A teacher explains how she went from effective to “in need of improvement”:
“I too have been highly effective for the 13 years I have been in the classroom, until last year, that is. I am now a teacher in need of improvement, not due to my teaching or my rapport with my students, but because I didn’t have my learning goal posted next to my rubric and I didn’t put descriptive feedback on 100% of the papers in portfolios )I missed 3 papers out of the 100+ that were in there). I didn’t refer to my rubric at the beginning, middle and end of my 15 minute small group lesson and when dealing with a child on the autism spectrum, I didn’t ask him to recall what the rule was for sitting on the carpet, I used the cue that I had discussed with him instead. This VAM is ruining the psyches of teachers and making us feel like we just fell off of the turnip truck. Way to make us want to stay in the career we love…tell us we suck every day!”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Sounds like DCPS and the IMPACT eval that the TFA mafia has forced down our gulets. To bad IMPACT just looks at the superficial. A 30 min observation by someone who doesn’t know you or your class is not only a joke, but also a great example of educational malpractice and does such a diservice to our kids. Teach your class based on that model and you truly aren’t teaching.
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Your scenario is being repeated all across the country. How sad for you and your students. Find a school where you can truly educate kids. Don’t quit, be choosy and look for just the right place.
What a joke! We all know that anybody can find something wrong on anybody, if you are determined to do so. They don’t need facts! Actually, facts make them even angrier and take it out on the teachers. It is called blacklisting, witch hunt, setting up for failure…you name it! If you were Mother Theresa, they would criticize your blue and white striped dress!? What people in power waste their time on! We may end up exactly with the type of system we are now creating. If more do not speak up, we will deserve it as a nation.
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I am no longer teaching, happily retired, but I hear so many stories of excelllent teachers who are suffering from real physical and mental ailments due to all these stressors. No one outside of education realizes how much individuals must give in a teaching day, and teachers are being wiped out with these ridiculous additional pressures, both emotionally or physically. I am so tired of “suits” making decisions from air conditioned offices for teachers. It is wrong, wrong, wrong.
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All part of the plan. Move along, please. There’s nothing to see here.
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It is all very disheartening and overwhelming. I have been a teacher for 17 years, and have never received anything less than glowing observations and year end summatives. I do my job, and I do it well. My school has chosen the Danielson rubric for our evaluations. There are elements on this rubric thatmake it almost impossible for a high school teacher to be highly effective. One of the components states that each individual student’s interests and cultures has been addresses. How am I suppose to do this in 40 minutes with thirty students; this is an early college English class. When would the actual teaching happen? How is this making the students career or college ready as is stated in the common core? So I work my ass off and am told that I am average. The assistant superintendent stated that only about one teacher in the district will be highly effective. So how will that play to the public?
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“So how wil that play with the public”
It will likely play out as intended: with increasing loss of faith in the public schools leading to further calls for their “reform,” and ever more once-in-a-lifetime opportunities for privateers.
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I am not a fan of using Danielson for evaluation. I find dissecting teaching into a skill checklist diminishes teaching. It can be helpful when someone is struggling with a particular area to study where his/her skills are weak, so he/she can work on those skills. However, if you have to teach thinking about each subskill it becomes very wooden. No one who is accomplished at an profession thinks about it like a checklist. The whole is more than the sum of the parts.
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Actually there are persuasive arguments that more professionals should emulate commercial airline pilots in their use of checklists. Here is a TED talk by Dr. Atul Gawande urging other physicians to expand their use of checklists:http://www.ted.com/talks/atul_gawande_how_do_we_heal_medicine.html
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I have enjoyed reading Gawande’s books. The checklists you are referring to are associated with routine tasks that must be exact in order to avoid serious mistakes like leaving a sponge in a patient, which is entirely too simplistic an example but is all that comes to mind at the moment. Gawande is not referring to a running checklist in a surgeon’s head that dissects each maneuver. I suppose this expertize shows in emergency situations where a pilot or a surgeon makes decisions based on experience. They sure aren’t wasting their time reading a checklist when seconds count. The point is that checklists are a tool for the routine operations that do not vary, so that you do not have to think about them. The Danielson rubric does not fulfill that function.
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So there is no routine in teaching? If you don’t think a checklist diminishes the profesionalism of physicians, surely it does not diminish the the profesionalism of teachers. Once we get the routine routinely right, we can think about the art of medicine, and teaching, right.
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Please read Charlotte Danielson’s material. Then, perhaps you will understand what I am trying to say although I begin to think you purposely misunderstand.
