Carrot for changing evaluations
Will districts respond to incentives?
Last month, State Board of Education President Ted Mitchell couldn’t get any votes for his plan to encourage districts to change the way they evaluate teachers and administrators. Education groups didn’t like the proposal any better.
But this week, with the California School Boards Association and the Association of California School Administrators now praising it, the Board unanimously adopted a new version that offers an incentive to districts willing to link evaluations with student achievement and good classroom practices.
The State Board’s role in what has become a national debate on evaluations is limited by state statutes and local bargaining. But there is one modest area – the authority to grant waivers from the onerous Ed Code – in which the State Board can offer a carrot. Under the new policy, schools or districts that create annual principal and teacher evaluations that meet a dozen broad criteria will be on a fast track to get waivers tied to improving student achievement.
The policy coincides with the efforts in some districts to adopt new evaluations. Mitchell himself led a task force in Los Angeles Unified whose recommendations have met resistance from United Teachers Los Angeles, the teachers union. (Mitchell explains why the State Board’s policy is important in a video interview I conducted; click here for it.)
One big stumbling block, which the union reaffirmed this week, is its opposition to using test scores as one of the measures. The State Board’s policy calls for using “no less than 30 percent based on growth in student achievement toward meeting grade-level proficiency.” That’s the same percentage that the Obama administration favors and that Los Angeles Unified and the six other districts in the state’s Race to the Top application used. But the State Board’s policy said other measures could be used beside standardized test scores: “classroom work, student grades, classroom participation, student presentations and performance and student projects and portfolios.”
In citing the California Teachers Association’s opposition to the policy, lobbyist Ken Burt said there is no evidence to support the 30 percent threshold and called the board’s policy “ideological, a matter of belief.”
But what appealed to the school boards and administrators associations and other groups is the policy’s recognition of the importance of other factors as well: “differentiated instruction and practices; culturally responsive instructional strategies to address and eliminate the achievement gap; high expectations and active student engagement; consistent and effective relationships with students, parents, teachers, administrators and other school and district staff; and meaningful self-assessment to improve as a professional educator.”
The policy requires that districts use the evaluations “to inform” all employment decisions, including tenure, promotion, and dismissal and in the distribution of highly effective teachers and administrators to minimize disparities between high- and low-poverty and minority schools.
Noting that a new Gates Foundation-funded study of teacher effectiveness concluded that students’ views of their teachers were good predictors of teacher effectiveness, the board is requiring that parents’ and students’ opinions also be a component of an evaluation.
A committee appointed by the State Board will determine whether districts’ evaluation systems qualify for the Ed Code waivers. Those waivers may relate to class size, instructional time, or daily schedules. Or districts could seek waivers from grant restrictions from which the Legislature hasn’t yet provided flexibility. What’s unknown is whether these waivers would be a strong enough attraction for districts and unions to pursue evaluations along the lines that the State Board prescribed.
The waivers would not be automatic anyway. An existing Waiver Office in the State Department of Education would continue to review districts’ requests and could recommend that the State Board not grant them. But the assumption would be that waivers would be put on the State Board’s consent calendar, making approval pro forma for those districts whose evaluation systems passed the review committee’s muster.
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I was pleased to see the amendment adopted to involve student and parent input into the evaluation. While pleased, i still have concerns of how that portion of the evaluation will be conducted. Its one thing to only survey students and parents, which was the data collection tool board members were embracing, but its another to truly involve students and parents in a meaningful way throughout the process!
The Student and Parent evaluation component should be more than just surveying. Students and Parents need to play a critical role in the development of the questions on the tools to be used, the design of the tools to be used, hopefully using multiple tools to not only get the quantitative data, but take this opportunity to collect qualitative data as well, so that teachers and principles get a chance to hear how students are affected by the exceptional work and the ineffective work they are performing. Students and Parents also need to be a part of the analysis of this work to be able to truly create good, meaningful, and powerful recommendations to principles and teachers and be able to hold them accountable if they are not improving or using those to better their praxis.
Lets hope we don’t settle for just surveying and get real about creating a system to improve the quality of education in this state! All Students Have A Fundamental Right to a Quality Education! Now lets move to give it to them!
