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The criteria laid out for this research seems flawed for too much bias.
If you want to assess a teacher's performance by the performance of the students taught, you would:
First, determine the student's (individually) performance prior to being taught by the specific teacher. You cannot gauge how much a student learned in the end if you do not know where they were in the beginning.
Secondly, you would need to eliminate, control, or monitor outside influences and create criteria to assess any outside influence against the teacher. Did the teacher really do a good job teaching or did the parents of one or more students independently (without the knowledge of the teacher, or consent) push their children to study harder during this period? And if so, was it the parents, the teacher, or both who caused an increase in performance?
Did a student all of a sudden take an interest in reading certain subjects? Was this new activity due to influence by the teacher? Or did the student decide to hang out at the library on his/her own accord?
It seems to me that one could look at a teacher's track record. I taught for nearly 30 years. Of the 30, did I have more good years than bad ones in terms of how children in my classes tested overall? Was I teaching the same course(s), and were students performing as expected?
After the first few weeks of school, I could have told you how most of my students would perform on an end-of-course test, and been at least 95% accurate. Friends of mine who teach students at the AP level can predict such with almost a 99% accuracy, and even tell you who will score a 3, 4, or 5.
I might also suggest that schools look for patterns with their students, and track a child from grade K through 6, the neighborhood from which the child hails, the demographics of the neighborhood and the child's home, parents' involvement in the school environment, if the child is identified in any context, and so on. . .
Just a bit weary of the whining educators do. There are all sorts of variables over which people have no control. I plant a garden, but I cannot control the weather. I can fertilize and water it, hope for the best, and reap what I get. Even the weeds can be the best weeds if I let them.
In the classroom, itself, the teacher can be the single most influential factor in a child's life.
It seems to me that one could look at a teacher's track record. I taught for nearly 30 years. Of the 30, did I have more good years than bad ones in terms of how children in my classes tested overall? Was I teaching the same course(s), and were students performing as expected?
After the first few weeks of school, I could have told you how most of my students would perform on an end-of-course test, and been at least 95% accurate. Friends of mine who teach students at the AP level can predict such with almost a 99% accuracy, and even tell you who will score a 3, 4, or 5.
I might also suggest that schools look for patterns with their students, and track a child from grade K through 6, the neighborhood from which the child hails, the demographics of the neighborhood and the child's home, parents' involvement in the school environment, if the child is identified in any context, and so on. . .
Just a bit weary of the whining educators do. There are all sorts of variables over which people have no control. I plant a garden, but I cannot control the weather. I can fertilize and water it, hope for the best, and reap what I get. Even the weeds can be the best weeds if I let them.
In the classroom, itself, the teacher can be the single most influential factor in a child's life.
Didn't you just contradict yourself? How is the teacher the most influential factor in a child's life in the classroom if you can predict with 95% accuracy how they will do in your class after just a few weeks?
I find that I do reach a few during the year but only a few. Most of the students who start out failing my class are still failing by the end of the year. I'll get a handful who turn around but we're talking one or two students per class.
The child's access to and use of electronics:
-Whether or not he/she uses a cell phone 24/7, texting throughout the night
-Internet access and use at home--good or bad; most of my students still do not have access to computers at home; those who do usually spend most of their online time in non-academic activities; some view online porn
-family medical and child-care issues--many of my students have to stay home to take care of siblings, their own children, or sick parents/grandparents, etc.; some are at the hospital all night when a family member is ill
-danger in the neighborhood--up all night due to gunfights, domestic violence at home or a neighbor's house, gang retaliations such as arson or drive-by shootings
One of my students has recently become homeless because when her mother got home from prison, she threw her out of the house. I am trying to get her some help to finish out her senior year and be able to go to college. I fear that we won't be successful.
These kinds of problems are far beyond what school critics see as normal disruptions for children, but in our school they are almost the rule rather than the exception.
I would continue, but I'm getting depressed just thinking about it. Nancy can probably pick up from here.
Variables to performance are important. Why? Simple.