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I think Gawnde’s point is that it is not a waste of time to go through a checklist “when seconds count”. I agree that teaching at it’s best is more art than science, but I also think teaching is rarely done at its best.
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‘I think Gawnde’s point is that it is not a waste of time to go through a checklist “when seconds count”.’
I disagree. The checklists are to eliminate the need for reviewing routine protocols in an emergency situation and to prevent unnecessary complications. A surgeon’s mental procedure during an unexpected emergency will follow certain rote patterns because of his/her training, but experience will moderate his/her actions. I think we are really having a semantic argument. It is important to teaching because there are few if any hard and fast rules/routines. Best practices are dependent on so many variables that the experienced teacher can interpret in a way that goes far beyond any checklist.
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Danielson is simply the latest “magic bullet” these idiots are pushing on teachers.
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A teacher who is treated this way is no longer a professional. My advice is to game the system as much as possible while looking for another job. Good luck!
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I hope some posters can help me with a couple of questions about this post.
The teaching evaluation seems to have been based on a brief observation of teaching, but the teacher refers to VAM. I had thought that VAM was teacher evaluation based on changes in standerdized test scores. Am I incorrect in that belief?
I also am curious about the teacher evaluation system that this one replaced. The teacher notes that the previous system rated him/her as highly effective. What changes in the procedure induced this change in evaluation?
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The shortest explanation is that the number pushers are helping the policy wonks put a science spin on a moving target. Here’s another way to view it.
This year will be our first year of newspaper published scores. It’s also the first year that Common Core standards will be evaluated. So, not only do I have to be able to get every student I have to show improvement by subgroup criteria on their score on the next year’s presumably more difficult test, with a new standard of a much denser, more complex material, but I must also prepare them without having access to that content. (by the one example they gave, I can assume dense non fiction and 19th century syntax) I am not allowed to talk with my colleagues about the content of previous years once we have them or I will lose my job. Pearson must be able recycle those passage and sell them again. Never mind that the test determines the teachers’ futures, the students’ future and the property values of the community. It’s a Pearson first world.)
Oh and here’s a fun little twist to make those lazy teachers do their jobs better. Now, our low performers who get an extra period of reinforcement have to be progressed monitored every two weeks with AIMSweb which aligns to neither the local assessment or the state test. In both fluency (which is time intensive to administer and aligns to nothing) and cloze testing (which is time intensive to grade and aligns to nothing) But, Pearson must be paid and paid often.
And no ignoring that useless measure… if the kids don’t show progress, the bad and lazy teacher will get be observed every few days to assist them in achieving this progress. Oh.. and you’re not allowed to teach directly to AIMSweb. It must come out of the air. No teaching them the CLOZE procedure so that they can actually use their skill base. They must just figure it out. SO now… we have to prep all our kids for a test that we’re not allowed to see, a local test of grade level that will go toward our can’t wait to shame you lazy teacher newspaper scores BUT also prep without prepping our lowest performers for an entirely unrelated time intensive measure all year (that can do nothing to improve our students test scores or real literacy). Oh, and expect to be poked at in our cages while we do it because teachers only do their jobs when someone’s looking.
I bet you have no idea what I’m talking about eh? The reality is more complex than a sound bite. That’s why it’s so easy to create spin about those bad teachers and horrible public schools. Destroy the ability to be successful, measure dirt and make the reality impossible for the general public to understand. Call every objection an excuse and rake in those charter dollars, baby.
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I have taught something on the order of 10,000 students in my 20+ years of teaching, so I have some idea about the complexity of teaching.
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I am in the midst of an assignment in which my high school juniors must (in groups of three) teach a lesson to the class. I am heartened to overhear them say things like “this is really hard,” or “I can’t imagine doing this every day,” or my favorite “I’m never goofing off in class again.”
I am sure my lesson would be a “failure” according to whatever rheeformist evaluation folderol could be applied to it, but I hope they carry the memory with them and it informs their notions about schools and teachers when they are adults.
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I am a retired special ed teacher. I can remember a student that I could not help pass the State test and bearly graduated. He came back two years later to introduce me to his wife and child by saying this is the person that saved me and gave me direction. I guess I failed him in the eyes of the new reformists. I still have tears when I think about it. We taught students how to live and survive. How to have a work ethic. how to repond to others and work with others. What will happen to the TEACHER.
