The following comment is evidence that the corporate reformers’ narrative about the “broken” evaluation system is wrong. I say “wrong” as a euphemism. I actually think it is a calculated lie, one that has been promulgated to advance a political agenda: to eliminate collective bargaining rights, to eliminate seniority and tenure, to demand that teachers have zero job protections, not even due process. All of this will make it possible to fire “bad” teachers, with no hearings or delay. The “bad” teachers are the ones who can’t raise test scores every single year.
If you don’t agree with this train of thought, then you are branded as a paid lackey for the teachers’ union, a defender of the status quo, and worse.
But what if the narrative is a giant lie? What if the evaluation system is working quite well in most places? What if low test scores are caused not by “bad” teachers, but by socio-economic conditions that shape children’s interest in schooling?
What if our society has been sold a bill of goods, intended to distract us from addressing real problems?
This reader writes:
I taught in Westchester County, New York, for 35 years (retiring in June 2011). I was on the faculty of two high schools and served as department chair in the second of those two. In both schools, working with several administrative teams, I nearly always found administrators working in the collaborative, supportive way described in Carol Burris’s excellent and reassuring post. This does not mean that I found all these administrators equally visionary or thoughtful or smart, but I found them all supportive and, when necessary, willing to rid the school of those who couldn’t rise to the its standards or fit its culture. I rarely saw weak teachers tenured. I saw a few tenured teachers eased out. I agree that “[a]lthough…it makes sense to make the 3020a dismissal process shorter and less costly, it should never be easy.” / With all this in mind, I was struck by a recent New York Times’ article celebrating the fact that, last year only 50% of teachers up for tenure actually received tenure in the NYC schools. (Many were granted a 4th year to pursue tenure.) The Times was convinced that this showed a rising standard of excellence. But this ignores a fact widely understood in public schools: That a teacher should not be invited back for a third year unless he or she is clearly on the track to receiving tenure. In 2010, according to the Times, 80% of candidates received tenure–a fact the article bemoaned, though 80% seems a little low to me.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I thought that part was obvious. Rather than trying address student needs or the impacts of poverty the corporatists have put forth their own narrative as to why students are failing…the teachers. This manufactured excuse allows politicians to shift money from public schools to private campaign contributing companies. By acknowleding the crisis but promoting their own narrative they are capitalizing on a problem by using it as an opportunity to eviscerate the public education sector and teachers unions. When they are finally proven wrong it may be too late to undo the damage.
Sent from my Samsung smartphone on AT&T
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Teacher evaluation is not broken. Teacher education is not broken. The public good, the belief in the common good, stands to be decimated by forces who will benefit from corporate statism. Sadly, those who stand to benefit include big media – whose children (like the children of deform movement leaders) will not be affected.
We are at seeing the fruits of a movement decades in the making. It imperils the principles that Americans hold dear: equity, opportunity, and education for democratic citizenship. We must fight for the future of democracy. Thank you, Diane, for this forum.
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I believe, Diane, that the problem of “evaluations” is not simply that there exist no (or few) ” ‘bad teachers’ but by socio-economic conditions that shape children’s interest in schooling”. And, I believe you know it, or you simply want to minimize the problem–I’m not really sure which are your motives at the moment, so, I’ll assume you consider this issue purely from the point of view of defending teachers and teacher unions; a stand that I share. Teachers come to the profession with all the intentions, intuitions, and, unfortunately, all the prejudices, ignorance, and attitude that they may have towards children in front of them. In places where a teacher’s world view is congruent with the children or youth they perceive as nearer to them, some issues about children’s capacities are likely complementary, where they are not, they can serve to impede educational, and social, achievement. Children learn from adults, and adults–more to this point, teachers–learn from their collective experiences including by whom and how they were trained. Unions, as is necessary, defend every teacher regardless of their competence for the tasks and children they are hired to undertake. I do not believe that the primary problem is “bad teachers”, but bad training, bad resources, and an inadequate social charge in the context of this society. By “bad training” I do not mean that teacher education systems are inherently bad, but that they, for historic reasons, are not preparing teachers to work with children who the greatest challenges, but those with the fewest. It is unfair and inaccurate to expect any teacher (or teacher educator for that matter) to try to educate children or youth that they simply have not acquired the tools engage properly. By “bad resources”, I mean not simply that there is not enough to do a proper job, but also that the resources, including additional “training”, are simply designed to create the illusion that teachers have received adequate support and, because they have so, that if their students are still inadequate then it is the problem of the students; and, of course, the parents and their communities. The problem of resources is supplemented with the worst medieval notions of educational “research”, historically sanitized from including the very children that struggle the most and upon which “effective” instruction and practice is then predicated. By an inadequate social charge, I mean that education, by and large, under this society is based on creating the very social “conditions that shape children’s interest [or lack of it] in schooling”. But, I also believe you minimize this problem when you use the term “schooling” when, in fact, children–and their adult models including parents, community, and teacher–lose not only an interest in “schooling” but in learning, learning how to learn, and using that learning to reflect and participate in the world that affects them.
