The ed "reformers" like to say that the best way to evaluate teachers is to tie their evaluations to student test scores. Fire the teachers whose students have bad scores, give bonuses to those whose students have good scores. Simple. Easy. But it's not.
There is plenty of research that indicates that these tests are not good measures of overall student learning, yet people want to use these tests to help evaluate teachers. This debate is going on in Illinois, where the state is preparing to roll-out its new evaluation system. The system could make up to 50% of a teacher's evaluation based on state test scores, despite the fact that these types of tests are not intended to evaluate teachers. It creates a problem for those who do not have these types of tests in their classes. It could cause them to be evaluated on other peoples test scores as is happening in Tennessee or you could be rated on school wide test scores, as is happening in Delaware. Or it may lead to more and more spending on creating standardized tests for those classes. This type of system leaves little room for evaluating educators on their content knowledge, their ability to manage a classroom, their proficiency in assessing their students in multiple ways and being able to get their students actively engaged in their own learning.
There are those who prefer to look at student growth or Value Added Models (VAMs) when evaluating teachers. VAMs have not yet been proven to be accurate either. This piece from the Washington Post , breaks down the problems with VAM, showing the variability from class to class, year to year and test to test. This report from the National Education Policy Center shows that the VAMs used in the much reported on story in the L.A. Times last year that publicly identified teachers and their VAM's (which was to show their effectiveness) was inadequate at best.
Teachers may be the most important in-school contributor to student achievement, but there are a myriad of other factors that may trump that; wealth, poverty, home support, attendance, health care and many others. Those never factor into a standardized test score.
There is plenty of research that indicates that these tests are not good measures of overall student learning, yet people want to use these tests to help evaluate teachers. This debate is going on in Illinois, where the state is preparing to roll-out its new evaluation system. The system could make up to 50% of a teacher's evaluation based on state test scores, despite the fact that these types of tests are not intended to evaluate teachers. It creates a problem for those who do not have these types of tests in their classes. It could cause them to be evaluated on other peoples test scores as is happening in Tennessee or you could be rated on school wide test scores, as is happening in Delaware. Or it may lead to more and more spending on creating standardized tests for those classes. This type of system leaves little room for evaluating educators on their content knowledge, their ability to manage a classroom, their proficiency in assessing their students in multiple ways and being able to get their students actively engaged in their own learning.
There are those who prefer to look at student growth or Value Added Models (VAMs) when evaluating teachers. VAMs have not yet been proven to be accurate either. This piece from the Washington Post , breaks down the problems with VAM, showing the variability from class to class, year to year and test to test. This report from the National Education Policy Center shows that the VAMs used in the much reported on story in the L.A. Times last year that publicly identified teachers and their VAM's (which was to show their effectiveness) was inadequate at best.
Teachers may be the most important in-school contributor to student achievement, but there are a myriad of other factors that may trump that; wealth, poverty, home support, attendance, health care and many others. Those never factor into a standardized test score.
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