Missouri Teacher Performance Evaluation, Amendment 3 (2014) (Normandy, Wellston: luxury, schools, closing)

[marigolds6]

Originally Posted by nealrm

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.

Minor?
The amendment requires standardized tests for a lot of disciplines that do not currently exist. That is going to be very expensive.

[marigolds6]

Originally Posted by Flyover_Country

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.

The problem with a system like that is that you have just severely penalized the 25 students who would have had that teacher; and odds are the parents have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to be in that district.

There is no better example of this than the Normandy district. Normandy was a stable average quality district before all the Wellston students were transferred into Normandy. Once that happened, it rapidly devolved into the worst district in the state. Similarly, once Normandy students were given open transfer, districts close to Normandy struggled immediately.

[nealrm]

Originally Posted by marigolds6

Minor?
The amendment requires standardized tests for a lot of disciplines that do not currently exist. That is going to be very expensive.

There is nothing in the amendment that requires standardized testing.

[marigolds6]

Originally Posted by nealrm

There is nothing in the amendment that requires standardized testing.

Section 3f requires standardized testing.
"The majority of such evaluation system shall be based upon quantifiable student performance data as measured by objective criteria and such evaluation system shall be used in (1) retaining, promoting, demoting, dismissing, removing, discharging and setting compensation for certificated staff; (2) modifying or terminating any contracts with certificated staff; and (3) placing on leave of absence any certificated staff because of a decrease in pupil enrollment, school district reorganization or the financial condition or the school district."

[nealrm]

"quantifiable student performance data" is not the same as standardize testing. All that quantifiable means is that it is measurable. So there is nothing to prevent a district from using a test they developed to evaluate their teachers.

[tambre]

Originally Posted by nealrm

"quantifiable student performance data" is not the same as standardize testing. All that quantifiable means is that it is measurable. So there is nothing to prevent a district from using a test they developed to evaluate their teachers.

Do you think that the teacher evaluation criteria would be standardized to be a uniform rating system amongst all districts or do you think that each district is going to create their own individual rating system?

[nealrm]

Originally Posted by tambre

Do you think that the teacher evaluation criteria would be standardized to be a uniform rating system amongst all districts or do you think that each district is going to create their own individual rating system?

The amendment does specifically mention local school districts, and that makes me believe that the writers intended this to be done on the local level. In addition, it would be difficult to do an apple to apple comparison across the entire state. Comparisons are possible when you are pulling students from the same population area, they tend to break down once you extend that to multiple population groups.

[tambre]

Do you think that some of these individual districts might develop a rating system that would in some way skew the process, so it weighs unfairly against teachers with high salaries, or conversely increases nepotism using data in a subjective and discriminatory way. Seems management these days looks less at talent, and more at the bottom line, less at loyalty and experience, and more at balancing the checkbook.

[Flyover_Country]

Originally Posted by nealrm

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.

The problem is that you are unlikely to have enough students that are similar enough to evaluate to be able to detect all but enormous differences in teacher performance. Essentially you'd be testing students from the same grade in the same building, else you get into a bunch of confounding factors such as how well previous teachers prepared students if you compare across grades and different social situations if you compare across different areas.

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.

You could also have as part of the "you can go anywhere" deal that you have to provide your own kid's transportation if you enroll them out of district. That would solve the busing issue. Yes, it would be less convenient for the parents but it's not like millions of parents don't already drive their kids to school every school day.

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.

It's no worse than evaluations largely based on confounding factors beyond the teachers' control, or based on statistically insignificant differences in evaluations.

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.

Some private companies may evaluate their employees inexpensively using internal metrics but they are not specifically forced to evaluate people in a particular manner by a government like this amendment would require. Look at the highly regulated industries such as medicine where they are forced by the government to evaluate people in a very specific manner to see what will happen with teachers. Like I said, this isn't a new concept and look at a field where this has already occurred if you want to see what happens.

Also I do predict that this will become a statewide program to compare teachers against each other. It will be exactly how comparison of hospital/doctor "quality" has become a nationwide comparison, despite the same huge number of confounding factors being present in such comparisons essentially rendering them useless.

[marigolds6]

Originally Posted by nealrm

"quantifiable student performance data" is not the same as standardize testing. All that quantifiable means is that it is measurable. So there is nothing to prevent a district from using a test they developed to evaluate their teachers.

It would be even more expensive for each individual district to develop their own objective test.