Hey ya’ll,
For the next few weeks, I plan on talking about getting ready to enter the teaching world. I’m currently attending interviews, job fairs, and information sessions on the regular. Today, I’d like to share with you a synthesis paper I wrote about teacher evaluation for an education policy class. If you’re not into policy (or teaching), maybe skip this post. I’ll be back to my regularly scheduled inane thoughts in a few weeks.
On January 25, 2011, President Obama addressed the nation about the state of the union. After acknowledging the still worrisome state of the economy, he discussed the role of education in economic growth and the part that strong teachers play in fixing a broken system. He remarked, “…after parents, the biggest impact on a child’s success comes from the man or woman at the front of the classroom” (Obama, 2011). President Obama also mentioned the Race to the Top initiative, which gives money to states with “the most innovative plans to improve teacher quality and student achievement” (Obama, 2011). At the moment, educational reform is a top priority in the United States.
In an effort to improve teacher quality in Los Angeles, The L.A. Times “obtained 
seven years of math and English test scores from the Los Angeles Unified School District and used the information to estimate the effectiveness of L.A. teachers” (Felch, Song, and Smith, 2010). The newspaper rated teachers using standardized test results across the years using value-added analysis (Felch et al., 2010).The Times then published a database which made information about teacher effectiveness (in regards to standardized tests) public (Felch et al., 2010). An argument for the importance of a study such as this one is that ineffective teachers are a factor that can keep students from improving in test scores from year to year. Such teachers “often face no consequences and get no extra help” (Felch et al., 2010). Teachers on the high end of the spectrum can “propel students from below grade level to advanced in a single year” (Felch et al., 2010).
Not everyone agrees with the validity of The L.A. Times study. In the article, Felch et al. quote A.J. Duffy, who is the president of United Teachers Los Angeles. Duffy “was adamant that value-added should not be used to evaluate teachers, citing concerns about its reliance on test scores and its tendency to encourage ‘teaching to the test” (2011). He cites a problem that many educators are familiar with; student achievement can be measured in more ways than a standardized test. On February 7, 2011, Valerie Strauss from The Washington Post wrote that “a new study” shows that there are “big flaws” with The L.A. Times project. At the University of Colorado at Boulder, Derek Briggs and Ben Domingue tried to replicate the results that Rand Corp. senior economist Richard Buddin found “through an independent re-analysis of the same data that he had used” (Strauss, 2011). What they found ‘raises serious questions about Buddin’s analysis and conclusions” (Strauss, 2011).
Standardized testing is also not consistent across subject matters. In Education Week, Stephen Sawchu writes that a “widely cited statistic puts the proportion of those who teach in nontested grades and subjects at about 70 percent” (2011). Even for those teachers who do have standardized tests scores available, there can be problems with “technical issues” (Sawchu, 2011). Many subjects “are more performance-based,” like “physical education” or “writing,” and would require “performance assessments to become part of the mix of measures” (Sawchu, 2011). It’s clear that other ways to evaluate teachers must be considered, or “most of the nation’s teachers” will be left out of the “value-added” discussion (Sawchu, 2011). Some argue there are also problems of taking into account demographics and disabilities into test scores. Cathy Corbo, the president of a teachers’ union in Albany, New York, “said that among her union’s members, finding appropriate techniques for assessing teachers of students with disabilities remains a key concern” (Sawchu, 2011).
Another problem with teacher assessment in general is that the qualities of an “effective” teacher are difficult to pin down. In The New Yorker, Malcolm Gladwell wrote that “there are certain jobs where almost nothing you can learn about candidates before the start predicts how they’ll do once they’re hired” (2008). The problem with predicating teacher success is compared with predicting the success of quarterbacks as they move from college to the NFL (Gladwell, 2008). The dean of the University of Virginia’s Curry School of Education, Bob Pianta, is quoted about his “system for evaluating…student-teacher interaction” which finds that having a “regard for student perspective” is an important aspect of an effective teacher (Gladwell, 2008). Gladwell also presents the importance of Jacob Kounin’s “withitness” concept for an effective teacher, which is the ability to “desist” misbehavior with the “proverbial ‘eyes in the back of her head’” (2008). The L.A. Times study found that “experience, education, and training” did not necessarily make an effective teacher, but that being “engaging” was important for effectiveness (Felch et al., 2010). The solution that Gladwell offered is based in a comparison between the difficulties of hiring a successful financial advisor. The financial-advice field “throws the door wide-open” for candidates (20008). Gladwell suggests that the teaching field “should be open to anyone with a pulse and a college degree” and should have “an apprenticeship system that allows candidates to be rigorously evaluated” (2008). At the moment, “pay and job protections [for teachers] depend mostly on seniority, not performance” (Felch et al., 2010). If the pay is the same across the board, there is less incentive to improve and use best practices in teaching. A system based on the financial-advice field would be very costly, and would suddenly turn teaching into a “high-risk profession” (Gladwell, 2008). Success would require paying effective teachers who “survive the minnowing” more (Gladwell, 2008).
Because there still needs to be research and conversations about what makes a teacher effective, the “value-added” analysis of data is very controversial. The process of weeding out the bad from the good will be long, and even then, it is only “the first step” (Felch et al., 2008).
References
Felch, J, Song, J, & Smith, D. (2010, August 14). Who’s teaching L.A.’s kids?. The L.A. Times, Retrieved from http://latimes.com/news/local/la-me-teachers-value-20100815,0,2695044.story
Gladwell, M. (2008, December 15). Most likely to succeed. The New Yorker, Retrieved from http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/12/15/081215fa_fact_gladwell
Obama, B. The White House, Office of the Press Secretary. (2011). Remarks by the president in state of union address Washington, D.C.: Retrieved from http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/01/25/remarks-president-state-union-address
Sawchu, S. (2011, January 31). Wanted: Ways to assess the majority of teachers. Education Week, Retrieved from http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2011/02/02/19teachers_ep.h30.html
Strauss, V. (2011, February 7). New study: How L.A. Times teachers data is flawed [Web log message]. Retrieved from http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/teachers/new-study-finds-flaws-with-la.html
