Madeline Will wrote in Education Week that many states plan to resume teacher evaluations, despite the pandemic and the difficulties of teaching remotely and/or in-person. Some will incorporate student test scores, which is absurd. Many teachers believe this is unfair, since teaching conditions are adverse. Unfortunately, Will relied on the “National Council on Teacher Quality” for its “expertise.” This is an organization launched by the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Foundation that has no professional credibility and that issues an annual rating of teacher education programs based on its reading of course catalogues and on whether the programs offer instruction in Common Core, for example.
The best authority on VAM in the nation is Audrey Amrein-Beardsley of Arizona State University, who earned her Ph.D. as a student of David Berliner and Gene Glass. She has written the definitive studies of test-based teacher evaluation. Her blog VAMboozled! is the go-to place for updates on this fraudulent evaluation method.
If Joe Biden is elected, one of the first things his Secretary of Education should do is to give blanket waivers are annual federal testing in grades 3-8 and urge states to eliminate any teacher evaluations based on test scores. Test-based teacher evaluations were enacted into state law solely to qualify for a chance to win some share of the billions attached to Race to the Top. Ten years ago, the research on value-added assessment (VAM) was almost non-existent but then Secretary Arne Duncan insisted on its validity. In the past decade, VAM has proven to be unreliable, invalid and unstable. Every state should repeal the laws they passed at Duncan’s urging.
Will reports:
For many teachers, stress levels are at an all-time high this year, as they navigate remote lessons, socially distanced classrooms, or a combination of the two. And there’s yet another looming stressor: teacher evaluations.
“You would think that given everything that’s changing and everything that’s brand new to teachers, that they would have figured out a way to skip a year,” said Kristin Brown, a high school math and computer science teacher in Wisconsin. As a teacher, she added, you shouldn’t have to “defend yourself and prove that you’re an effective educator in a pandemic.”
In the spring, nearly half of states eased evaluation requirements or issued flexibility or guidance for school districts, and teachers’ unions are arguing for more of that as the coronavirus pandemic rages on.
So far, at least 17 states have released guidance on teacher evaluations this year, according to an analysis by the National Council on Teacher Quality. Most states are still requiring teacher evaluations in some capacity, although Mississippi has suspended the requirement for districts to submit annual employee performance data, and Illinois has told districts they will not be penalized if they don’t conduct summative evaluations this year.
While some administrators and other experts say evaluations and observations are crucial to providing valuable feedback and support, many teachers say it’s unfair to make potentially high-stakes job-performance decisions when they’re navigating new technologies, adjusting to different methods of teaching, and trying to reach students who might not have reliable internet access or stability at home. They worry that evaluations this year, particularly those that include student growth data, won’t be reflective of teachers’ abilities, since students’ lives and learning have been so disrupted.
Shannon Holston, the director for teacher policy at NCTQ, said she expects more states to release guidance in the coming weeks. For those that have already, “it seems a number of states understand that this is not a normal year and have tried to adjust requirements for evaluations while still really focusing on the observation and feedback component,” Holston said.
For example, Colorado and Ohio will not incorporate student growth data in teacher evaluations at all this school year. And districts in Connecticut and Oregon can use social and emotional learning or student engagement measures in evaluations this year instead of academic measures to show student growth.
Massachusetts has streamlined its evaluation rubric to focus on six priorities, and Washington state has reduced the number of criteria required for comprehensive evaluations from eight to two. The rest of the evaluation score will be based on the teacher’s previous score...
New Jersey had to tweak its student growth percentile formula because there were no statewide assessments last year from which to collect data. Instead, teachers and administrators this year are responsible for setting goals for students and assessing whether they’ve met those goals by the end of the year. This objective will make up 15 percent of teachers’ evaluation rating, while the observations or the portfolio of practice will make up the remaining 85 percent...
A new law in Indiana says that schools are no longer required to use state test scores when evaluating teachers. But Indiana State Teachers Association President Keith Gambill said he has heard some districts are still planning to use test scores this year—which the union is against. Gambill said local associations will be working with those districts to try to eliminate test scores from evaluations...
Teachers are limited with how they can react to unexpected challenges during remote classes, said Gambill, of the Indiana state teachers’ union.
“If technology freezes or there’s an issue with connectivity, that’s not something you can course-correct for in the same way you could if everyone is in person,” he said.