Let's suppose that you make automobiles. We would expect that you would be able to control and fix as many of the variables that could impact the quality of the car as possible. You wouldn't want to be using defective tires. You wouldn't want to be using steel that wasn't properly made. In fact every industry that sells a product and that has a finished product that is evaluated has a great deal of control over the raw materials that they make the product with.
Those that don't have control over the raw materials are not required to produce a 100% quality product. Doctors are not required to make everyone healthy regardless of what the patient comes in with. Maybe eventually that will be possible, but nobody is hassling our bad doctors for failing to cure the dude who smoked cigarettes all his life.
Nobody expects that every professional sports team or palyer no matter how good, will always be at the top of the game, BECAUSE WE UNDERSTAND THE VARIABLES that prevent full performance.
But in education, the variables don't appear to matter. It doesn't seem to make a difference for the teacher if 1/3 of his/her class doesn't actually attend school but misses 1/4 of the instruction. In music performance, people are expected to practice the violin or they won't get good. They don't just have instruction in it and then they are good. But in education, teachers are rated on being able to instruct and practice with the new skills doesn't matter. So how are the scores of the child one some mythical test going to be high for his/her class if 10% of them do not have anyone to help them with the homework, which is another word for practicing the newly learned skill.
Anyone who doesn't recognize that these variables need to be considered when rating teacher performance and recognizes these variables in every other line of human endeavor, is either very strange, or they have some kind of axe to grind against education or everything.
So, cataloging the variables is important for three reasons:
1) if we can find as many as possible, we can group them into categories, from very impactive to less impactive, and we can begin to address these variables as part of the whole teaching milieu rather than just looking at what is being done in the classroom instruction. Also, by cataloging them we can begin to define them so that we know whether we are using programs that actually impact these variables. I'm not aware that this has ever been done in any systematic way.
I do know that something called RtII(Response to Intervention & Instruction) is sweeping the country. When we go into meetings students about performance now, we don't just kibitz about it. We use scientific data to determine which variables of a student's reading performance are missing, and then we use very specific scientifically researched interventions that must take place for the full fidelity of the intervention, for at least 60 minutes of direct instruction per day, for 5 days a week, for 12 weeks before we try something else.
This is a case where educators have addressed the variables directly impacting failure to learn to read usually at the kindergarten, 1st, or second grade level.
In some subject areas, such as math, we simply don't have the research to show what teaching method or which variables prevent children from learning math skills successfully. In reading this is no longer the case. There are a large number of very specific variables that have been identified. Teachers who follow these paradigms have hugely greater success than those who don't, and we end up with way less multi-disciplainary testing, and way less placements in special education by early intervention with very specific programs. But these successes have come from very defined research and then training of teachers to use these paradigms. Those teachers who are less successful are NOT BAD TEACHERS, they just haven't been trained in these skill sets.
2) We can be realistic about how we can identify teacher performance from one environment to the next. If you make a professional football player play in 2 degree temps in Green Bay for the superbowl every year, their performance because of some important variables is going to drop off dramatically.
3) When we give the tests themselves we need to be aware of the variables. OF COURSE IF EVERYBODY has the same variable it sort of cancels it, but it still doesn't bring up optimum scores if everybody is being tested against some exterior criteria. Anyone who doesn't think that making 10 year old take a two hour test every morning for 10 straight days will make them tired and perform less well on the 6ht day thanthe 1st day, simply doesn't understand human nature.
So variables are important in education, just as they are in every other business, occupation, you name it. And if we want to do a good job in these occupations, we do everything we can to eliminate the impact of any variable that reduces optimum performance. Ignoring variables, pretending that they aren't real without scientific evidence to back it up, or limiting the set of variables without scientific study to determine their impact, won't improve performance either in education or in the creation of steel widgets for the space program.
Politicians, business experts, and other influential figures have zeroed in on education because they are unwilling to look at the underlying causes.
Anyone who has spent any real time in the classroom realizes that factors outside the classroom have an impact on the classroom. The numerous variables mentioned in this thread are well known to the classroom teacher but minimized or ignored by the experts outside the classroom. Selective data is used to reinforce the preconceived conclusions that the experts hold.
