I paste this letter in its entirety because (1) it's pretty short and (2) I couldn't find an excerpt good enough to carry the idea. Please read it and give your opinion.
The right way to assess teachers' performance
By Michele Kerr
Friday, June 18, 2010; A27
The Obama administration's Race to the Top program demands that teachers be evaluated by student test scores. Florida's legislature passed a bill in April to end teacher tenure and base pay increases on test-score improvement; although Gov. Charlie Crist vetoed that attempt, legislatures in Colorado, New York, Oklahoma and other states have also modified regulations regarding tenure with an eye toward Race to the Top. Teachers protest, but they are dismissed as union hacks with lousy skills, intent on protecting their cushy tenured jobs because they could never cut it in the real world.
I'm a first-year, second-career high school teacher, a "highly qualified" teacher of math, English and social science, a standing I achieved by passing rigorous tests. I'm not a union fan, nor am I in favor of pay increases based on seniority or added education. Like many new teachers throughout the country, I was pink-slipped and am looking for work, so I don't have a cushy job to protect.
I'm not your typical teacher. But I believe I speak for many teachers when I say I'm willing to be tested on student performance, provided certain conditions are met. So let's negotiate.
I propose that:
(1) Teachers be assessed based on only those students with 90 percent or higher attendance.
Without the missing students, the tests won't yield a complete picture of learning. But the tests' purpose is to yield a picture of teaching, which isn't the same thing as learning. Teachers can't teach children who aren't there.
Results will reveal that many students miss this attendance requirement. Put that problem on the parents' plates. Leave it out of the teaching assessment.
(2) Teachers be allowed to remove disruptive students from their classroom on a day-to-day basis.
Two to three students who just don't care can easily disrupt a class of strugglers. Moreover, many students who are consistently removed for their behavior do start to straighten up -- sitting in the office is pretty boring.
Yes, teachers could misuse this authority. But if teachers are evaluated by student learning, they must have control over classroom conditions. Then the administration can separately decide what to do with constantly disruptive students or those teachers who would rather remove students than teach them. But keep the issue away from measuring student performance; leave it as a personnel call.
(3) Students who don't achieve "basic" proficiency in a state test be prohibited from moving forward to the next class in the progression.
Students who can't prove they know algebra can't take geometry. If they can't read at a ninth-grade level, they can't take sophomore English -- or, for that matter, sophomore-level history or science, which presumes sophomore-level reading ability.
Not only is it nearly impossible for these students to learn the new material, but they also slow everyone else as the teacher struggles to find a middle ground. By requiring students to repeat a subject, we can assess both the current and the next teacher based on student progress in an apples-to-apples comparison.
If Race to the Top is to have meaning, we have to be sure that students are actually getting to the top, instead of being stalled midway up the hill while we lie to them about their progress.
(4) That teachers be assessed on student improvement, not an absolute standard -- the so-called value-added assessment.
I suspect that my conditions will go nowhere, precisely because they are reasonable. Teachers can't be evaluated on students who miss 10 percent of the class or don't have the prerequisite knowledge for success. Yet accepting these reasonable conditions might reveal that common rhetorical goals for education (everyone goes to college, algebra for eighth-graders) are, to put it bluntly, impossible. So we'll either continue the status quo at a stalemate or the states will make the tests so easy that the standards are meaningless.
Yes, some students are doing poorly because their teachers are terrible. Other students are doing poorly because they simply don't care, their parents don't care, their cognitive abilities aren't up to the task or some vicious combination of factors we haven't figured out -- with no regard to teacher quality. No one is eager to discover the size of that second group, so serious testing with teeth will go nowhere.
That's too bad. We need to know how many students are failing because they don't attend class, how many students score "below basic" on the algebra test three years in a row, how many students fail all tests because they read at a fourth-grade level. We need to know if our education rhetoric is a pipe dream instead of an achievable reality blocked by those nasty teachers unions. And, of course, if it turns out that all our problems can be solved by rooting out bad teachers, we need to find that out, too.
So if we're going to evaluate teachers based on student results, let's negotiate some reasonable terms -- and let's not flinch from whatever reality those terms reveal.