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My goodness, I could have written this. I am in Southern California in a supposedly “good” district. I am having flashbacks just reading this. I feel for you. 😦
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The teacher in the post is confused. VAM has nothing to do with what she is describing. VAM is only related to student test scores. This part of her evaluation is part of the new evaluations required under RTTT but is not VAM,
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Although you are correct that VAM is not your observation score, it is, from one point of view, all of a piece… especially when your administrator is being double dipped on the student scores and has their own reason to panic. When taken together, the new accountability is a disastrous and clumsy effort to codify a process that is interpersonal and specific to a particular set of circumstances.
As example, there may be two children who have the same demographic but one is recently homeless or has an alcoholic parent and the other has a supportive mother who works two jobs and has only the success of her children on her mind. Those are not the same children (as anyone in KIPP can testify) But, they are measured (as are their teachers) by the same criteria because they fit into the same subgroup and therefore “should” perform similarly. This may sound exactly right to people outside of the field (after all, all children deserve justice) but it isn’t really just to evaluate two teachers identically by children who look the same or have the same money at their disposal, yet arise out of such profoundly different circumstances.This isn’t to say that authentic accountability is nebulous, but it doesn’t bend to numbers in the way that psychometricians would have us believe.
Of course, that doesn’t matter; we all know that there will be “no excuses”. Nothing as inconsequential as reality should get in the way of an impassioned elite using social justice as a lubricant at galas and fundraisers and on resumes. Educational leadership…. such a warm place to wait out a collapsed economy.
Meanwhile, the real people who do the real work struggle to make sense of an absurd, constantly shifting set of requirements that are impossible to implement. It is truly laughable. Unfortunately, no one in power wants to hear what’s wrong with RTTT, why it undermines real instruction, why we lose more class time because of it, why great lessons are thrown away so more time can be put into the test, how evaluation is being used to break up public schools and sell them off piece by piece to the highest bidder…. Why good teachers who can are leaving the field fast as they can. No one cares about a moving target except the people with a bull’s eye on their back.
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Part of a plan to create teacher burn out and greater turn over to keep wages lower.
I saw this come into being before I retired in 2006 after 38 years. The younger teachers most often received recognition at meetings and so forth. However, as they aged, they also fell out of favor no matter how hard they tried.
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For anybody here who is not familiar with working with children on the autism spectrum, I just want to say that what the teacher did here — use a cue that has already been rehearsed to prompt the required behavior, instead of asking the child to recall a rule — is the absolute correct, and probably only possibly successful, method to use in this sort of situation. There are real differences in how children on the spectrum process information and this teacher gets that. She is right to be proud that she does.
Sign me, An autism mom
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Thank you kafkateach for confirming what I thought. Dr. Ravitch featured this response, so I thought she endorsed the entire post.
I am still curios about the change in metric for this teacher. How had she/he been evaluated before to have been assessed as highly effective?
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Wow. What a shame. Isn’t there anything we can do about this?
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I have been teaching for 35 years and have walked the halls of the school I teach feeling good about myself and the job I do……………felt I was useful until my evaluation last year. I have been labeled “ineffective” and got a horrible evaluation last year doing what I have done for years. My problem is that I have not accepted and endorsed the Marzano way of doing things. It is a good thing that last years evaluation is being thrown out.
Thanks to our good governor who apparently feels teachers are overpaid louts, ineffective teachers can be removed if they are ineffective 3 years in a row. I started my masters in administration many years ago and this is right out of the book on management: how to change employee behavior…………….undermine their confidence, threaten their jobs, make them feel insecure, then pose a path to success by making them study a new method…………….then praise them highly for patterning their new style on the accepted template of the way teachers should be. This is part of the education reform that our governor is spearheading and it will make the world a much better place……….I wish I had his insight.
I wanted to stand my ground and punch someone in the mouth for forcing this redundant, (research based now mind you), unnecessary bullshit on me and the classroom but we all know the outcome of that approach. Thank God my wife’s a union rep and persuaded me to better understand the expected performance. So I spent the better part of 7 hours preparing a 45 minute lesson………complete with academic games and a power point presentation I borrowed. So on the day (recent), I outlined the activities of the lesson, briefly reminded them of the behavioral expectations, stated my learning goals and went through the scales, asked whether they were a 2, a 3…….then proceeded to show the power point, followed by a game of “give-one, get-one” on the facts of the game………………and all the while I had a check-sheet in hand and “monitored” the game, giving credit to those that actively participated as opposed to those that didn’t……………remembered to review the learning goals and asked where they were on the scale while nodding, smiling, and showing approval for their success……………….referred to the scale reading aloud the expectations and inquiring where they were…………..briefed them on the game of jeopordy, divided the class in half…………..and played the game. And at the end I again asked the class where they were on the scale after repeating the learning goals and finally congratulated the winners and the efforts of the losers (celebrating success) using smiles, nods, and positive body language as well as verbal reinforcement.
