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Yes - I think it is an excellent idea. The main opposition argument appears to be that a teacher has little control if an individual student chooses to study or if that student parents encourage him/her to succeed at school. That maybe true on an individual student basis. However, teacher don't have just one student they have 30 or more. In Jr high and high school they may have 100+ passing through their class. The teacher does have control of the average performance across all the students they teach. When that average is compared against the average of other teachers in the same school teaching similar subjects, trends do form. You will see that some teachers consistently have averages that are high, while others have averages that are lower. Those teachers that have higher averages deserve the rewards for doing better work.
Teachers are not the only job out there that doesn't have 100% control over every aspect. Heck, many jobs have significant outside influence. Those that are good their jobs have a higher success average than those that are not, regardless of the outside influences.
There are mainstream classrooms where students with learning disabilities, autism, and mild intellectual disabilities are placed in with typical students. These teachers usually have special education certification, but are teaching both regular and special needs students, who can function in the "least restrictive environment" of the regular classroom. How would you rate their performance compared to a teacher with only gifted students? How would you rate art teachers, music teachers, library teachers, special education teachers, computer teachers, physical education teachers?
Yes - I think it is an excellent idea. The main opposition argument appears to be that a teacher has little control if an individual student chooses to study or if that student parents encourage him/her to succeed at school. That maybe true on an individual student basis. However, teacher don't have just one student they have 30 or more. In Jr high and high school they may have 100+ passing through their class. The teacher does have control of the average performance across all the students they teach. When that average is compared against the average of other teachers in the same school teaching similar subjects, trends do form. You will see that some teachers consistently have averages that are high, while others have averages that are lower. Those teachers that have higher averages deserve the rewards for doing better work.
Teachers are not the only job out there that doesn't have 100% control over every aspect. Heck, many jobs have significant outside influence. Those that are good their jobs have a higher success average than those that are not, regardless of the outside influences.
Are you a teacher? We need to hear from teachers and administrators. I am against it. I come from a family of teachers and i have heard plenty over the years.
There are mainstream classrooms where students with learning disabilities, autism, and mild intellectual disabilities are placed in with typical students. These teachers usually have special education certification, but are teaching both regular and special needs students, who can function in the "least restrictive environment" of the regular classroom. How would you rate their performance compared to a teacher with only gifted students? How would you rate art teachers, music teachers, library teachers, special education teachers, computer teachers, physical education teachers?
Comparisons need to be similar vs similar. So students with learning disabilities, autism, and mild intellectual disabilities should not be include in the class average for assessing the teachers performance. Classes of gifted student would need to be compared against other classes of gifted students.
Art & music teacher would need to be evaluated via another method due to the subjective nature of their subjective.
Computer are just another subject like history or science, I don't see why they would be special.
PE teacher: The amount of improvement in physical skills of the students.
What the heck is a library teacher??? Is that the same as a librarian or are you referring to someone teacher how to locate information in a library and/or internet? If the latter, they are teaching a set of skills, thus can be evaluated the same as other subjects.
Are you a teacher? We need to hear from teachers and administrators. I am against it. I come from a family of teachers and i have heard plenty over the years.
The teachers and the teacher unions have been against anything that forces them to be held accountable for the job they do. The result has been bad teachers that keep teaching year after year. If the teachers want to submit a means of evaluation that includes something beyond showing up and includes some evaluation of their performance, let them put it forth. I have yet to hear anything beyond the typical union seniority garbage.
When talking with other parents, you keep hearing the same comments about the same teachers again and again. "Mrs [good teacher] did a great job with _____ he learned so much" or "_____ hated Mrs [bad teacher], she never explained the subject well" While one parent saying this about a teacher doesn't mean much, when it becomes a trend with several parents saying the same thing, then it is significant.
What the heck is a library teacher??? Is that the same as a librarian or are you referring to someone teacher how to locate information in a library and/or internet? If the latter, they are teaching a set of skills, thus can be evaluated the same as other subjects.
Guess I didn't want to assume they were still called librarians...maybe teachers of library science, or some such new title? But you answered my question, regarding specialized areas that are hard to quantify.
