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NCLB is code for "No Child Allowed To Excel." Everyone ELSE gets held back until the dummies can catch up.
Unfortunately, you are correct. I teach in an upper SES school and I'm constantly pushed by my admins to cut content because I'm going too fast. As things are, approximately, 20% of my kids get A's and the few kids who fail fail because they don't turn in their work. Yet I'm told to slow down because I have too many kids failing. Seriously? Look in the grade book. The problem is the zeros for assignments not turned in. They're actually pushing us to give 50% E's for those assignments so those kids can pass on minimal grades. In theory I agree with the concept but I have to many kids who turn in next to nothing and the idea of them passing when they only did half the work really bothers me.
With a 50% E, you could skip every other test and score 70% on the ones you take and pass. Make that 75% if you want one of the tests you skip to be the final. I'm so on the fence with this. It's so darned easy to EARN a 50% E that I just don't feel I should be handing them out for free. I allow students to turn in assignments at any time for 50% credit. All they have to do for this credit is copy a friend's assignment who got it right. And they want me to give FREE 50% E's instead so lazy kids who can't even be bothered copying someone else's work can pass.....GRRRRRRR
if all our teaches were excellent we would have fixed 50% of the problem in our schools.
Name one profession where all of the people in it are excellent? You need to change excellent to acceptable. We need to get rid of unacceptable teachers but if we only hire those who are excellent class sizes will be so large, due to a critical shortage of teachers, that they won't be able to do much.
I know several very good teachers but I don't know that I know any I'd call excellent. Most of the teachers I my building are good but not excellent. They do their jobs well. Like any profession the percentage of people who will be excellent will be very small.
Name one profession where all of the people in it are excellent? You need to change excellent to acceptable. We need to get rid of unacceptable teachers but if we only hire those who are excellent class sizes will be so large, due to a critical shortage of teachers, that they won't be able to do much.
I know several very good teachers but I don't know that I know any I'd call excellent. Most of the teachers I my building are good but not excellent. They do their jobs well. Like any profession the percentage of people who will be excellent will be very small.
One point that is often missed in this discussion is that a particular teacher may be great for some students and bad for others. It all goes back to teaching style and the fact that all children don't learn either the same way or at the same pace. I've had teachers that I felt were terrific, but other students didn't like them. I've also had teachers I would have classified as poor, yet my friends thought they were great. Determining whether a teacher is "excellent" can be an extremely subjective process.
I see flaws in all these techniques of determining a good teacher:
1. Measuring class performance. Some teachers get students who are very motivated to learn and others get students who are very unmotivated. I also see a bias here in favor of middle and upper income areas where parents are heavily involved in helping their children learn.
2. Giving teachers a written test. This one ought to be obvious. Great students are often poor teachers and visa versa. Written tests do a poor job of assessing who is the best teacher.
3. Letting principals and administrators decide who are the best teachers. Very flawed. The people who get the best evaluations will always be those who are "buddies" of the principal, instead of those who are truly the best teachers in the school.
4. Letting students and parents rate teachers. The flaw here is that the teacher who will get the best ratings is the one who teaches the easiest class and is always nice to the kids. On the other hand, the teacher who is pushing the kids to learn will be thought of as a "bad teacher".
I wish there were some easy method available for determining who the best teachers are, but that process is very elusive. We haven't found it yet. Although, I do wonder if a combination of the methods I've mentioned above plus a sort of "peer rating" system (where teachers are rated by other teachers) might help us weed out a few of the really "hardcore bad cases" at the bottom of the profession? I'm leery though. These processes can be manipulated by the wrong people
One point that is often missed in this discussion is that a particular teacher may be great for some students and bad for others. It all goes back to teaching style and the fact that all children don't learn either the same way or at the same pace. I've had teachers that I felt were terrific, but other students didn't like them. I've also had teachers I would have classified as poor, yet my friends thought they were great. Determining whether a teacher is "excellent" can be an extremely subjective process.
I see flaws in all these techniques of determining a good teacher:
1. Measuring class performance. Some teachers get students who are very motivated to learn and others get students who are very unmotivated. I also see a bias here in favor of middle and upper income areas where parents are heavily involved in helping their children learn.
2. Giving teachers a written test. This one ought to be obvious. Great students are often poor teachers and visa versa. Written tests do a poor job of assessing who is the best teacher.
3. Letting principals and administrators decide who are the best teachers. Very flawed. The people who get the best evaluations will always be those who are "buddies" of the principal, instead of those who are truly the best teachers in the school.
4. Letting students and parents rate teachers. The flaw here is that the teacher who will get the best ratings is the one who teaches the easiest class and is always nice to the kids. On the other hand, the teacher who is pushing the kids to learn will be thought of as a "bad teacher".
I wish there were some easy method available for determining who the best teachers are, but that process is very elusive. We haven't found it yet. Although, I do wonder if a combination of the methods I've mentioned above plus a sort of "peer rating" system (where teachers are rated by other teachers) might help us weed out a few of the really "hardcore bad cases" at the bottom of the profession? I'm leery though. These processes can be manipulated by the wrong people
That is very true. I have students I click with and students who hate me and wish I would die. Even the band director who is one of the nicest teachers I've ever met has kids who refuse to take band because they will not have him as a teacher.