My jaw muscles are still sore from smiling. I feel this insistence that we teach this way has robbed me of my autonomy………………..the scope and sequence tells us when to teach and what…………….Marzano style the how……………………and the new method of evaluating forces your hand or your out of a job. No one looks to me to have knowledge of subject matter……………….I teach what is in the scope and sequence or it is a waste of time. I feel very over qualified, constrained, insecure about my job. Administrators have an agenda………………..I don’t want to socialize or associate with them…………………they are being coerced to require change from us with the threat of their jobs………………..perhaps they are insecure about their job…………….no one feels comfortable anymore. We are treading lightly………….uncertain about our future, and being told that this is the way things are today because there is less money and fewer jobs. It is not a relaxing, fun place to work anymore. I would like very much to last another 7 years so I can retire and get the hell out of this very fucked up system. I can not imagine anyone new recruited to work this hard and get the little pay the school board makes available. I am also relieved that the board made available the 3 percent the teachers now pay for medical benefits………..after all, they were the very best teachers or they wouldn’t be administrators, right? Who would want to be a teacher!? I am advising my students not to make that mistake.
So will do another lesson like this one?………………..Sure, next year during my formal observation and not before. And if anyone asks, I consistently spend 5 to 7 hours preparing for every class and for every prep……………….I endorse Marzano, I love teaching, and I am voting for Governor Scott when he is up for relection (if that’s not a load of sarcasm, nothing is, and nothing could be further from the truth).
I won’t want a gold watch, pen, a pat on the back or certainly not a hand shake from an administrator. I may retire mid-year so they have to find a sub for the rest of the year and I will if it’s an advantage financially – I am leaving and won’t let the door hit me in the back! I don’t care…………….it’s their problem. Drop in 2 years…………..I can do it. That’s what is keeping me going! However, I feel personally constrained to continue giving my students my knowledge and continue coaching including the Academic A team and the NOSB team. I still like the kids………………………..but until then…………….
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WOW!!!! My only comment/question is…….How do we as teachers, me being a 27 year veteran in the profession teaching precious 5 year olds……make the powers that be understand that we feel diminished and unable to follow through with the passion and love that we have for our students and our profession. Any answers to that solution would be gladly appreciated……I totally agree and support your comments…..
Kathy H.
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Which is one of the reasons that when someone tells me they want to get into teaching, I DISCOURAGE him/her. No one needs that type of stress and aggravation. Teaching is stressful enough; we don’t need VAM telling us how useless and ineffective we are.
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My district adopted the Springboard curriculum for ELA last year. We have been told repeatedly that we are to use the curriculum with fidelity. I take the lessons, break them down and create a NearPod presentation of the activity., step by step. I was evaluated December 1 , 2015 received my feedback today, January 22, 30151 of refinement was lesson presentation because the lesson seemed “out of order”. Because it’s been almost two months ago, I went back and revisited the activity to see where I “messed up.” I had followed the activity as presented in the book with some additional explanation. It was intended to be a student centered activity. The lesson the day before modeled the process they needed to follow for the next days lesson, but I was “docked” because they didn’t see me model it on the evaluation day. The students did ask lots of questions (over material we’d spent two weeks on.) and it was the final lesson prior to the embedded assessment at the end of the unit. This was a class of average but unmotivated and often inattentive students. I know I’m supposed to meet all students’ needs, but at some point students need to become accountable. Once I’d answered the same question three times, I did stop to address the whole class to clarify. I lost points for stopping their work process and was told if I’d explained it at beginning of the lesson, I wouldn’t have had to do that. Again, all of that had happened on previous day and actually on several days prior to that as well. Yes, I’m frustrated. I know I’m a good, effective, conscientious teacher. (In fact 95 percent of my students met their learning targets last semester.) But because my evaluation is based on a single period with the lowest of my students, I get a rating of emerging proficient. I held back the tears until I got home.
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Fern, take comfort in the fact that you are not alone. I have a similar experience where I am being evaluated by the admin who is known to be picky when I only teach one class in her building. She didn’t even evaluate that class. I pour my heart and soul into my classes, rarely letting even a vacation go by without logging on to develop an idea or read up on methods, just because I love to, only to be told I’m mediocre.
Those ELA modules sound like a nightmare, BTW.
Keep the faith.
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