The writer, a Stanford teacher program graduate, taught geometry, algebra and humanities at Oceana High School in Pacifica, Calif.
washingtonpost.com
To Parents and Teachers
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Accountable
- Posts: 24818
- Joined: Mon May 30, 2005 8:33 am
To Parents and Teachers
Accountable;1317625 wrote: I paste this letter in its entirety because (1) it's pretty short and (2) I couldn't find an excerpt good enough to carry the idea. Please read it and give your opinion.
The right way to assess teachers' performance
By Michele Kerr
Friday, June 18, 2010; A27
The Obama administration's Race to the Top program demands that teachers be evaluated by student test scores. Florida's legislature passed a bill in April to end teacher tenure and base pay increases on test-score improvement; although Gov. Charlie Crist vetoed that attempt, legislatures in Colorado, New York, Oklahoma and other states have also modified regulations regarding tenure with an eye toward Race to the Top. Teachers protest, but they are dismissed as union hacks with lousy skills, intent on protecting their cushy tenured jobs because they could never cut it in the real world.
I'm a first-year, second-career high school teacher, a "highly qualified" teacher of math, English and social science, a standing I achieved by passing rigorous tests. I'm not a union fan, nor am I in favor of pay increases based on seniority or added education. Like many new teachers throughout the country, I was pink-slipped and am looking for work, so I don't have a cushy job to protect.
I'm not your typical teacher. But I believe I speak for many teachers when I say I'm willing to be tested on student performance, provided certain conditions are met. So let's negotiate.
I propose that:
(1) Teachers be assessed based on only those students with 90 percent or higher attendance.
Without the missing students, the tests won't yield a complete picture of learning. But the tests' purpose is to yield a picture of teaching, which isn't the same thing as learning. Teachers can't teach children who aren't there.
Results will reveal that many students miss this attendance requirement. Put that problem on the parents' plates. Leave it out of the teaching assessment.
(2) Teachers be allowed to remove disruptive students from their classroom on a day-to-day basis.
Two to three students who just don't care can easily disrupt a class of strugglers. Moreover, many students who are consistently removed for their behavior do start to straighten up -- sitting in the office is pretty boring.
Yes, teachers could misuse this authority. But if teachers are evaluated by student learning, they must have control over classroom conditions. Then the administration can separately decide what to do with constantly disruptive students or those teachers who would rather remove students than teach them. But keep the issue away from measuring student performance; leave it as a personnel call.
(3) Students who don't achieve "basic" proficiency in a state test be prohibited from moving forward to the next class in the progression.
Students who can't prove they know algebra can't take geometry. If they can't read at a ninth-grade level, they can't take sophomore English -- or, for that matter, sophomore-level history or science, which presumes sophomore-level reading ability.
Not only is it nearly impossible for these students to learn the new material, but they also slow everyone else as the teacher struggles to find a middle ground. By requiring students to repeat a subject, we can assess both the current and the next teacher based on student progress in an apples-to-apples comparison.
If Race to the Top is to have meaning, we have to be sure that students are actually getting to the top, instead of being stalled midway up the hill while we lie to them about their progress.
(4) That teachers be assessed on student improvement, not an absolute standard -- the so-called value-added assessment.
I suspect that my conditions will go nowhere, precisely because they are reasonable. Teachers can't be evaluated on students who miss 10 percent of the class or don't have the prerequisite knowledge for success. Yet accepting these reasonable conditions might reveal that common rhetorical goals for education (everyone goes to college, algebra for eighth-graders) are, to put it bluntly, impossible. So we'll either continue the status quo at a stalemate or the states will make the tests so easy that the standards are meaningless.
Yes, some students are doing poorly because their teachers are terrible. Other students are doing poorly because they simply don't care, their parents don't care, their cognitive abilities aren't up to the task or some vicious combination of factors we haven't figured out -- with no regard to teacher quality. No one is eager to discover the size of that second group, so serious testing with teeth will go nowhere.
That's too bad. We need to know how many students are failing because they don't attend class, how many students score "below basic" on the algebra test three years in a row, how many students fail all tests because they read at a fourth-grade level. We need to know if our education rhetoric is a pipe dream instead of an achievable reality blocked by those nasty teachers unions. And, of course, if it turns out that all our problems can be solved by rooting out bad teachers, we need to find that out, too.
