The debate about how (or whether) to consider student achievement when evaluating teacher performance appears to put policy makers and some of the leading scholars in the field on a collision course. As the matter of whether New York City should release the ratings of 12,000 teachers based on their students’ test scores goes before a judge, a group of scholars is seeking signatories to a petition that declares: “Legislatures should not mandate and districts should not pursue a test-based approach to teacher evaluation that is unproven and likely to harm not only teachers but the children they instruct.” The authors are some of the most highly regarded and recognized leaders in education research and include five former presidents of the American Educational Research Association as well as the elected leaders of other professional groups in the field.
But aren’t they too late? Twenty-five states and hundreds of districts already allow or are using measures of student achievement in teacher evaluations, which affect decisions about compensation and in some cases removal. So, are the scholars fighting a forest fire with a garden hose and refusing to acknowledge that reality? Well, maybe not.
The statement says test scores should not be “heavily relied on” and that value-added measures — which use sophisticated formulas to calculate the discrete impact of a student’s teacher — should not be used as the “primary way” to evaluate teachers. The petition says test scores “are one piece of information for school leaders to use to make judgments about teacher effectiveness” and “such scores should be only a part of an overall comprehensive evaluation.” That’s exactly how the system in New York is designed. Student achievement counts for less than half of the evaluation. So, is that “heavy reliance”? It’s certainly not the “primary way” that teachers are being evaluated.
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at 8:36 am
[...] states and hundreds of districts use measures of student achievement in teacher evaluations, writes Richard Colvin on HechingerEd. However, student achievement counts for less than half of a [...]
at 11:00 am
No they are not too late. The Obama administration rushed too quickly to push VAMs, but it empowered districts to use, as well as misuse test scores. As systems abuse test scores, they will have to prove in court that the stuff coming out of the statistical black box says something about the performance of the teacher they seek to fire. Then, the experts’ evidence will be used to great effect.
I predict three things. First, principals will be the canary in the coal mine. By the time most districts try to fire teachers with VAMs, they will already be seeing an exodus of qualified principals leaving schools where they will learn that it is statistically impossble to meet growth targets. What I don’t predict is an honest discussion of the factor which will be #1 BY FAR in principals’ minds. How can inner city secondary principals hope to approach their statistical targets without enforcing their Codes of Conduct? What happens to the principals who try to provide disciplinary backing for teachers trying to raise standards?
Secondly, unions will play a smart chess game. They will identify the worst abuses of VAMS in evaluations and focus their legal efforts getting legal precedents that will ultimately kill VAMs for evaluation when controlled by management alone.
Thirdly, the system will crater when it gets to high school. Wouldn’t you love to be the first principal to fire an Algebra or Biology teacher based on Math or Science middle school test scores fed into that model? You’d be destroyed on cross examination. What I don’t expect, but what needs to be done is to counter sue in those cases, seeking punitive damages. Take a VAM devised with 5th grade Math scores and uses it to set growth targets and try to apply it to a hard core middle school, after all the easier-to-educate kids left for choice schools, leaving a 6th grade population that is worlds apart from the 5th grade population. If a middle school principal has the faulty judement to try to fire a 6th grade teacher at a hard core middle school based on data from a feeder school that looks like America (as is true in urban districts across the nation), he should pay punitive damages. He would be desecrating the basic principles of the rule of law.
Judges don’t feel comfortable with collective punishment. Soon, they will stop this craze. Besides, as the union knows, replacement teachers don’t exist. How will you recruit new talent as you are also trying to rob teachers of their fundamental rights as Americams?