But to answer your original question: This amendment deserves a huge NO vote. Does it make sense to you to judge a teacher's performance by his/her students' performance on statewide assessments (tests)? This puts the entire burden on the teacher, none on the student--or the parents.
if kids aren't learning anything these days, there are a helluva lot more reasons than teachers. This asinine legislation--the result of a billionaire's petition drive, not a grassroots response--puts all the blame on teachers.
This is exactly the same thing going on in many other fields, such as medicine. Your doctor and the health system that employs them gets fined/paid less/smeared in the media if their patients aren't all perfectly healthy with no bad habits. They are supposed to be able to get every smoker to quit, every obese person to lose weight rapidly and keep it off, everybody to get exactly the amount of daily exercise they're supposed to, everybody on medication is supposed to take every single medication exactly as prescribed every single day etc ad nauseaum. The patients themselves however have no responsibility to follow medical advice, with the exception of their insurance premiums can be higher if they smoke.
So the teacher evaluations as proposed are certainly not very smart but definitely not without precedent. This is what you get when you have a government try to simulate a free market. Actually letting the dollars follow the person receiving the services (e.g. a voucher system valid at any school in the state) would be a very easy fix for those situations but that not going to happen as it removes power from the government instead of increasing it.
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Originally Posted by geofra
From the OP
What?
The districts are expected to eat the costs so no, technically taxes don't increase. (Actually, of course they do, they just go up later with a different piece of legislation so THAT piece of legislation has to be the one to declare a tax increase. Gotta love lawyers.) Again, just like healthcare with the hospitals and doctors expected to eat all of the costs of government legislation and regulation (Obamacare, HITECH Act, HIPAA, etc.) You don't think that the government actually funds their giant mandates, do you?
This is exactly the same thing going on in many other fields, such as medicine. Your doctor and the health system that employs them gets fined/paid less/smeared in the media if their patients aren't all perfectly healthy with no bad habits. They are supposed to be able to get every smoker to quit, every obese person to lose weight rapidly and keep it off, everybody to get exactly the amount of daily exercise they're supposed to, everybody on medication is supposed to take every single medication exactly as prescribed every single day etc ad nauseaum. The patients themselves however have no responsibility to follow medical advice, with the exception of their insurance premiums can be higher if they smoke.
So the teacher evaluations as proposed are certainly not very smart but definitely not without precedent. This is what you get when you have a government try to simulate a free market. Actually letting the dollars follow the person receiving the services (e.g. a voucher system valid at any school in the state) would be a very easy fix for those situations but that not going to happen as it removes power from the government instead of increasing it.
I don't see any way this is taking the responsibility from the student to learn. Grades are not being changed, the student still will have the same consequences for bad grades, all that is being evaluated is a teacher effectiveness of conveying information to the students. We all know that some teacher do a good job of instructing students and other teachers don't. It makes sense that those teacher that do a good job, are encouraged to stay in teaching. It also makes sense that teacher that poorly convey information are encouraged to find a job more suitable to their talents.
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Originally Posted by Flyover_Country
The districts are expected to eat the costs so no, technically taxes don't increase. (Actually, of course they do, they just go up later with a different piece of legislation so THAT piece of legislation has to be the one to declare a tax increase. Gotta love lawyers.) Again, just like healthcare with the hospitals and doctors expected to eat all of the costs of government legislation and regulation (Obamacare, HITECH Act, HIPAA, etc.) You don't think that the government actually funds their giant mandates, do you?
I really don't expect this will change taxes in a significant way. Teachers currently need to be evaluated, this is just changing the method of evaluation. Any changes would be minor and if it resulted in better education well worth the cost.
I don't see any way this is taking the responsibility from the student to learn. Grades are not being changed, the student still will have the same consequences for bad grades, all that is being evaluated is a teacher effectiveness of conveying information to the students. We all know that some teacher do a good job of instructing students and other teachers don't. It makes sense that those teacher that do a good job, are encouraged to stay in teaching. It also makes sense that teacher that poorly convey information are encouraged to find a job more suitable to their talents.