I wasn't challenging the idea of what an excellent teacher is but rather the ridiculousness of expecting any profession to be filled with only excellent people. It can't be done no matter whose definition of excellent you use. You'll run out of excellent people long before you run out of positions to fill.
You're also correct that those who get the best evaluations are the buddies of the principal while those of us who are disliked by our principal can't buy a decent evaluation. I am painfully aware of this. According to my peers and student success data, I'm a good teacher but I will never get a good evaluation from my current principal. Since he is the one who presents the case of whether to keep me or replace me given that I will tenure next year, I'm toast and I know it. Not because I'm a bad teacher but just because he doesn't like me. It sucks but I can't do anything about it. What I needed to do was kiss up to him and be his buddy from day one but that's not my style so it didn't happen.
I will challenge you on tests though. While you are correct that passing a test does not guarantee that a teacher will be good, failing it means the teacher doesn't know enough of the material to teach the material and that is a teacher who should not be in the classroom. This is just a weeding tool to cut off the bottom. As to whether or not better scores mean better teachers, someone would have to look at the data but that data is not available because it is only reported whether a person passes or fails. While I know my scores, I can't compare them to the scores of others and neither can my admins.
When I came out of college they were still reporting the actual score to the schools but they no longer do so in Michigan because they don't want people hired/not hired based on who had the higher score. We really have no idea whether there is any correlation to teacher quality and test scores, however, as a parent, I would not want someone who cannot pass these tests to teach my kids. I've taken the tests. I know how easy they are.
I also agree on letting parents and students rate teachers. That becomes a popularity contest.
IMO there's only one way to rate teachers and that is to use progress data from the actual students teachers teach but then you'd need a running average because, statistically speaking, we get different mixes of kids each year. You also need to give the kids a vested interest in the tests that they are taking. These should be common exit exams and if the kids don't pass the exam they don't pass the class. As things are now, the only person who has no vested interest in the test score is the person taking the test. You can't determine the quality of their education based on a test they don't care about.
IMO, common exit exams also fix the problem of passing kids just to pass them and that is a HUGE problem in education. It is very hard to teach your material when you have to shore up prerequisite material for kids who never should have been placed in your class in the first place. There should be an accepted standard for passing that is common for all schools. If a student passes algebra I that should mean they actually know a certain amount of algebra. If they don't, they should retake the class with remediation or go into another class for people who didn't pass. Maybe you do a one semester review of algebra, designed for kids who didn't pass algebra the first time, and try again on the exit exam. I'm not sure simply putting them back into the class they didn't do well in is the best idea.
IMO, common exit exams also fix the problem of passing kids just to pass them. There should be an accepted standard for passing that is common for all schools. If a student passes algebra I that should mean they actually know a certain amount of algebra. If they don't, they should retake the class with remediation or go into another class for people who didn't pass.
Oh, but you can't DO that...you'd bruise poor Johnny's fragile self-esteem...
As of now, the students in the Volunteer State have predicted scores on standardized exams based on all previous exams (like TCAP's at K-8 level, other EOC's, PLAN tests, etc.,). The issue we have with the predicted scores is that it's based on a formula which we are not allowed to see. IOW, we don't know exactly how these predicted scores are actually made. We've have many math teachers (and others w/ knowledge) try to replicate the formula so we can have a better understanding of it, but no joy. It's quite suspicious to many of us, which brings the actual predicted score into question.
Now, if the student
meets their predicted score, the teacher shows no growth. (scores 3 out of 5 in our rubric)
makes < their predicted score, the teacher shows lack of growth (scores 1 or 2 in our rubric)
makes better than predicted score, the teachers shows growth. (scores 4 or 5)
But what if the student is predicted to score perfect or near-perfect? There's no way to show growth for this student. Or if the student just misses 1 or 2 questions less than the predicted? Now we've shown a reversal of growth. Therefore the teacher spends less time on trying to reach/challenge these students and our best/brightest fall by the way side.
The biggest chunk of our effort is not for the middles quintiles, either. The most growth is shown for the lowest quintile, as they have the most room for growth. So we spend our effort teaching them to hopefully score a 30% (which is still failing) on this test instead of a 15%. And these are the students that will more than likely never use some of the material we teacher in these classes (i.e. chemistry).
Yet, we'll spend most of our time here because the magic word is growth. This word is what we as teachers and schools live by. Yet the teacher that had their entire class actually meet their predicted score is considered average, not great. Now why is this? They showed no growth, but - based on some esoteric, unfathomable prediction - the teacher accomplished that which they were supposed to have done. The predicted score isn't something the student is supposed to achieve simply by walking into the classroom and sitting down to take the test. The predicted score is supposed to be achieved only if the teacher has done their job!! Yet, no growth = average teacher. This is one of the many failings we have in our evaluation system.
