Here is a comment from a first-year teacher who knows more than the “reformers” who wrote the laws in Florida.
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Can you believe this? A story in the Washington Post reports that kindergarten students in Georgia will be asked to evaluate their teacher’s performance. The five-year-olds’ judgments will help to determine whether their teachers get a bonus or get fired http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/student-surveys-may-help-rate-teachers/2012/05/11/gIQAN78uMU_story.html.
Have we lost our minds in this country? At long last, are we totally insane on the subject of teacher evaluation? I know that the Gates Foundation has encouraged the idea that student surveys should be used to judge teachers, along with test scores and other so-called measures. For what it’s worth, I think it is not a good idea. In college, in high school and in middle school, teachers will be wary of asking too much of their students, for fear of losing their favor. If they assign too much reading or if they are tough graders or disciplinarians, their students might retaliate by giving them a low mark.
If teachers must seek their students’ approval, how does that make school better?
To rely on kindergarten students to judge their teachers brings this idea to its lowest possible level. At what point does a bad idea get revealed as sheer idiocy?
Diane
A parent recently wrote an article in the New York Times explaining why he planned to file a Freedom of Information Act suit to demand the release of all test questions.
He is right. Now that the tests have assumed so much importance, the public has a right to know what they were asked.
Now that the tests have such a decisive effect on so many people’s lives, the public has a right to know.
Based on these tests, students will be promoted or will fail.
Based on these tests, students will get into the college of their choice, or will not.
Based on these tests, some teachers will get a bonus, and others will be fired.
Based on these tests, some schools will be closed.
Based on these tests, lives will be changed for better or worse.
Who pays for the tests? The public.
Who is affected by the tests? The public.
Who has a right to know what was asked? The public.
Who has a right to know how many pineapples are on the test? The public.
Who has a right to know how many questions are stupid? The public.
Who has a right to know if there are questions with multiple answers or no answer? The public.
If a person accused of a crime has a right to confront their accuser and hear the evidence, why shouldn’t test-takers have the right to know whether the tests that shaped their fate are reasonable?
Publish them. Let everyone see what is on them. Publishers can write new test questions or they can create a database of released test questions so large that students can dip into them for test preparation.
Or, someday we may regain our wits, and decide to move on to far better forms of assessment, where students actually demonstrate what they know and can do instead of picking a bubble.
Unless, of course, we have become so dumbed down by decades of bubble testing that we can no longer think differently.
Diane
The principals of New York State are amazing. When the State Education Department began creating its “educator evaluation system,” it called together the principals and showed them what it was up to. It showed them a video of guys building a plane while it was flying. This was called, in self-congratulatory parlance, “building a plane in mid-air.” A few principals noticed that the guys building the exterior of the plane were wearing parachutes, but the passengers didn’t have parachutes. The principals realized that they, their staff, and their students were the passengers. The ones with the parachutes were the overseers at the New York State Education Department. For them, it was a lark, but the evaluation system they created was do-or-die for the hapless passengers.
The principals rose up in revolt, led by Carol Burris and Sean Feeney. They wrote a petition and circulated it to other principals. In a matter of weeks, they had the signatures of more than a third of the principals in the state. All objected to the test-score based evaluation, all objected to being the state’s guinea pigs, and all insisted that the state should do some pilots before imposing its best guess on the principals, teachers, and students of New York.
It took tremendous courage for principals to sign the petition. Sadly, they didn’t even get the support of the teachers’ unions of New York State. Indeed, NYSUT told its members not to sign. I can’t explain why. It made no sense to me. Why would teachers want to be judged by the arbitrary rise or fall of test scores.
The principals created a website, newyorkprincipals.org. Lots of people have signed their petition. I hope more do.
One of the brave principals wrote a letter to Commissioner John King yesterday. It was reported in the New York Times blog, Schoolbook. (http://www.nytimes.com/schoolbook/2012/05/02/long-island-principal-decries-quality-of-state-exams/)
The principal, Sharon Fougner, said the following:
The tests contained:
Unfamiliar, untaught material
Deliberately misleading questions and answer choices
Ambiguous, poorly worded questions and answer choices
Inconsistent directions
Misplaced answer lines
Omitted directional cues
Multiple answers that could be correct
Inappropriately sized work spaces
Extended multiple steps (as many as 5 or 6) in single problems
Incomplete/missing information
Reading levels that are above grade
These errors by Pearson and the State Education Department have caused “confusion, anxiety, miscalculations, distraction, misuse of time, and fatigue.” The “inordinate length” of these exams, wrote the principal, is “beyond the stamina and attention span of eight to ten year olds.”
All of this together adds up to one single conclusion: The New York State Education Department is guilty of child abuse. Let me say it again, this time slowly: The New York State Education Department is guilty of child abuse. And incompetence.