The issue is that there are other very significant factors beyond the teacher's control that significantly affect what is being evaluated. The big one is the involvement of parents in the child's education and discipline at home. There's very little to nothing the teacher can do to affect those factors but the teacher still ends up being held responsible for them anyway.
The best method of evaluation of teachers is to let the parents and students pick which teachers and districts they go to and the state/district paying based on that. A teacher with a waiting list of 100 kids to get into their class of 25 is likely a good one; a teacher in the same building with 3 people signed up to be in their class of 25 might have issues. Ditto with districts- if a school district suddenly has few students wanting to go to it in favor of going to other districts, they have issues.
There are certainly districts and teachers that are bad but this method of evaluation is very poor at determining the actually good/bad teachers from ones who do or do not have a lot of students with issues beyond their control.
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I really don't expect this will change taxes in a significant way. Teachers currently need to be evaluated, this is just changing the method of evaluation. Any changes would be minor and if it resulted in better education well worth the cost.
Evaluation costs a lot of money, period. You have to pay a monopoly or near-monopoly designated third party evaluation service a huge sum of money to come up with evaluations, pay them a huge sum to administer them, and then pay them a huge sum for the third party to validate and report those numbers to DESE & Company. You can't report your numbers yourself because you are assumed to omit or lie on your report. Like I said, it's identical to what happens in other fields and it all costs a bunch of money.
The districts are expected to eat the costs so no, technically taxes don't increase. (Actually, of course they do, they just go up later with a different piece of legislation so THAT piece of legislation has to be the one to declare a tax increase. Gotta love lawyers.) Again, just like healthcare with the hospitals and doctors expected to eat all of the costs of government legislation and regulation (Obamacare, HITECH Act, HIPAA, etc.) You don't think that the government actually funds their giant mandates, do you?
There will most likely be local tax increases on a case by case basis to cover this legislation. It probably depends on how each school district currently evaluates their teachers and whether or not it is similar to what is proposed in the legislation.
The issue is that there are other very significant factors beyond the teacher's control that significantly affect what is being evaluated. The big one is the involvement of parents in the child's education and discipline at home. There's very little to nothing the teacher can do to affect those factors but the teacher still ends up being held responsible for them anyway.
When working with averages based on students pulled from the same area, issues like involvement of the parents and discipline at home level out. If an area has poor parental involvement, then all teachers in that area would have that same level of parental involvement. So when comparing teachers, the field is level.
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The best method of evaluation of teachers is to let the parents and students pick which teachers and districts they go to and the state/district paying based on that. A teacher with a waiting list of 100 kids to get into their class of 25 is likely a good one; a teacher in the same building with 3 people signed up to be in their class of 25 might have issues. Ditto with districts- if a school district suddenly has few students wanting to go to it in favor of going to other districts, they have issues.
While this might work, the cost would be extremely high. Bussing around here runs around 3 million per district per year. These are typical districts. This plan would double or triple those cost due to overlapping routes. This also has the issue of forcing teachers to compete in what is basically a popularity contest.
Quote:
There are certainly districts and teachers that are bad but this method of evaluation is very poor at determining the actually good/bad teachers from ones who do or do not have a lot of students with issues beyond their control.
So what are the parents in your suggestion basing their decision on? It is either popularity which makes it worthless, or performance based on heresay which is again worthless.
Quote:
Evaluation costs a lot of money, period. You have to pay a monopoly or near-monopoly designated third party evaluation service a huge sum of money to come up with evaluations, pay them a huge sum to administer them, and then pay them a huge sum for the third party to validate and report those numbers to DESE & Company. You can't report your numbers yourself because you are assumed to omit or lie on your report. Like I said, it's identical to what happens in other fields and it all costs a bunch of money.
That is just plan wrong. Companies evaluate their employees all the time. You don't need some third-party monlpoly to come in and do it. If you do, then you need to replace the managers. We already pay managers at the schools to evaluate the the teachers, all this does is tell them some of the criteria that must be used.
Last edited by nealrm; 09-06-2014 at 12:53 PM..
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