PUT TEACHERS TO THE TEST: Educators should be evaluated based on their students' exam scores + LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

LA Times Opinion by Camille Esch

March 23, 2008 - In recent years, reformers have sought to improve our failing public education system by tightening and standardizing the measures we use to judge performance. From the numerical requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act to California's increased focus on assessment and accountability, there's been a conscious attempt to use hard data to measure success at every level of the education system.

But one group does not have its performance measured this way: teachers. Determining the effectiveness of individual teachers -- are they helping our kids learn or not? -- remains a mostly subjective judgment. Yet there's no reason why teachers shouldn't also be evaluated against objective measures of student performance just as are schools, districts and states.

Teacher evaluations focus on what they do in the classroom -- the input of the learning process. In most school districts, principals show up at prearranged times to observe teachers' work, and then write their observations. In doing this, they typically use a checklist to guide their assessments. Evaluations usually consist of one or two written observations.

This superficial and largely subjective approach to evaluating teachers is something of a farce. In many instances, principals can only rate teachers "satisfactory" or "unsatisfactory." Multiple unsatisfactory evaluations can lead to dismissal. But faced with the prospect of battling the local teachers union to prove that a teacher's unsatisfactory evaluation is valid, most principals capitulate and rate virtually all teachers as satisfactory.

This rubber-stamp routine may make things easier for administrators, but not for the kids. Several researchers, among them Eric Hanushek of the Hoover Institution of Stanford University and Jonah Rockoff of Columbia University, have shown that teachers are not interchangeable when it comes to student learning. Given a year with an effective teacher -- one whose pupils previously showed test-score gains -- students can advance their learning by a grade level or more, according to research done by William L. Sanders while he was at the University of Tennessee. He also found that under a weak teacher, kids' progress can stall, and they can fall behind.

So why not include student test scores -- the output of the learning process -- in teachers' evaluations? Besides giving the evaluation process a much-needed shot of objectivity and rigor, this change could help administrators target assistance for struggling teachers and recognize those who are most effective in the classroom.

In its report this month, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's nonpartisan committee of education experts agreed. Among other things, it recommended that teacher evaluations should be based in part on student achievement.

Teachers unions object to using student test scores to evaluate teachers. They argue that these scores are influenced by many factors beyond a teacher's control -- students' home environments, language abilities, whether they ate breakfast on the morning of a test. True enough, but this is not a reason to ignore student achievement altogether.

Of course, student test-score data should not be the sole measure of a teacher's performance. It should be combined with other factors to produce a well-rounded assessment, including more rigorous and more frequent classroom observations by principals, announced and unannounced, as well as reviews of teachers' lesson plans and homework assignments by principals or peers.

And incorporating student test data into teachers' evaluations should be done in a way that ensures fairness. For starters, not just absolute student test performance should be taken into account, but also how much students grow over the course of a year. For instance, a teacher could make phenomenal progress with struggling students but still not get them to a high achievement. In this case, the teacher should be rewarded, not penalized. This approach would prevent teachers from fleeing low-performing schools or classes.

Second, evaluation must consider extenuating circumstances. For instance, if a first-year English teacher is assigned to teach chemistry, he shouldn't be blamed for less-than-stellar test scores.

Finally, any attempt to use test scores to help evaluate teachers should not be done on the cheap. Policymakers may be tempted to co-opt existing assessments like California's STAR tests for the purposes of teacher evaluation. But these standardized tests are designed to give information about how a school, district or state is performing, and they don't cover all subject areas. To build a better system of evaluating teachers, it is worth the investment to design tests that measure how much individual students learn over the course of a year on the material the teacher is expected to teach.

There's no question that teachers have tough jobs. But the old evaluation system that ignores student achievement and finds virtually all teachers "satisfactory" simply sets the bar too low, lacks objectivity and does not address whether students are actually learning. If we want to give students the best chance at success, we need to do a better job of determining whether their teachers are helping them. Evaluating teachers with no hard evidence about their primary responsibility is just plain irresponsible.

Camille Esch is an Irvine fellow at the New America Foundation. She specializes in education policy.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: The New America Foundation is a non-profit public policy institute and think tank located in Washington, D.C. that promotes innovative political solutions transcending conventional party lines—what they call radical centrist politics. Founded by Ted Halstead, the foundation aims to be non-partisan, and its board includes people with a range of political beliefs. Well-known board members include political commentator and Newsweek columnist Fareed Zakaria, former Republican governor of New Jersey and former head of the United States Environmental Protection Agency Christine Todd Whitman, conservative philosopher and historian Francis Fukuyama, author and Atlantic Monthly correspondent James Fallows, and liberal economist and professor Laura D'Andrea Tyson.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR (3/29): Teach first, suggest later

Re "Put teachers to the test," Opinion, March 23

Despite Camille Esch's suggestion that teacher evaluations be linked to improved test scores, teachers are being put to the test every day and in every classroom across this state. I have 36 to 40 middle-school students in each of my classes. They come from a wide variety of abilities and backgrounds. Our state is facing a $16-billion deficit. The result will be even larger class sizes.
I would like to extend an invitation to Esch: Trade places with me for two weeks. If she has the proper credentials and meets the myriad requirements to teach, she can teach my 190 8th-grade students history, and I can be a specialist in education policy.
John L. Uelmen
Newbury Park

Esch presents a balanced case for including students' standardized test scores in a teacher's performance evaluation. However, it's important to guard against putting too much weight on test results. Making students' exam scores a major factor in evaluations would create a classroom atmosphere that encourages teaching to the test -- an uninspired approach leaving students unengaged -- and would give teachers an incentive to help students cheat to raise their scores. I assume most teachers would not succumb to the temptation to artificially inflate the academic performance of their students; nevertheless, the incentive would exist and could potentially poison the learning environment.
Teacher evaluations should promote effective teaching by examining to what extent a teacher connects with students and inspires a love of learning. Too much focus on testing would undermine that goal.
Joseph Kaufman
Mission Viejo

Oh, why do I even bother to respond? Yet another non-teacher (Esch works at a "foundation") knows how to rate teachers -- by student test scores. I'll allow that as one element. But what about this: On the last round of report cards issued by my school, I entered a written request for parent conferences on 27 of the report cards. Want to guess how many responses I got? One. Factor that in, Ms. Esch, before you rate my performance. And let me know when you begin teaching five classes and a total of 180 students a day, as my colleagues and I do; then we can talk.
The situation is far more complex than Esch describes.
Ann Bourman
Los Angeles

In this rush to hold teachers responsible for their students' standardized test scores, there is one vital component missing: student accountability. Nowhere in this equation are students held accountable for their own test scores. Except for exit exams, standardized tests are no-stake tests; there are no consequences for low scores or rewards for excellent ones. Until students see the connection between test scores and their academic progress, many of them will continue to perform in a mediocre manner.
Francine Buschel-Gomez
Burbank

Esch leaves out what to do with the test data. Under current rules, it is difficult to get rid of ineffective teachers. It is also difficult to reward exceptional teachers because remuneration is based on seniority and other extraneous issues.
Roy Krausen
Oakland

Los Angeles Times: Put teachers to the test