The example to the Chicago Teachers Union in this context is indeed revolutionary because the CTU is acting, regardless of the individual motives of any of its leaders or members, to counter these three-pronged problems. They are challenging the national education policy of a failed, ineffectual political leadership aimed at ceding learning to corporations and, in doing so, are raising important demands aimed at winning the hearts and minds of their students, parents, and the communities so utterly failed by the overall education system. The demands are simple; smaller class sizes, better resources, support for curriculum that goes beyond the basics, and a decent living wage and benefits for workers engaged in some of the most important work of society. But making these demands poses a challenge to the power not only of a political machine, but of the very nature of what education should be about; to prepare children and communities to engage in changing our society or to have them learn how acquiesce to it and maintain its oppressive nature. I believe the CTU, and educational leaders like yourself, need to stop thinking that a) all teachers are equal to the tasks before them, b) that because teachers, teaching, and preparing teachers must be defended that somehow it means the inherent problems of racism, sexism, and working class bias against the most oppressed are somehow amalgamated in defending aspects of our profession that are simply indefensible. The only real road to improving the educational system is to take it out of the hands of the corporate-minded–including within the profession–and to create a historic collaboration with working people and the oppressed devoid of belief in the “progressive” nature either so-called liberal politicians or a society predicated on maximizing profit over human need. Such a task inherently coincides with the demands of the CTU, but its achievement will be mitigated by the belief that we are not also responsible for those “socio-economic conditions that shape children’s interests in schooling” and learning and in changing our society in their interests.
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Socio-economic failures are a big factor. And it’s just as much about systemic communication failure in school systems. How different would it be if teachers had the power and space to provide real feedback that effectively advocates for themselves and their students, then directly and positively impacts the decisions of senior management? “Effective” being the key operating word, here.
How do we create real communication on things like developing teacher evaluation systems? In healthcare, the development of housestaff safety councils, where residents work with the administration to provide frontline feedback on broken processes to improve them, is a great model. http://educationhealthcarereform.wordpress.com/2012/09/09/the-importance-of-culture/
Such committees could be designed to incorporate and acknowledge teacher feedback, and translate these to administrators in a way that together all could make positive shifts in school culture.
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Actually, it isn’t the evaluation system that is broken at all; it is the ADMINISTRATIVE LAW system that is broken.
Any teacher who has been wrongfully fired will tell you how it easy it is for principals to destroy your career and how much they are protected by hearing officers, higher-up administrators, and the court system in general.
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The ONLY evidence that reformers use to justify that teacher evaluation systems are broken is the historically high, supposedly inflated, teacher ratings. When comparing the high teacher ratings to the supposed low quality of graduate in the U.S. (based on high school drop out rate, high college freshman remediation rates, low college completion rates, low ratings of high school graduates by workplace supervisors, and supposed low NAEP scores alongside supposed low PISA and TIMSS scores) politicians purely and simply blame teachers. They justify in their brains that there is no way so many teachers can be rated so highly, yet the product of education is so low in quality.
There are studies on both sides producing evidence that principal ratings either do or don’t correlate with student outcomes. Qualitative judgment from administrators is heavily under fire, but Gates MET project did show that principal judgements do somewhat correlate with student outcomes.
It seems as though the problem stems from first, thinking that one can judge the quality of output (quality of student) from the teaching and learning process; second, believing one can judge the quality of a teacher based on how well his or her students perform on a standardized test; and third, believing there is ultimately a problem with a teacher who teaches students that can’t pass the standardized test.
There is very little responsibilities placed on the backs of students who have mostly slid through the system because it wasn’t set up to meet their needs. Many students are simply not intellectuals and have no business being told they must attend college or they will be deemed a failure.
I am beginning to think our refusal to track and place students more realistically, because we see it as some sort of inequality, is biting us in the butt. Although I believe there are a good number of students that slide through high school, and probably shouldn’t even dare attend college, do make it through college, the vast majority of these students are not making it. They are wasting time and money in attending college. The evidence is there – we have more high school graduates attending college than ever before, yet we have the highest college remediation and college non-completion rate ever.
To summarize, I think the system is set up wrong, and although I hate to admit it, I think the reformers have some valid points about the low quality of high school graduates. However, I do not believe it is the teachers’ fault, nor do I necessarily believe it is the students’ fault. I think we have it set up wrong – I personally wish we would set up a vocational system in the same manner as Finland. The ramification of believing every student should be college bound, when realistically they can’t be, is setting up our present situation – teachers who are overall rated highly because their administrators believe they are doing an adequate job based on qualitative data, and students who are basically misplaced, and, therefore, can’t pass a standardized test.
Think of all that money wasted on our current reform efforts and how many beautiful vocational schools we could have built with carpentry, construction, welding, etc…. Think of how many students would be more engaged if they knew they were attending high school to first learn the basic knowledge about English, mathematics, and science (without all the pressure), and, secondly, to know they were learning something in their vocational courses that would allow them to be successful after they graduated.
We are lying to ourselves in believing all high school students should be college bound, and that lie produces a snowball effect where teachers are being held accountable for the quality of students produced by a system that is not built for the students. I believe most of the other ‘problems’ stem from this fact.
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