Will anyone be accountable? Don’t hold your breath.
Diane
I read in the Daily News this morning that Governor Cuomo will oppose the public release of teacher ratings (http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/teachers/gov-andrew-cuomo-approve-making-teacher-evaluations-public-article-1.1067628#ixzz1t98iGb9q). I am glad he realizes that teachers’ evaluation should not be published for all to see, but I wish he had taken the next step, which is to shield such evaluations as part of every teacher’s personnel file. No member of the public has the right to see the job evaluations of police or firefighters or corrections officers, yet their jobs are no less important than those of teachers.
The Governor’s position is that parents have a “right to know” the job evaluations of their child’s teacher. I disagree, and I’ll explain why.
The first reason that I think this is wrong is that the ratings themselves, as we learned when they were released by New York City, are inaccurate. Why should parents have the right to know a rating that is wrong? We saw examples of teachers who were assigned students they never taught; teachers who got ratings for years when they were on maternity leave. Given the city’s insistence that teachers be compared to other teachers and graded on a curve, half of the teachers fell in the bottom half of the curve, despite their qualities as teachers.
In one case, a teacher of gifted children was rated a very poor teacher—one of the worst in the city—because the children who started in her classroom gained only .05 of a point when the computer said they should have gained .07 of a point. This is not judgment, this is a mechanical calculation that is meaningless. Her principals says she is an excellent teacher but the computer knows best.
Then there was the New York Post’s “expose” of the woman they called “the worst teacher in the city.” The rankings showed her at the bottom. But the rankings did not explain that she teaches new immigrant students who cycle in and out of her classroom as they learn English. In other words, the rankings are bunk.
Aside from the question of accuracy—a very large question given the crudeness of the measures—there is an issue of practicality. What happens when the parents in a school learn that Ms. Smith has a ranking in the 12 percentile? Will they all go to the principal and ask to have their children transferred to a teacher with a higher ranking? If they do, will Ms. Jones have 65 children in her class, while Ms. Smith sits in an empty classroom? What will be their rankings next year? What will parents do with the inaccurate information the Governor wants them to have?
I suppose this will sort itself out and in time will come to mean nothing at all. One thing seems certain. This is not a method that will improve the teaching profession or improve education or give teachers the respect they now feel is sorely lacking.
Great common on my Edweek blog. Often I wish I had a way to call attention to smart comments like this one. My new blog gives me the chance to give additional attention to the ideas of thoughtful writers. This one comments as “laborlawyer.”
Objecting to high-stakes-testing cannot stop high-stakes-testing unless those objecting can offer a reasonable alternative to high-stakes-testing as a way to identify/remove ineffective teachers. The high-stakes-testing supporters argue that there are ineffective teachers in the schools, that current teacher evaluation systems are not identifying/removing those ineffective teachers, and that these ineffective teachers are a major cause of poorly-performing schools (that is, of low test scores in inner-city schools). These arguments are superficially compelling. It’s true that there are ineffective teachers in the schools (just as there are ineffective employees everywhere) and virtually all citizens have personal recollections of ineffective teachers from their own school days. It’s also true that current teacher evaluation systems are not identifying/removing ineffective teachers — in most school systems, the traditional principal-observes-and-evaluates evaluation system results in very few, if any, discharges. It’s probably not true that ineffective teachers are a major cause of poorly-performing schools (that is, the poorly performing schools are concentrated in low-income areas while the ineffective teachers, even if somewhat more common in the low-income areas, are certainly not concentrated in the low-income areas to the same extent as the low test scores are). But — it’s impossible to prove that ineffective teachers are not a major problem and, in any event, arguing in favor of ineffective teachers has zero appeal. High-stakes-testing is an inexpensive solution to the identify/remove-ineffective-teacher issue. So — to win the debate, opponents of high-stakes-testing must provide an alternative solution. An obvious possibility is a peer-review evaluation system similar to that used in Montgomery County, MD schools since 2001. This system — called “PAR” — has been amazingly successful at removing ineffective teachers with over 500 teachers discharged or resigned-in-lieu-of-PAR-evaluation. The teachers union supports PAR. There have been few litigation challenges to the discharges. The overwhelming majority of teachers think the system is fair. There is no high-stakes-testing, with all its adverse side effects. Briefly, principals identify teachers as possibly poor-performers; senior consulting teachers (who do not report to the principal) intensively monitor/evaluate the identified teachers; a consulting-teachers/principals committee makes the final discharge decision. It’s unclear why PAR has received so little public attention. The NY Times wrote a column praising PAR. But, the media and ed bloggers have otherwise largely ignored it. Opponents of high-stakes-testing should study and publicize PAR — or something like it — as an inexpensive, productive alternative to the destructive high-stakes-testing as a way to identify/remove ineffective teachers.
