Teacher Evaluations

Recently, someone brought to my attention an online focus project by The Hope Street Group. They're trying to find a better method to evaluate teachers. Taken from their site, www.hopestreetgroup.org:

"The majority of teacher evaluation systems in this country result in nearly all teachers being rated satisfactory, despite the fact that many schools are not meeting federal benchmarks for success. Evaluation systems are rarely linked to quality, targeted professional development to address improvement areas for teachers. Administrators are often not trained to conduct robust evaluations, nor held accountable for the results of their current systems."

Franky, I agree that teacher evaluations are essentially useless. I'll take some examples from this past year, my first year teaching (unsurprisingly, all my evaluations were satisfactory). Most of my recommendations included the words "Continue to use..." and the ones that didn't weren't very meaty. I honestly feel that as a first year teacher I could have used more substantive evaluations.

Honestly, I thrive on feedback, and its unfortunate that in general teachers get so little. Most of the time I felt very on my own, learning through trial and error the things that worked for me and the things that didn't. While the trial-and-error system may work fine for learning some things, I have to wonder if there wouldn't be a more efficient process for a first year teacher to learn.

I definitely think there could be a lot of improvement made in the teacher evaluation process. For one, teacher evaluation is a major responsibility for school administration, but its one that defiantly gets put on the back burner. Administrators have tons of other responsibilities, and teacher evaluations is very time-consuming. I know that there's definitely some relief once a teacher becomes tenured (only 2 evaluations a year instead of 4!).

Anyway, this will hopefully prove to be some interesting research they're doing, and I'm excited to be a part of it.

On Merit Pay

There has been a good bit of talk recently concerning President Obama, Arne Duncan, and their adamant stand supporting merit pay for teachers. My knee-jerk reaction has always been positive, but with some hesitation. I'll tell you why.

Most other professional jobs are rewarded with pay for performance. Lawyers earn more when they win cases and stock brokers get bonuses if they invest your money well (or recently, even if they invest is poorly, but I digress). We even think that we can judge the intangible qualities of what makes our restaurant experience a good one, and tip our waitress accordingly. Teaching is the only profession I can think of where mediocrity and complacency are actually rewarded. When I look out on the sea of teachers out there, I see some that are worth following. But I also see some who I would never wish to emulate. If two of those teachers, the good and the bad, have been there the same number of years and have the same level of education, they get the same pay. Just intuitively, that doesn't make any sense to me.

I like to think that I am good at my job. But I won't deny thinking on more than one occasion, "Why should I go to the extra effort to do this? Its not like it will affect me in any way." I believe that in my short time in the classroom, that this idea has even crossed my mind shows the one reason we need a merit pay system. Because honestly, why should any teacher go above and beyond in their classroom? Right now the only motivation I can think of is to gain the professional respect of their peers, and that can only motivate a person so much. "But it's for the children," you might exclaim. "We go above and beyond for them!" While that may be true for some teachers, I think that in all honesty we can't (and shouldn't have to be) that idealistic. Of course many teachers go into teaching because they love children and want to improve their lives. But there are other motivations to teach that may not carry such an implicit desire to excel. Really, its a disgrace that we as a county ask teachers to do their jobs 'despite the pay'. I don't ask my veterinarians to do their job out of the pure love of my cat; it surely helps that they love my animal, but all I really ask is that they provide a good service for a just price. I think that is what we should reasonably ask of our educators.

My own major criticism of merit pay systems lays not with the principal, but with what would inevitably become the practice - rewarding teachers based on test scores. But in truth, I believe strongly that we could design a system that even I would be comfortable with in this area. I dislike the idea of rewarding based solely on test scores for all the usual reasons (and at least one lesser mentioned reason). Test scores are partly out of the teacher's control. Even if they taught well, a student might have an argument with their parents on the morning of the test and not be focused for it. Furthermore, special education students and students who are not proficient in English historically have a difficult time with standardized tests, even if know the material very well.

But I take issue with pay for performance on test scores for anther, less mentioned, reason as well. I know that recently I was listening to a colleague talk about a pay-for-performance pilot program they were taking part in. She was a Kindergarten teacher, and a dedicated one. She loved her students, her job and took a great deal of pride in how she was able to take a child who didn't know the alphabet at the beginning of the year and have them reading above grade level at the end of the year. But after she listened to the explanation of the system she was about to pilot, she told me "There's nothing in it for me." Why, I wondered, would this system not reward this excellent teacher? Kindergarten isn't a state testing grade. She felt (justifiably) slighted.

I think the first step toward creating a successful pay for performance system is to put aside this idea that one teacher can really control the test scores of each child. Education isn't a one-on-one battle; it really takes a community. The third grader who takes their first MSA isn't showing what they learned in third grade - they're showing a progression, that they've been learning all along. Some of our most important teaching is done before students are even tested, in early childhood. A successful merit pay system would address this and reward those teachers as well. I believe that every teacher should be rewarded if the school as a whole does well. No one teacher does it alone. It takes support and growth throughout all the grades.

I think that most teachers scoff at the idea of a merit pay system not because they are afraid to be paid based on their performance, but because they don't believe their performance will be judged fairly. I believe this system could have enormous benefits. I would never be sitting in my classroom thinking, "Why should I go to the extra effort? It's not worth my time." Even on my worst day I know it is worth my time. Maybe someone else just needs to recognize that as well.

Before I begin...

Before I begin posting, I wanted to give a brief introduction to myself. This coming school year (2009-2010) will be my second year in the classroom. I'm still new to all this, but at the same time I feel like coming in as a newcomer to this side of the education system has provided me with a lot of fresh insight. I wanted to share that with the public at-large, so here it is.

I have no formal training in education. I have my teacher certification through an alternative certification program, and in college never took a single theory class. Education seemed like a restrictive major to me in college, and I was never interested in it. Being an education major meant I would have had to sacrifice my favorite part of my college experience - the ability to take a broad variety of classes - for a very structured curriculum. When I decided I wanted to teach after I graduated, I enrolled in an alternative certification program. So, I teach in an area where they needed teachers in exchange for getting my professional license. I really liked this route to teaching.

I teach elementary school. I know most people interested in the knitty-gritty of education policy, if they taught at all, taught high school. I'm in a different position. My grade isn't a testing grade (I teach in Maryland, and state testing begins in Third grade for us). I don't have the high-stakes pressure of NCLB in the same way as my colleagues that teach in higher grades. But I see it. And I feel it in a different way.

Finally, everything I plan on posting here is my opinion. Sometimes informed, sometimes ill-informed. Sometimes researched, sometimes antecdotal, sometimes far-reaching and sometimes narrow in scope. It's a chronicle of my attempt to take one step further outside of my own classroom during my second year of teaching and see this system I am in for what it really is.