Question for teachers/school admin regarding posting of test scores (Howe: schools, assessment)

[buffy888]

At our school, results for practice TAKS and district benchmark exams are posted by teacher name. (For example, there will be a page that is labeled 4th Grade Science Benchmark and will be broken down like Smith - 90% of her students met expectations, Jones - 50% of his met expectations, etc.) These are in a hallway through which staff members, parent volunteers, school visitors, and students walk. The purported purpose is to see "areas across the board in which we are weak or are doing well," but of course is not used in this way.

Many teachers lately are questioning if the school is actually allowed to post scores publicly in this manner. It is not broken down by student name, but class lists by teacher are readily available and some believe that posting the scores violates student confidentiality because one could then in some way extrapolate a general idea of individual test scores... Others believe it is wrong for a variety of reasons. My test scores are fine, but I know how upsetting it can be for teachers whose students did not perform well on an assessment (especially first year teachers or those new to a grade level). I am not competitive and don't really need to compare my students' performance against others, but I know there are also competitive teachers who do so in order to make themselves feel they are better teachers than those with lower scores.

I am just curious if this is done in other districts and what the thoughts are from those who teach or are school administrators.

[pobre]

Oh, no. Our benchmarks are not posted anywhere. Our scores are available to us and to our administrator online through Compass. However, they are not available to the general public, or even other teachers. The only information that is made public is the overall passing/commended rate after TAKS, which is public information.

IMHO, this could be a FERPA issue...

We are not even supposed to post class lists!

PS this is for NEISD

[SA5]

As a principal I'll jump in here...I think that sharing the data like that is only helpful when the climate at the school is one where teachers work together and help each other. Otherwise you're asking for trouble! I don't think there are any laws against posting the scores by teacher in semi-public (I'm assuming you were talking about an office area) but I wonder what the motive is...I share my staff individual data with the grade level either with or without names depending on the activity and my teachers are pretty OK with it. We know who has what class and what kids so there are often reasons for someone to be higher than another. But they're also really competitive and most often want to know how the other schools in the district did so they can try to beat them!

[traficdogn]

Originally Posted by SA5

As a principal I'll jump in here...I think that sharing the data like that is only helpful when the climate at the school is one where teachers work together and help each other. Otherwise you're asking for trouble! I don't think there are any laws against posting the scores by teacher in semi-public (I'm assuming you were talking about an office area) but I wonder what the motive is...I share my staff individual data with the grade level either with or without names depending on the activity and my teachers are pretty OK with it. We know who has what class and what kids so there are often reasons for someone to be higher than another. But they're also really competitive and most often want to know how the other schools in the district did so they can try to beat them!

Yup, data sharing is good.

The problem is when, only "select" data is shared, which is often the case.

I believe this is why many corporations went to open web/blog links. Ie. Each worker could voluntarily post the data they thought was relevant to their work.