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NYC is adapting a system that (theoretically) takes into account the vital factors of teaching and acknowledges some limitations. IMO the limitations far outweigh the benefits of assessing teachers this way.
From your link..here's what goes into a teacher's evaluation:
"The formula used to derive teachers’ rankings looks like something off the blackboard in the films “Good Will Hunting” or “I.Q.”
It takes into account previous reading and math test scores. Free- or reduced-price lunch status. Special education status. Whether the student speaks fluent English. How many suspensions and absences students received. Whether the student was held back. Whether they attended summer school. The student’s race and gender.
Then it adjusts for those characteristics for the entire classroom."
I just cannot believe the above. Previous scores ? Free or reduced lunch ? How well they speak English ? Suspensions and absences ? Student race & gender ? Like a teacher has ANY control over that ?
Here's a NYTimes article on the just released NYC teacher ratings.
One 8th grade teacher whose students consistently produced outstanding scores (89th percentile) got ranked a "0" on teacher performance because the formula expected her to do better (90+ percentile).
Another teacher received a very low rating for the year she was out on maternity/childcare leave.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/26/ny...?ref=education
The ratings have high margins of error, are now nearly two years out of date and are based on tests that the state has acknowledged became too predictable and easy to pass over time.
The only way test scores could be used to evaluate teacher perfromance is if the student was required to pass the test to pass the class. You cannot use a test that a student had no vested interest in to evaluate how well their teacher taught!!! I have seen students show up for the ACT test, bubble one answer and then take a nap. What do their scores say about my teaching ability?
The day you require students to demonstrate improvement to pass the class is the day you can measure the worth of the teacher in said class on test score improvement. What you need to measure is not the improvement in passing scores from one year to the next but the average improvement of each child in the classroom!!! We should be measuring how much more each individual student has learned but to do that, the student must have a vested interest in the test. It has to have value to them. They should take an entrance and exit exam and it is those scores that should be compared. I'm not sure how you'd make the entrance exam matter to the child though. The exit exam could be a final they must pass to pass the class.
NYC is adapting a system that (theoretically) takes into account the vital factors of teaching and acknowledges some limitations. IMO the limitations far outweigh the benefits of assessing teachers this way.
Arizona's superintendent over education is adamant that two thirds of teacher evaluation come from student testing and parent surveys. Essentially, we will be evaluated based on norm-referenced tests which guarantee that only a small percentage of students can exceed and not all sudents can meet the standard. If you are fortunate enough to teach honors classes (I am not- in truth, many case managers at my school come to me with their kids because I differentiate well and have taken a bunch of Sped courses), you would still be at the mercy of anecdotal data provided by parents who have zero vested interest to be objective with their input...
A bad situation here in Arizona is about to get much worse.
IT is all tied to NCLB OR if a district gets "waivers" it is tied to Race to the Top guidelines.
In NC, there are 6 standards for teacher evaluation.
On February 29 our district is making all teachers' grade books available ON LINE for parents to see their children's grades. THis will or can be used by parents to evaluate teacher's effectiveness.
BUT none of the first 5 standards matter if a teacher scores below a 7 on the 6th standard--ADEQUATE YEARLY PROGRESS (AYP) if my students fail to show measurable growth on their EOC tests 2 consecutive years in a row--I WILL BE RIF'd---even if the first five standards were 9+...
The only way test scores could be used to evaluate teacher perfromance is if the student was required to pass the test to pass the class. You cannot use a test that a student had no vested interest in to evaluate how well their teacher taught!!! I have seen students show up for the ACT test, bubble one answer and then take a nap. What do their scores say about my teaching ability?
The day you require students to demonstrate improvement to pass the class is the day you can measure the worth of the teacher in said class on test score improvement. What you need to measure is not the improvement in passing scores from one year to the next but the average improvement of each child in the classroom!!! We should be measuring how much more each individual student has learned but to do that, the student must have a vested interest in the test. It has to have value to them. They should take an entrance and exit exam and it is those scores that should be compared. I'm not sure how you'd make the entrance exam matter to the child though. The exit exam could be a final they must pass to pass the class.
They are running out of options. They won't blame themselves. They won't blame parents because there is nothing they can do about it. Kids won't be blamed because they are the "product" of the system.
The only ones left to blame for kids failing are the teachers.
I don't know what will happen though after they get rid of all these "low performing" teachers because that bar is near 100% which is impossible to achieve.
They are running out of options. They won't blame themselves. They won't blame parents because there is nothing they can do about it. Kids won't be blamed because they are the "product" of the system.
The only ones left to blame for kids failing are the teachers.
I don't know what will happen though after they get rid of all these "low performing" teachers because that bar is near 100% which is impossible to achieve.
The high stakes tests will always produce a failure rate of aproximately 13% because they are produced on a bell curve, and this ensures that about 68% of testers will score within 1 standard deviation of the mean while the remaining testers will be split between exceeding and failing.
It is crazy to create jargon like: "all kids must pass," or "all students will meet mastery" of a test that is designed to differentiate the whole population.
I've had a district statistician explain to me that certain questions are removed from the test sample to account for the bell curve, but that still applies across the entire population, so it doesn't change anything. Another statistician told me that the line for meeting mastery is set so that the entire population can meet, but that would mean that the line for meeting is set at 0 because the test is designed to exclude by standard deviations from the mean.
Essentially, these tests are unacceptable for the task that educators have been given, but until educators start leaving the classrooms to run for office (which isn't going to happen), lawyers will continue to hold a majority of public offices, and exclusionary testing processes are a fact of life for them. Unfortunately, test in or get out isn't a very good method for our public schools- but why should politicians care when they have such a plentiful population to point the finger at?
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