Have you been paying attention to what is going on with
Teacher evaluations? I can’t say I blame you for not drilling down in on the
farcical minutia that is TLE (Teacher Leader Effectiveness). So a teacher’s formal evaluation, the characterization
of the quality of their teaching, is being calculated like their very own
personal A-F grade. Does anyone (only
credible people can answer) think a school’s A-F grade is an accurate portrayal
of the overall quality of a school? Hell no.
A-F only measures the quality of the student’s test performance in a
school, or as I like to point out, the quality of the students in the school. TLE can’t even boast that claim. Here is how TLE is calculated: Observation +
OAM + VAM or SLO or SOO = Evaluation.
Ugh? Let me break it down: A
teacher’s observation is combined with a teacher determined metric, OAM (of
which teachers get to pick their rating scale), plus either a complex
statistical formula called Value Added Measure (VAM) or an overcomplicated
Student Learning Outcome/Student Objective Outcome (SLO/SOO) (where teachers
decide if the student has shown appropriate growth). Still confused? Join the club. The far right ideologues and I have found
something to agree on: the government screwed this all to hell. TLE in its current form is just a POS!
The real problem with the quantitative aspect of TLE is not
the use of data to improve instruction.
I love the aspect of teachers selecting a Student Learning Outcome and
collecting the information to drive changes in instruction or to reinforce
great teaching. We should use the data as a professional development mechanism,
but not for evaluations. Teachers, by
nature, won’t trust the system when it could ultimately lead them to being
branded as a poor teacher and become a tool for their termination of
employment. And don’t start with the
song and dance BS about evaluations should be about improving teacher quality
and not about hiring and firing….. until great teachers get evaluated the same
number of times poor teachers are evaluated, every teacher is going to believe
employment decisions hinder on good evaluations.
The real problem with the quantitative aspect of TLE is it
is simply an unfair and biased system.
If you teach 4th grade through 8th grade reading
or math or Algebra I/II or English 3 you are playing by a different set of
quantitative rules than everyone else. These
teachers get a VAM score based on so complex of a mathematical formula, the
Oklahoma SDE spent $2 million dollars on the formula’s creation. All other teachers, however, get to sit in a
room and decide the specifics: 1. Which group of students do I want to measure?
2. What content/standard(s) do I want to
measure? 3. What assessment I use to get the data? 4). What student growth constitutes
success? How is this even close to equal
or fair for our teachers? The 5th
grade reading teacher must use the 5th reading test and a computer
determines student success with test growth scores teachers can’t control, but
the 5th science teacher gets to use a teacher created pre/post test and
gets to determine successful growth outcomes?
Quantitative data used as part of the evaluation will not
elicit the outcome everyone wants: improved teacher quality. Isn’t the whole
point of teacher evaluation to improve professional practice? Using
quantitative data is a theoretical boon that is a practical boondoggle. I argue using quantitative data in the formal
evaluation inhibits the improvement process.
Do we really expect teachers to challenge themselves with rigorous
lessons and robust student growth targets if the results end in an “ineffective
rating”? Do we really expect teachers to
attempt different teaching modalities and improve their pedagogy when their
livelihood is on the line? However, if
we took the quantitative evaluation piece off the table and allowed teachers to
utilize the SLO/SOO process to improve best practices, then teachers could
benefit from this otherwise complete waste of time.
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