So if we're going to evaluate teachers based on student results, let's negotiate some reasonable terms -- and let's not flinch from whatever reality those terms reveal.
The writer, a Stanford teacher program graduate, taught geometry, algebra and humanities at Oceana High School in Pacifica, Calif.
washingtonpost.comSounds reasonable to me. I'd suggest the students that don't make the cut for whatever reason be put in some sort of self paced program.
The right way to assess teachers' performance
By Michele Kerr
Friday, June 18, 2010; A27
The Obama administration's Race to the Top program demands that teachers be evaluated by student test scores. Florida's legislature passed a bill in April to end teacher tenure and base pay increases on test-score improvement; although Gov. Charlie Crist vetoed that attempt, legislatures in Colorado, New York, Oklahoma and other states have also modified regulations regarding tenure with an eye toward Race to the Top. Teachers protest, but they are dismissed as union hacks with lousy skills, intent on protecting their cushy tenured jobs because they could never cut it in the real world.
I'm a first-year, second-career high school teacher, a "highly qualified" teacher of math, English and social science, a standing I achieved by passing rigorous tests. I'm not a union fan, nor am I in favor of pay increases based on seniority or added education. Like many new teachers throughout the country, I was pink-slipped and am looking for work, so I don't have a cushy job to protect.
I'm not your typical teacher. But I believe I speak for many teachers when I say I'm willing to be tested on student performance, provided certain conditions are met. So let's negotiate.
I propose that:
(1) Teachers be assessed based on only those students with 90 percent or higher attendance.
Without the missing students, the tests won't yield a complete picture of learning. But the tests' purpose is to yield a picture of teaching, which isn't the same thing as learning. Teachers can't teach children who aren't there.
Results will reveal that many students miss this attendance requirement. Put that problem on the parents' plates. Leave it out of the teaching assessment.
(2) Teachers be allowed to remove disruptive students from their classroom on a day-to-day basis.
Two to three students who just don't care can easily disrupt a class of strugglers. Moreover, many students who are consistently removed for their behavior do start to straighten up -- sitting in the office is pretty boring.
Yes, teachers could misuse this authority. But if teachers are evaluated by student learning, they must have control over classroom conditions. Then the administration can separately decide what to do with constantly disruptive students or those teachers who would rather remove students than teach them. But keep the issue away from measuring student performance; leave it as a personnel call.
(3) Students who don't achieve "basic" proficiency in a state test be prohibited from moving forward to the next class in the progression.
Students who can't prove they know algebra can't take geometry. If they can't read at a ninth-grade level, they can't take sophomore English -- or, for that matter, sophomore-level history or science, which presumes sophomore-level reading ability.
Not only is it nearly impossible for these students to learn the new material, but they also slow everyone else as the teacher struggles to find a middle ground. By requiring students to repeat a subject, we can assess both the current and the next teacher based on student progress in an apples-to-apples comparison.
If Race to the Top is to have meaning, we have to be sure that students are actually getting to the top, instead of being stalled midway up the hill while we lie to them about their progress.
(4) That teachers be assessed on student improvement, not an absolute standard -- the so-called value-added assessment.
I suspect that my conditions will go nowhere, precisely because they are reasonable. Teachers can't be evaluated on students who miss 10 percent of the class or don't have the prerequisite knowledge for success. Yet accepting these reasonable conditions might reveal that common rhetorical goals for education (everyone goes to college, algebra for eighth-graders) are, to put it bluntly, impossible. So we'll either continue the status quo at a stalemate or the states will make the tests so easy that the standards are meaningless.
Yes, some students are doing poorly because their teachers are terrible. Other students are doing poorly because they simply don't care, their parents don't care, their cognitive abilities aren't up to the task or some vicious combination of factors we haven't figured out -- with no regard to teacher quality. No one is eager to discover the size of that second group, so serious testing with teeth will go nowhere.
That's too bad. We need to know how many students are failing because they don't attend class, how many students score "below basic" on the algebra test three years in a row, how many students fail all tests because they read at a fourth-grade level. We need to know if our education rhetoric is a pipe dream instead of an achievable reality blocked by those nasty teachers unions. And, of course, if it turns out that all our problems can be solved by rooting out bad teachers, we need to find that out, too.
