Editorial: NEW WAYS TO EVALUATE TEACHERS + smf’s 2¢

San Gabriel Valley Tribune Editorial | http://bit.ly/hysZuH

19 April 2010 - TEST scores can be misleading, in more ways than one. For example, a school with unusually high test scores may actually have overperforming students and underperforming teachers. What parents need to know is how well teachers are doing at raising students' performance.

One way to measure is what's known as value-added ratings of teacher performance, based on how much students improve from year to year. Parents love it, but it's hotly debated among educators.

To his credit, the new superintendent of Los Angeles Unified, John Deasy, has brought value-added ratings to LAUSD schools. The ratings have been released for schools, and starting next month the district will share confidential scores with individual teachers.

The advantages of value-added ratings are profound. To the extent that the scoring is accurate, it shows whether students of all levels show improvement and when they don't.

The truth is that most schools do a completely inadequate job of evaluating teacher performance. In most districts, 99 percent of them get graded as satisfactory based on ridiculously insubstantial reviews. With the value-added reviews, it becomes clear whether students do well or poorly with any given teacher.

The concerns, though, are real. An effective teacher can do well with underperforming students, but what about students who are peak performers? And what about subjects such as art or music, or students who work with more than one teacher in the same subject?

Ideally, value-added evaluations help a teacher to see what works in a classroom and what doesn't. The point should be not to punish, but to guide a teacher toward excellence.

smf: If we can accept that “Test scores can be misleading” we are halfway to enlightenment on NCLB and Value Added Assessments and School Reform in general.

Test scores are a piece of the puzzle – and the pictute won’t be complete without them – but our singular focus on standardized test results results in a myopia bordering on blindness.  This newest iteration of value added assessment is cosmically superior to the LA Times Blame-and-Shame-and-Publish-the-Names methodology – but it still accounts only for tests taken in May to measure teaching and learning that happens all year. This paradigm won’t just force classroom teachers to teach-to-the-test – it will force principals and school boards and budgeteers and textbook publishers to administer/make policy/budget and publish to-the-test. Believe me, there are contract negotiations ongoing where labor and management are negotiating-to-the-test.

Call me old fashioned, accuse me of clinging to the status quo, but I thought we were educating children, not evaluating adult performance.

The editorial above contains a couple of clunker thoughts:

• “Parents love it…”  Really? Which parents? Since when?
• “To the extent that the scoring is accurate….”: What extent is that?  Is it as “real” as reality television?
• “The truth is….”  I actually agree with the next thought, but I’ve cynically learned to discredit thinking prefaced with “The truth is….”
• “Ideally…”:  Again, I agree with this thought …and I want so hard to be an idealist!