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It doesn't matter if people like being evaluated. Virtually all of us are in one way or another.
Apparently you didn't actually read 2 or 3 of my posts. I didn't say test scores should be the one way to evaluate a teacher. I also talked about observing teachers to see if they are implementing "best practices".
Now, if I were evaluating your reading teacher, based on your reading comprehension skills...epic fail.
I was not commenting on your proposed system of evaluation. I was commenting on the current system of evaluation. I was responding to your statement that, "I think what many teachers don't like is the idea that they should be evaluated," by explaining that the current system of evaluation is ridiculously poor and would not be tolerated in the private sector (because of its inefficiency, its inaccuracy, and its effect on employee motivation and ultimately productivity). That is why I snipped the part in the middle about your proposed system; it was not part of the point I was responding to and I was not building a response to that proposal. Your proposal is fine. It is not what schools do by any stretch.
Edit: Just to provide an example of the current situation in evaluation. My wife taught in public schools (2 elementary, 1 middle, 1 high school) for three years. In that time, the middle school principal sat in on her class once. She never even met either elementary principal. She had a high school vice principal sit in 3 times (once per year). The middle school vice principal sat in twice the third year (mostly because the vice principal was also her department head that year). The high school department head also sat in twice per year.
Her evaluations were based purely on her students' performance on the vocabulary sections of the state standardized test; since she was expected to devote the two weeks before the testing period to vocabulary study. Nothing else other than her students' vocabulary score improvement counted. Oh, and she was an orchestra teacher. Her evaluations were actually great because orchestra self-selects for dedicated students, but the evaluation system and lack of guidance drove her buggy. (Her high school principal did once ask for an explanation of why her orchestra "dropped" from a 3 to a 2 at state large group festival, when it had been consistently scoring 3s and 4s in the years before she came there. Sorry to the music teachers out there for the eyeroll that will induce.)
Last edited by marigolds6; 09-29-2015 at 09:46 AM..
I was not commenting on your proposed system of evaluation. I was commenting on the current system of evaluation. I was responding to your statement that, "I think what many teachers don't like is the idea that they should be evaluated," by explaining that the current system of evaluation is ridiculously poor and would not be tolerated in the private sector (because of its inefficiency, its inaccuracy, and its effect on employee motivation and ultimately productivity). That is why I snipped the part in the middle about your proposed system; it was not part of the point I was responding to and I was not building a response to that proposal. Your proposal is fine. It is not what schools do by any stretch.
...
How would you expect a school system to pay for the kind of evaluation you are suggesting? My school had approximately 80 teachers. At 20 observations per year per teacher (your suggestion), that would be 1,600 hours of observations, plus another 3,200 hours to write the evaluation report. 4,800 hours for evaluation in one school. That's somewhere around $120,000 in costs for one school for evaluations (assuming the observers are only getting around $25 per hour.
Now, for my school system we had about 22 high schools, 22 middle schools, and something like 125 elementary schools. So now we're up to about $2.6 million just for the middle schools, another $5.2 million for the high schools. And $7.5 million for the elementary schools. Let's see, something like $15 million for my school system, without the related expenses such as training the observers, supervising the observers, and evaluating the observers.
That's why schools don't do that kind of evaluation "by any stretch".
I was in a situation when I was teaching in Greece, NY (a suburb of Rochester). Another teacher and I had the same students, me in science, he in English. My kids were doing great. His classroom situation was perhaps the worst I have ever seen in 33 years of education. Same kids, different teachers. (And BTW, there was a year when I totally failed with one classroom of 9th grade science students, so this is not about me bragging).
By your logic, you should have been fired for that.
By your logic, you should have been fired for that.
Not at all.
First of all, the discussion we have been having certainly doesn't encompass all of anyone's philosophy of education.
Second, and I don't believe we've discussed this in this thread, I'm not one of the Americans who believes we should run around firing everyone who doesn't perform up to some particular threshold...at least not for one bad patch. Let's see...that year I had one class I couldn't bring to the success level I desired. But that was after 10 years (that would be 50 classes) of success. Let's see -- 98% success rate. I'd rate that pretty good.
The concern with a teacher comes when you have a pattern of failing to lead students to success. For example, we had a math teacher of 7th grade in our school who -- every year -- had a fail rate that was the highest in the school in any subject. Clearly, that's a problem.
And so, what do you do. Instantly fire them? No, but you begin to quickly work on the issues. Buddy them up with a coaching teacher, provide inservice opportunities to improve skills, etc.
Now might say to just fire them. In social studies or English, candidates are a dime a dozen. In math and science it was often a real challenge to find a satisfactory candidate to fill a vacancy.
In fact, AMSS, I don't think I've talked much about firing teachers anywhere in this discussion. So stop extrapolating my words.
How would you expect a school system to pay for the kind of evaluation you are suggesting? My school had approximately 80 teachers. At 20 observations per year per teacher (your suggestion), that would be 1,600 hours of observations, plus another 3,200 hours to write the evaluation report. 4,800 hours for evaluation in one school. That's somewhere around $120,000 in costs for one school for evaluations (assuming the observers are only getting around $25 per hour.
Now, for my school system we had about 22 high schools, 22 middle schools, and something like 125 elementary schools. So now we're up to about $2.6 million just for the middle schools, another $5.2 million for the high schools. And $7.5 million for the elementary schools. Let's see, something like $15 million for my school system, without the related expenses such as training the observers, supervising the observers, and evaluating the observers.
That's why schools don't do that kind of evaluation "by any stretch".
As I have said repeatedly....
Taxpayers are unwilling to pay for effective evaluation, then complain that teachers are not effectively evaluated.
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