The school is expected to solve all problems efficiently without interfering with the delivery of the educational product to the customer (student? parent? or future employer?). A perfect example of something that is completely outside a school's control but now is owned by the school involves cyber bullying.
Example: Student A sends a text message on a Saturday Night from the comforts of her home to 10 of her friends falsely stating that Student B engaged in an inappropriate act with Student C. Each of the 10 recipients immediately forwards the text to 10 others. Monday morning rolls around and the school's/superintendent's phone is ringing off the hook with angry parents demanding that the school solve the problem. Kids get pulled all day from classes, the police get involved, rumors fly around the school, etc.
What did the school have to do with this event that happened on a Saturday night? Nothing. What about the kids being allowed to text all night to whomever they want without any parental oversight? Few question or see anything wrong with it as it quickly gets dismissed as my kid wouldn't do that. However, if the consequences of the text are bad enough the media picks up on it and the school ends up being viewed as the one who is primarily responsible to prevent such problems.
Of course all these problems need to solved in an efficient manner without negatively impacting AYP on NCLB reports.
Of course all these problems need to solved in an efficient manner without negatively impacting AYP on NCLB reports.
Amen! I am continually saying: "And why is this my problem?"
Another example in the parents fighting and getting a divorce. Now consistently and for a long time the school is supposed to provide counseling for children of divorce. But the school's job is to education children not be a social service agency for every thing that goes wrong in a child's life.
Counseling takes away class time which takes away instruction time which keeps children from making educational goals which are the goals of the school.
Where does it stop? It doesn't. Parents believe that if they are having a problem with their child at home, regardless of their incredibly poor parenting skills or the ADD of their child or the child's oppositional deviant disorder or whatever, its really the school's fault to fix. Its really the parents job to take their child to a therapist and get it "fixed". Its not the school's job. I really wish school district board's would simply lay out a policy about what is the basic job of the school and what is not.
Politicians, business experts, and other influential figures have zeroed in on education because they are unwilling to look at the underlying causes.
Anyone who has spent any real time in the classroom realizes that factors outside the classroom have an impact on the classroom. The numerous variables mentioned in this thread are well known to the classroom teacher but minimized or ignored by the experts outside the classroom. Selective data is used to reinforce the preconceived conclusions that the experts hold.
The school is expected to solve all problems efficiently without interfering with the delivery of the educational product to the customer (student? parent? or future employer?). A perfect example of something that is completely outside a school's control but now is owned by the school involves cyber bullying.
Example: Student A sends a text message on a Saturday Night from the comforts of her home to 10 of her friends falsely stating that Student B engaged in an inappropriate act with Student C. Each of the 10 recipients immediately forwards the text to 10 others. Monday morning rolls around and the school's/superintendent's phone is ringing off the hook with angry parents demanding that the school solve the problem. Kids get pulled all day from classes, the police get involved, rumors fly around the school, etc.
What did the school have to do with this event that happened on a Saturday night? Nothing. What about the kids being allowed to text all night to whomever they want without any parental oversight? Few question or see anything wrong with it as it quickly gets dismissed as my kid wouldn't do that. However, if the consequences of the text are bad enough the media picks up on it and the school ends up being viewed as the one who is primarily responsible to prevent such problems.
Of course all these problems need to solved in an efficient manner without negatively impacting AYP on NCLB reports.
I don't think they are being ignored because of ignorance. I think they are being ignored because there is nothing you can do about them. We can't invade their private lives. So, we attack the one place we can change. The classroom. There's nothing wrong with that tactic EXCEPT they expect us to fix all of those things at home we have no control over and we just can't. Reality is, our students spend three times as much time in that environment as they do in school. We cannot undo in 1/3 the time the damage done at home. All we can do is the best we can with what is handed to us. The $30,000 question (inflation ) is, what does that look like?
We should be making the classroom all it can be BUT we have to realize that much of what determines whether or not a student is successful is out of our hands.
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) is, what does that look like?