Teachers say they welcome coaching and feedback. [Monise] Seward [a special education teacher in Georgia] said she’d find it more helpful to have another teacher observe her class, so she can get feedback from someone who’s currently in the trenches with remote instruction. Mostly, Brown said, teachers want to be afforded professional trust that they’re doing their best possible work under challenging circumstances.
“The sentiment out there is that teachers are drowning, and day to day we might have our heads above water for a little bit of time, but the next minute we’re gasping for air,” she said. “What can I give up, and what can I do differently, so that I’m always above water? Once we’re in this for a while, we’ll get a routine going. Just let us get our feet under us before jumping in.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Student “growth measures” are nothing more than reports on an increase in test scores from one point in time to another.
The language from studies of human growth and development has been stripped of any hint of variability other than incremental increases in test scores.
Physical growth measures can be made. You can measure the height of a student from the beginning of a year to the end of a year. You can measure the girth and weight of a student and use a body mass index as an estimate of physical growth.
Physical growth is measurable, but the growth measures reported to be important and aggrandized in policy today are nothing more than increases in test scores from one point in time to another.
Moreover these misleading “growth” measures are based on assumptions, usually undisclosed by test-makers, including assumptions about a standardized curriculum for each grade level, the content of instruction that items address, the difficulty of each item in the test, the relative cost of the testing process and much more.
The reification of test scores is if meaningful measures of anything other than skill in test-taking is as absurd as thinking the scores on these tests are reliably and responsibly sampling what students “know and can do” and how well they have been taught.
Diane, I know there were folks on Bernie’s team who listened to you about public education. I certainly hope you have a pipeline to Biden. The pandemic and its repercussions won’t disappear with a Biden inauguration. I fear the neoliberals like Arne Duncan and those who advised Clinton will be welcomed back into the fold.
The people on Biden’s team would do well to listen to the words of Joe Biden, who promised to end standardized testing, to Vice President Joe Biden himself, who said, “Education should be put more in the hands of educators, you should have more input on what you teach, how you teach it, and when you teach it. You are the ones in the classroom, you should have more input.”
yes: we will know so much the day Biden appoints his sec. of education
The alarm bells went off when I said to a non-sped administrator that I had to make a reading program my own. It showed up in my evaluation as not teaching the program “with fidelity.” In other words, if I could manage to respond in the same robotic manner and follow the script without deviation, my students would all miraculously become skilled readers. I never was sure where IEPs (INDIVIDUALIZED education plans) came into this equation. Of course, everybody knows that every child will respond to a situation in the exact same manner and needs the exact same instruction. The program had some very good features to it, but EVEN ITS CREATORS did not follow it lockstep but adapted it to the situation and the students.
It is patently obvious that a student’s achievement cannot be accurately determined by the same once or twice a year high stakes, multiple choice test like every other student is taking. Neither students, or learning for that matter, comes in these standardized little bundles that are processed for a year and come out in newly enhanced, standardized bundles.
It all strikes me as a stealth operation to standardize education by rigidly defining the input in an attempt to control the output. And they talk about the old “factory model” of education!
Funny, I was just thinking about teacher evaluations this mornings. Where would bureaucrats be without their rituals?
The same place witch doctors would be without their voodoo dolls
Peter Greene’s recommended reading includes an article on trust based observations. It is a formative way to evaluate teachers. The author, Craig Randall. points out that the observation process makes teachers feel particularly vulnerable so it is important to establish trust. Trust does not exist in many schools where administrators are openly hostile to teachers. For teachers that work in supportive system, observing teachers is a far more authentic tool to inform administrators that are evaluating teachers. It is also a system that I knew for most of my career. It’s not perfect, but it is far better than leaving it up to a capricious algorithm. http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/finding_common_ground/2020/10/theres_a_better_way–trust-based_observations.html
I have a friend who has already been found “wanting” by the online district school in which she teaches. All because of some parent’s (note the singular) complaint. Adminanimals will get us any way they can.
Must be a parent with power and enough money to hire a lawyer. Adminimals will sacrifice their own mothers to litigious parents.
What is your friend wanting?
Higher pay? Smaller classes? More autonomy? Respect?
Teachers are Wanting
Teachers are wanting
No more and no less
Dispense with the taunting
And treat with respect