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Talk about recycling. Bad old ideas never go away. Way back when the “unfreezing” of the education system (RAND Corp. term), was first underway in 60’s and 70’s, one of the means to accomplish it was to place students in positions of judgment over adults. Remember when the practice of having a student on every school board, having students be part of PTA so they became PTSA’s..remember the advocacy of “experimenta lcolleges” in community colleges where students devised their own separate curricila within the regular school? It worked to help break down established lines and respect for authority. so here we are again, with Gates Foundation Study supposedly to put forth ways to measure teacher effectiveness, putting forth the same old idea. Place the students in charge of measuring how effective their teachers are. And all this from students about whom the whole orchestrated agenda is supposed to help because they are so ”educationally deprived”.
This time, the upside down recommendation, is designed to jeopardize status of any teachers left who demand respect and strict academic performance from students. Get rid them to leave only the ones who comply with the workforce training agenda, or who can function in the context of charter schools for a transition period until the next step toward nationalization of education and conforming to standard core curricula can be achieved.
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I think that Mary raises a valid point, if the student ratings are tainted by dishonesty then they may not be of much use. And once a student knows his rating has some power to it he may use it for his own purposes vs. making it an honest rating of the teacher. I’m sure there are a number of social science studies that flesh out this common sense point of view.
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Actually, what was novel about the Gates study is that it proved these largely anecdotal points to be false. Student evaluations were completely accurate when compared to value-added and other methods of teacher evaluations, even when considering students as young as those in the third grade! I think this study shows that it is just wrong to say that parents and students cannot be objective or honest in their evaluations of teachers. Let’s stop underestimating our parents and students! These are the people who are closest to the teacher’s practices and the results of those practices, and are thus in the best position to give the most valuable feedback on the effectiveness of those practices. It is not like their evaluations will be the ONLY means of determining effectiveness – they will be just one piece of multiple observations and data points – so the idea that these evaluations will be used to kick out unpopular teachers is simply not based on fact, and the Gates study has given us some hard data to prove it.
And let’s get to the point of those “unpopular” teacher anyways. What makes them unpopular? Usually the fact that they cannot relate to their students (cultural competency) or they refuse to use creative means to address their students’ styles of learning – both which are considered valid points of evaluation per the California Standards for the Teaching Profession. My “popular” teachers were always the ones who were available during lunch and after school, understood me and respected my opinion, and were the first ones to give me the tools I needed to fully understand the material they presented. And it is just those points of “popularity” that make some teachers more effective than others at improving the academic outcomes of their students, and it just makes plain sense to include them in formal evaluations of teacher effectiveness.
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I noticed that the planned evaluation is aimed at teachers…where’s the principal / administrator evaluation process in all this discussion by the Billionaire Boys Club for Education Reform?
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These types of “reforms” are a terrible idea! They are sure to make teachers afraid to take any kind of leadership role in their own classroom and instead create a legion of educators who pander and cater to their students whims in order to receive favorable evaluations. Have you ever heard of a middle school student who actually liked their teachers or could even find any value in what was being presented to them???
All of these so-called “reforms” such as linking evaluations to test scores, student/parent evaluations of teachers, negotiating achievement goals into teacher contracts and the like that I have read on this site will have LITTLE TO NO EFFECT ON STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT!! Why? For the simple reason that students and their families will STILL have zero accountability when all is said and done. Where is the idea of recipropcity in education? This is a two-way partnership. There can be no learning without this principle being firmly understood and committed to by BOTH learner and teacher.
Where is the student and parent accountability?? In my class this year alone, I have had students miss over 100 days of instruction due to unexcused and excused (read: vacation time during school months) absences! Getting students to complete homework is a mammoth undertaking in itself. Adinistration has made changes to programs and schedules without knowing the impact on learning! And we are supposed to blindly go along with all of these REFORMS???
Give teachers a voice in school site decisions regarding evaluation procedures! Make retention policies stronger to coincide with proposed teacher accountability reforms! Suspend the drivers’ licenses of parents who cannot or will not get their kid to school! (You’ll NEVER hear that idea from any politician’s mouth. Can’t hold the constituents to any higher standard, can we?) Make education a true, two-way endeavor and stop making teachers the scapegoat and sacrificial lamb that is slaughtered on the altar of declining national achievement!
