Teacher Mike Matthews Drops Some FACTS Into The Teacher Evaluations Story

Update: John Young tackles News Journal editorial on DDOE's teacher evaluation FAIL.
 
Mike Matthews rebuke of DDOE's teacher testing ~
Attacking the symptoms instead of the root cause

Teachers have always been evaluated. The evaluation system, for the most part, is fair in that it requires continual monitoring by your building principal. There are five components to a teacher’s evaluation. The first four are rather harmless and encompass such areas as professional practice, planning and preparation, and classroom environment. They require administrative EYES and EARS in your classroom to OBSERVE what you’re doing. The most controversial, though, is Component V. This is the part of a teacher’s evaluation that is judged solely on student test scores. If students don’t reach some pre-determined growth or benchmark goal, then that could have a negative impact on a teacher’s evaluation.
Yes, there were foul-ups in the implementation of the Component V portion of the evaluation this year. For those teachers who teach subjects NOT covered under the state test, DCAS (which is a majority of educators), they had to administer their own tests under the guidance of the state. Tests developed by cohorts of content-area-specialized teachers. Bubble sheet tests, for the most part. Well, many teachers in my District, particularly at the secondary level, were complaining well into November and December that they had NEVER received the materials FROM THE STATE to give their students the pre-test that should have been given the first week of school.
And the state wonders why the confidence level of teachers has dropped. Y’see, this State Department of Education seems too willing to attack the symptoms of the hot mess that is our evaluation system as opposed to looking at the root causes. They seem willing to simply blame a few chaotic timing and operational foul-ups as the cause for so much teacher dissatisfaction with the new evaluation.
But when I talk to teachers across my District, it’s clear to me this Component V is more universal than a few operational foul-ups. There are things going on in our schools that cannot be measured by test scores and, by extension, it makes it incredibly dangerous to then grade teachers on said test scores.
The symptoms of the problem are irrelevant to the bigger picture issues plaguing our environment of “rigor! rigor! rigor!” and “data! data! data!” and “test! test! test” and “disaggregate! disaggregate! disaggregate!” The flaws of this system are the test itself as well as the judging of our teachers based on factors that are well out of their control.

Click the link for the whole story.

And see Kilroy for more!

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