Archive: Opinions

As a career teacher (now retired) at Ithaca High School, I got to see teacher evaluation very closely and personally. Some of my evaluations came from administrators who knew very little about teaching, my subject, or sometimes education in general and were comically inept. Others came from administrators, and often department heads, who’d had extensive classroom experience. Their evaluations homed in on strategies I needed to improve and how I could improve them. They made my job easier in the long run, and I became a more effective teacher.

Judging teacher effectiveness based on test outcomes makes little sense. How easy it is to game that system: A teacher with clout such as seniority can sometimes move students like chess pieces — I’ve seen it — and end up with more highly skilled classes. Secondary teachers can lobby for honors classes. Those teachers might look really good on evaluations based on test scores, no thanks to any particular pedagogical gifts displayed in front of the class.

My classes tended to be mostly lower-skilled students. I asked for them because I loved them. They could be difficult — oh, the stories — but seeing the light come on in a kid who’s been written off by everybody else always made my day. Made my career. They often did badly on the one-size-fits-all state tests, and I considered it my responsibility to keep their defeat from crushing out that light. But by the test result rubric, I wasn’t such a hot teacher.

A crucial evaluation element missing in Ithaca, Lansing, and most other districts is student input. You can’t fool kids. Even as public education becomes more and more data driven, students retain more wisdom than many realize. They know a good teacher from a bad one. The teachers they most respect are the ones they can learn from, not the ones they fear, not the ones they just have fun with, but the ones who model the fun of learning. Research has proven that student evaluation of teachers is accurate and should be valued by those who hire and fire.

I like the evaluation process options Lansing has for its tenured teachers, and I wish non-tenured teachers were evaluated just as creatively. Three observations a year can be great if done well, and they also need a mentoring program. Release time for a master teacher to meet regularly with a new teacher, and to observe, is tax money well spent. The little brush fires can be spotted and extinguished, ideas can be batted around, materials exchanged — all without the pressure of formal observations, which should stay in place.

With mentoring, a master teacher and potential mentor can be developed more quickly, raising the median quality of the teaching staff in fewer years, thus saving money. A mentor is also in the perfect position to make a friendly suggestion that maybe teaching is not the protégé’s best career choice, thus saving the District many thousands of dollars, not to mention the intellectual and emotional welfare of lots of children, perhaps your own.

Any discussion of teacher evaluation sooner or later brings up merit pay. Like some political systems, it looks like a great idea, but it doesn’t really work. Here’s why: the District has X dollars to spend on teacher salaries. To reward the excellent teachers, assuming you somehow have an excellent evaluation system, you pay them more, right? Where does that money come from? Doesn’t that leave less in the pot for teachers who need to improve? And if everybody’s great, how can everybody get paid extra? They can’t. That makes this a demerit pay system. Morale goes down the drain, taking student achievement with it.

Besides, a so-called merit pay system is too easy to game in a very harmful way. If I’m in a merit pay system, I’m competing against my colleagues, not supporting them, mentoring them, or doing a lick of peer coaching. And if I’ve developed some outstanding materials and tests, do you think I’d share them? My colleagues have become competitors. Morale goes down the drain, taking student achievement with it.

Teacher evaluation may be impossible to do well and fairly. A big part of the problem is a need for numbers. People in offices need charts and graphs. Test scores. Just imagine a government program to evaluate parenting skills. We think we know who does it well or badly, but hard data? Instead, we have a squishy field of anecdotal evidence and conflicting philosophies. But for teachers, a mentoring program and giving students a voice in evaluation would help make schools better places to learn.

And that’s what it’s all about.

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