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John You should tell your readers that state law(since 1974 has required all Certificated staff to be evaluated using student achievement as one of for criteria. this all with credential requirements including administrators) This must be done each year for non tenured staff and every two years for permanent staff. Now that law also required School Boards to adopt standards of student achievement in every (repeat every) area of study and to evaluate student achievement on progress towards those standards. The fact that nearly all Boards have not accomplished that statutory requirement is the first major problem. Funny that CSBA never mentions that dirty little management secret. John
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Thank you for telling them, John. There is a general consensus that evaluations under the 1970s Stull Act are not working. It is based on a few perfunctory, usually announced, classroom observations by principals. Nearly every teacher meets the criteria for a passing review, without guidance for improvement. Right or wrong — I have heard arguments on both sides — many superintendents argue that due process rights make it very expensive and difficult to dismiss clearly poorly performing teachers. And it is not a collaborative process, as the next generation of evaluations should be. For a discussion of the Stull Act and what other states are doing, see Chapter 4 of California’s Teaching Force 2010, the annual report of the Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning.
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Maria: It’s clear from the policy that principal and administrator evaluations are included and emphasized. I didn’t know any of the State Board of Education were billionaires. They apparently disguise this well. Perhaps you know more about their net worth than I do.
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First, to Mary and Katie and Mr. Thompson,
Diane Ravitch, in her Building Bridges Blog, pointed out that Gates used student input for only reaffirming growth in test scores. Yes, Katie, students do give meaningful feedback. But do they notice the various factors that affect instruction, small room, no overhead projector, no computers, sometimes, not. And yes, if students and parents feel that their is a direct tie-in with evaluations, teachers will loose some power. Next, as with all surveys, Questions Matter. David Cohen, of InterAct Blogs just took apart the Hoover Report, based upon the same premise. How can we get these astute analyzes to our less-than-analytical or perhaps-a-hidden-agenda pols!
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Katie, the students participating in the Gates study had no reason to believe their ratings would impact teacher evaluations. Since they had no power there was every reason to be honest. This is very similar to the situation with teachers. If you start to implement high stakes testing more teachers cheat on standardized tests. Fortunately most teachers don’t lie, and we can probably count on most students not to lie. But that doesn’t mean there won’t be problems with lying.
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To all discrediting parents and students to know right from wrong, there is a simple way of getting by that problem. That is involving them not just as subjects and surveyees, but involving them in the process! By engaging a group of students and parents in Evaluation training, as i have done in schools and communities across the state while working with Youth In Focus, you really decrease the possibility of this happening. We need to train these student parent teams in the methods of Research and Evaluation, train them about bias in research! When you train people and hold them accountable for this work, you will get more productive outcomes
I have had this discussion with teachers and principles who are dear friends of mine, and all have welcomed this input. They all have said its important to know how they can improve the art of teaching, how to make sure that they are doing all they can for their students. The only teachers who are against this are those who have become complacent in their craft, who show up when the bell rings and leave with the students! Lets not pretend that they do not exist!
The beauty of research and evaluation is that we don’t know what will come out of this until the work is complete. The bottom line is what occupation do you not have to be evaluated in? Since when does evaluating performance become a witch hung? Everyday working people have to show improvements and meet performance benchmarks to be promoted to a higher position or pay scale! Why not teachers? If you are passionate about your work, about doing the best for students, you welcome feedback on your craft and performance! And as i was taught many years ago entering the teaching profession, The best way to learn is to teach and the best teachers never stop learning!
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The only teachers who are against this are those who have become complacent in their craft, who show up when the bell rings and leave with the students!
and
What makes them unpopular? Usually the fact that they cannot relate to their students (cultural competency) or they refuse to use creative means to address their students’ styles of learning
You both should stop characterizing the views of those you disagree. To describe these as hilariously, delusionally inaccurate is to do them too much kindness.
Ideally, teacher evaluations should be done by those with no dog in the fight. I’d just as soon principals not be involved, either.
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