Testing teachers
Common sense dictates that if an evaluation system rates nearly everyone the same, it’s not a very effective system.
Yet for the last 40 years, Pennsylvania teachers have been evaluated using a two-category system, which is determined based on observation whether a teacher was “satisfactory” or “unsatisfactory.” This simple-to-a-fault system resulted in 99.4 percent of all teachers and 99.2 percent of all principals across the state being given satisfactory ratings during the 2009-10 school year. That would be great if test results for students corresponded with such lofty ratings, but the reality is really quite different.
That is why we are quite pleased to see progress toward a major overhaul of the assessments.
Legislation enacted last month offers specific criteria on which educators will be measured, and a possible new protocol for classroom observation has been getting trial runs in dozens of districts across the state. Starting with 2013-14 school year, the rating categories will expand from the previous two options to include “distinguished,” “proficient,” “needs improvement” or “failing.” The first two are considered satisfactory.
According to the new law, 50 percent of the teaching assessment will be based on observation, including preparation, instruction and classroom environment.
The other half will be based on various measures of student achievement:
n 15 percent for “building level data,” such as test scores, graduation rates, attendance and Advanced Placement course participation;
n 15 percent for “teacher-specific data,” including student progress;
n 20 percent for “elective data,” which are measures developed by local districts that could include student projects and portfolios.
For teachers of grades or subjects not covered by standardized tests, evaluations will include 15 percent building-level data and 35 percent elective data, but no teacher-specific data, Education Department spokesman Tim Eller said.
This is a move in the right direction as it attempts to account for the fact that a good teacher can’t be judged by one or two elements. Moreover, it doesn’t replicate the mistakes of No Child Left Behind by putting undue weight on standardized test scores.
There will surely be those who find this new system flawed — and they may be right, as all rating systems are difficult to nail perfectly — but this is a case where improvement was clearly needed. It took four decades, but Pennsylvania has finally figured out their evaluation system is unsatisfactory. It is far more difficult to evaluate a teacher than, say, a worker on an assembly line, but there is a clear need for some sort of evaluation system.
Under the previous method, where everybody was lumped into one giant satisfactory category, there was no way that those teachers who needed improvement could get it and no way to set apart those who were truly exceptional. We owe it to the students and the teachers to do a better job of evaluating teachers.
But if there’s one area that the new system could clearly improve on, it’s the fact it doesn’t address nepotism. We can’t help but think that the presence of nepotism is a severe hindrance in fairly evaluating teachers and principals. It doesn’t take a leap of imagination to envision a scenario where an under performing or generally underwhelming teacher is given a better evaluation based on their relation to a school director. After all, if a principal or superintendent wants to keep his or her job, they mustn’t run afoul of the school board.
Any ranking system is going to be flawed as long as nepotism is alive and well in our school districts. Common sense again dictates that you can’t expect relatives to objectively evaluate their kin. It took 40 years for the state to re-evaluate the teacher evaluation system; it is our hope that movement on a statewide ban on nepotism would come much, much sooner than that.