching. I hate education.
The following links will take you two articles on the recent federal lawsuits against Florida’s teacher evaluation system. Change is coming and it’s for the better–logic and common sense will eventually prevail over and greed and the abuse of science..
1. Daily Business Review.com (South Florida): http://www.dailybusinessreview.com/PubArticleDBR.jsp?id=1202596225641&thepage=1
2. Florida Education Association:
NEA, FEA file a federal lawsuit over Florida’s teacher evaluation procedure
The National Education Association (NEA) and the Florida Education Association (FEA) filed a federal lawsuit today challenging the evaluation of teachers based on the standardized test scores of students they do not teach or based on subjects they do not teach.
The lawsuit is brought by seven accomplished teachers and the local education associations in Alachua, Escambia and Hernando counties. They are bringing suit against the Florida commissioner of education, the State Board of Education and the school boards of those three counties, that have implemented the evaluation system to comply with SB 736, passed during the 2011 session of the Florida Legislature.
“This lawsuit highlights the absurdity of the evaluation system that has come about as a result of SB 736,” said FEA President Andy Ford. “Teachers in Florida are being evaluated using a formula designed to measure learning gains in the FCAT math and reading tests. But most teachers, including the seven in this lawsuit, don’t teach those subjects in the grades the test is administered. One of the teachers bringing this suit is getting evaluated on the test scores of students who aren’t even in her school.”
“Seven accomplished educators in Florida are pushing back against one arbitrary, irrational and unfair evaluation system,” said NEA President Dennis Van Roekel. ”But they are supported by hundreds of thousands of educators across the country who are fed up with flawed evaluation systems being pushed by politicians and corporate education reformers in school districts across the country. As unthinkable as it might seem for a teacher to be evaluated on the performance of students they do not teach or subjects they do not teach — we know that it’s happening and not just in Florida. NEA is proud to stand with our Florida colleagues to say ‘NO’ to evaluation systems that don’t help improve student learning or the practice of teaching.”
The lawsuit was filed today in the District Court of the United States for the Northern District of Florida, Gainesville Division. The lawsuit contends that teachers’ evaluations based on the test scores of students they do not teach or based on subjects they do no teach violate the equal protection and due process clauses of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
These evaluations have high stakes consequences. Teachers who are rated unsatisfactory (the lowest of the four performance ratings under the law) two consecutive years or two out of three years in a row are subject to termination or non-renewal. Transfers, promotions and layoffs are based on the assigned performance rating. And, as of July 1, 2014, salaries will be based on the assigned performance rating as well.
(Please call Mark Pudlow at 850.201.3223 or 850.508.9756to arrange interviews with any of the plaintiffs.)