Look, Pearson is going get their money from us either way we go, so let's meet them half way.
I don't like standardized tests - not because I feel they are useless, but because of the one-off, all-or-nothing consideration for which they are being used, along with the use of the predicted scores. What if the kid has a bad day on that one test? What if they come to school hungry, tired, achy, or under any other condition for which we teachers (and many times, the student) have no control?
You want to evaluate me and my students at the same time? You also want to make sure the publishing companies stay in business? (that last one, I couldn't give a crap about, but they are going to be with us regardless, so we must learn to live with it.) Then let Pearson
make a pre-test in chemistry based on the Next Generation Science standards &/or CC.
Then at the end of the semester/year, let Pearson give them a post-test, again based on the same standards.
Make the post-test count as the semester exam for the student so that they will take it seriously. Make them responsible for their learning, not just for taking a test. (make it count for 20-25% of the term grade.)
Measure the growth between the two tests.
If the teacher has done their job, then there should be growth.
The amount of growth could be used as a partial measure of the teachers effectiveness.
the amount of cumulative growth for all teachers with testing curricula would be a partial measure of the school effectiveness.
If the teacher has been effective, there should be an obvious positive difference in scores. There should be more positive growth in the upper quintiles than in the lower quintiles, but growth, nonetheless. If a teacher is sitting there, reading the paper, while the kids are texting each other, napping, or anything else. then little to no growth will occur. The better teacher will show lots of growth, and in all quintiles.
This system needs some tweeking (not twerking!!) and could use some input - not from administrators, principals or publishing companies - but from teachers in the field. You guys/gals that do this for a living.
I will challenge you on tests though. While you are correct that passing a test does not guarantee that a teacher will be good, failing it means the teacher doesn't know enough of the material to teach the material and that is a teacher who should not be in the classroom. This is just a weeding tool to cut off the bottom. As to whether or not better scores mean better teachers, someone would have to look at the data but that data is not available because it is only reported whether a person passes or fails. While I know my scores, I can't compare them to the scores of others and neither can my admins.
When I came out of college they were still reporting the actual score to the schools but they no longer do so in Michigan because they don't want people hired/not hired based on who had the higher score. We really have no idea whether there is any correlation to teacher quality and test scores, however, as a parent, I would not want someone who cannot pass these tests to teach my kids. I've taken the tests. I know how easy they are.
Yet, we'll spend most of our time here because the magic word is growth. This word is what we as teachers and schools live by. Yet the teacher that had their entire class actually meet their predicted score is considered average, not great. Now why is this? They showed no growth, but - based on some esoteric, unfathomable prediction - the teacher accomplished that which they were supposed to have done. The predicted score isn't something the student is supposed to achieve simply by walking into the classroom and sitting down to take the test. The predicted score is supposed to be achieved only if the teacher has done their job!! Yet, no growth = average teacher. This is one of the many failings we have in our evaluation system.
Based on your succeeding suggestion, am I correct in presuming that the predicted growth is intended to be less than your curriculum?
I mean, if your curriculum covers X subject to Y degree, the predicted growth is some percentage of Y less than 100%, right?
And that's based on the student having achieved only a percentage of X subject the preceeding year, right?
So if the predicted growth was 80% of the basic algebra curriculum taken in grade 9, then the predicted growth would be--what? Ninety percent of the advanced algebra curriculum in grade 10? I
Oh, but you can't DO that...you'd bruise poor Johnny's fragile self-esteem...
Ah yes....Johnny's self esteem....THAT is the root of what is wrong with education in this country. We are more concerned with how our kids feel than we are whether they actually learn.
Exit exams would work in three ways. 1) If teachers aren't getting their kids to pass the exams, it would be noted in a short amount of time. 2) Students would have a vested interest in actually learning the material because they have to pass the test placing some responsibility to learn on the learner. 3) Students who had not learned the minimum amount of material needed to move to the next class wouldn't creating a better learning environment for all.
Exit exams increase teacher and student accountability and would eliminate promoting kids into classes where they lack the perquisites to succeed.
Of course it will never be done because it's not PC to place any responsibility to pass on Johnny. Johnny is the one person who we hold blameless. He's growing up believing that any failure to succeed is someone else's fault....never mind we're sending him off to college and out into the world completely unprepared because we're too busy protecting his feelings. Honestly, I'm surprised we don't have more Columbine's than we do. Kids who have never experienced failure and pulling themselves up by their boot straps and getting on with life aren't going to deal with failure well as teens (teens can be cruel) and young adults. They're in for a rude awakening and it should come as no surprise that some of them do not weather this well and seek revenge on those who have what they think they deserve.
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Honestly, I'm surprised we don't have more Columbine's than we do. Kids who have never experienced failure and pulling themselves up by their boot straps and getting on with life aren't going to deal with failure well as teens (teens can be cruel) and young adults. They're in for a rude awakening and it should come as no surprise that some of them do not weather this well and seek revenge on those who have what they think they deserve.