So if we're going to evaluate teachers based on student results, let's negotiate some reasonable terms -- and let's not flinch from whatever reality those terms reveal.
The writer, a Stanford teacher program graduate, taught geometry, algebra and humanities at Oceana High School in Pacifica, Calif.
washingtonpost.comSounds reasonable to me. I'd suggest the students that don't make the cut for whatever reason be put in some sort of self paced program.
“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities,â€
Voltaire
I have only one thing to do and that's
Be the wave that I am and then
Sink back into the ocean
Fiona Apple
Voltaire
I have only one thing to do and that's
Be the wave that I am and then
Sink back into the ocean
Fiona Apple
To Parents and Teachers
Agree completly.
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chonsigirl
- Posts: 33633
- Joined: Mon Mar 07, 2005 8:28 am
To Parents and Teachers
Yes, this is a hot topic in Maryland, they are filling out the grant for this program at the present moment. Teacher's unions are against it.
Here the evaluation standards would be:
1. Teacher's evaluation year: 50% of evaluation based on student scores
2. Non-evaluation year: 100% of evaluation based on student scores
The question unanswered is-what test? The state test, a mandated federal test, the school district's tests?
Here the evaluation standards would be:
1. Teacher's evaluation year: 50% of evaluation based on student scores
2. Non-evaluation year: 100% of evaluation based on student scores
The question unanswered is-what test? The state test, a mandated federal test, the school district's tests?
To Parents and Teachers
chonsigirl;1317632 wrote: Yes, this is a hot topic in Maryland, they are filling out the grant for this program at the present moment. Teacher's unions are against it.
Here the evaluation standards would be:
1. Teacher's evaluation year: 50% of evaluation based on student scores
2. Non-evaluation year: 100% of evaluation based on student scores
The question unanswered is-what test? The state test, a mandated federal test, the school district's tests?
I guess I don't understand why they wouldn't be evaluted the same every year?:-3
Here the evaluation standards would be:
1. Teacher's evaluation year: 50% of evaluation based on student scores
2. Non-evaluation year: 100% of evaluation based on student scores
The question unanswered is-what test? The state test, a mandated federal test, the school district's tests?
I guess I don't understand why they wouldn't be evaluted the same every year?:-3
I expressly forbid the use of any of my posts anywhere outside of FG (with the exception of the incredibly witty 'get a room already' )posted recently.
Folks who'd like to copy my intellectual work should expect to pay me for it.:-6
Folks who'd like to copy my intellectual work should expect to pay me for it.:-6
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chonsigirl
- Posts: 33633
- Joined: Mon Mar 07, 2005 8:28 am
To Parents and Teachers
I agree, Floppy. There should be an established way to evaluate a teacher, not this way this year, something different the next.
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fuzzywuzzy
- Posts: 6596
- Joined: Mon Feb 02, 2009 5:35 pm
To Parents and Teachers
Gosh you guys too eh?
NAPLAN and the government’s My School website, which uses the standardised data to rank and compare schools nationally, is widely opposed by teachers, parents, and students. The testing mechanism is an important part of the Rudd government’s drive to further promote a shift of students from public to private schools, to amalgamate and close so-called underperforming schools in working class areas, and to restrict education to the most narrow and empirically measureable activities with the ultimate aim of producing a more “productive†workforce.
Australian teacher unions call off NAPLAN boycott
Also . Naplan scores and statistically comparable schools. My schools website
this is for my boys school
School Profile | ACARA
Then click the schools we've been compared to and you'll see it doesn't make sense.
Statistically Similar schools | ACARA
A rural school with a 1% indigenuos population compared to a school like Robinvale with a high indigenous population and then comparing it with a primary school in suburban Melbourne is just crazy talk.
And after our Naplan tests we all heard (3 instances in my area alone) how teachers were keeping some students at home (because of certain welfare concerns) so as not to sit the tests because only students that sit the test are counted . Any children who will perform under the average are encouraged not to take the test.
It's all about underperforming teachers instead of scoring a school on the basis of who needs more resources and help.
Be very careful guys before you want this type of scoring to come in . You'll find yourself out of a job or worse your school being closed down.
NAPLAN and the government’s My School website, which uses the standardised data to rank and compare schools nationally, is widely opposed by teachers, parents, and students. The testing mechanism is an important part of the Rudd government’s drive to further promote a shift of students from public to private schools, to amalgamate and close so-called underperforming schools in working class areas, and to restrict education to the most narrow and empirically measureable activities with the ultimate aim of producing a more “productive†workforce.
Australian teacher unions call off NAPLAN boycott
Also . Naplan scores and statistically comparable schools. My schools website
this is for my boys school
School Profile | ACARA
Then click the schools we've been compared to and you'll see it doesn't make sense.
Statistically Similar schools | ACARA
A rural school with a 1% indigenuos population compared to a school like Robinvale with a high indigenous population and then comparing it with a primary school in suburban Melbourne is just crazy talk.
And after our Naplan tests we all heard (3 instances in my area alone) how teachers were keeping some students at home (because of certain welfare concerns) so as not to sit the tests because only students that sit the test are counted . Any children who will perform under the average are encouraged not to take the test.
It's all about underperforming teachers instead of scoring a school on the basis of who needs more resources and help.
Be very careful guys before you want this type of scoring to come in . You'll find yourself out of a job or worse your school being closed down.
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Accountable
- Posts: 24818
- Joined: Mon May 30, 2005 8:33 am
To Parents and Teachers
We're evaluated the same way every year. Student performance is not part of it. 
The VP stops in (or not and says he did) sits in the back, looks for specific things posted on the walls, and listens for specific phrases being regurgitated by the teacher (showing proper questioning technique). That's a bit over-simplified, but not much. Our standardized tests seldom cover what the curriculum requires, yet weigh heavily in grading school performance.
I hate eyewash, which it seems is all the paperwork is for. I pray for the district- or state-level mucketymuck who comes along and asks "What's the purpose? Then let's measure that!" even though I know it will mean more work for me. At least it will be meaningful work.
The VP stops in (or not and says he did) sits in the back, looks for specific things posted on the walls, and listens for specific phrases being regurgitated by the teacher (showing proper questioning technique). That's a bit over-simplified, but not much. Our standardized tests seldom cover what the curriculum requires, yet weigh heavily in grading school performance. I hate eyewash, which it seems is all the paperwork is for. I pray for the district- or state-level mucketymuck who comes along and asks "What's the purpose? Then let's measure that!" even though I know it will mean more work for me. At least it will be meaningful work.
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Accountable
- Posts: 24818
- Joined: Mon May 30, 2005 8:33 am
To Parents and Teachers
Ahso!;1317628 wrote: Sounds reasonable to me. I'd suggest the students that don't make the cut for whatever reason be put in some sort of self paced program.
You're right. We need to pay more attention to the different way people learn, and put them with teachers who teach that way. We'd be far more successful.
You're right. We need to pay more attention to the different way people learn, and put them with teachers who teach that way. We'd be far more successful.
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Clodhopper
- Posts: 5115
- Joined: Mon Feb 25, 2008 5:11 pm
To Parents and Teachers
I may well be wrong about this, but my impression of teacher assessment is that it is more about finding people to blame than improving education.
Over here schools are ranked according to the pupils' performance in Standard Attainment Tests. This has led to schools teaching to the test, not "educating" in the wider and more valuable sense.
The relationship between teacher and class is often very subtle and delicate. Any test I've seen is a very, very blunt instrument. Worse than useless imo.
Over here schools are ranked according to the pupils' performance in Standard Attainment Tests. This has led to schools teaching to the test, not "educating" in the wider and more valuable sense.
The relationship between teacher and class is often very subtle and delicate. Any test I've seen is a very, very blunt instrument. Worse than useless imo.
The crowd: "Yes! We are all individuals!"
Lone voice: "I'm not."
Lone voice: "I'm not."
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chonsigirl
- Posts: 33633
- Joined: Mon Mar 07, 2005 8:28 am
To Parents and Teachers
That is true, you know what the test is going to ask, and make sure you cover those topics. Less leeway for extra stuff. I usually get through the curriculum with 1-2 weeks to spare, then I can go back at the end, after testing of course, to do these type of lessons.