The Teacher Evaluation Debate

This post by John Thompson from This Week in Education makes a point I have been trying to get folks to understand since value-added has been pushed into the fore for teacher evaluation:

I would quarrel on one point with Cody, and perhaps Dr. Phillips, before exploring areas where we agree, as well as areas where we might be able to articulate an agreement.  My experience as an inner city teacher convinces me that the fair and efficient termination of perhaps 5 to 10% of teachers who are not doing their job should be a top priority.  I just maintain that those teachers are easy to identify, that value-added is not necessary to do so, that due process has very little to do with retaining ineffective teachers, and that there is no reason to risk serious damage to the entire profession in order to fire bad teachers.

Having worked as a mathematics educator in urban schools from San Diego to New York City, I cannot agree more. Everyone in those schools knows who the 5% to 10% of teachers in that school who need to be terminated for cause, the kids, fellow teachers, parents, administrators. We do not need an expensive, untested value-added regime to find and eliminate those teachers. We need principals who know how to observe and document poor instruction, poor planning, and an unwillingness to learn the craft of teaching. We need systems that support principals as instructional leaders so that they have the time and expertise to do this part of their job and not just run around to meetings all of the time. And we need a distributed leadership system that allows teachers and other education professionals in the schools to help the principals document the areas in need of improvement, devise professional development plans to help those struggling teachers, and exit those who do not want to or are unable to improve within a reasonable amount of time.

The specious value-added regimes are a way to try to make something "objective" by misusing a measure of student achievement to pretend that those numbers have more meaning than what one can observe in a classroom. If you observe in another classrooms, you can see the ones where learning is happening and the ones where it is not. If you cannot, you should not be a principal or other administrator in a school.

The Answer Sheet - Willingham: Big questions about the LA Times teachers project

The Answer Sheet - Willingham: Big questions about the LA Times teachers project

I am glad Willingham called the LA Times on the status of the science on value-added models. The National Academies of Science, in their report on use of VA models said they should not be used to make high stakes decisions, and publicly posting teachers' results seems about as high a stake as you can get in this day and age, short of actually firing folks. So, I think it is important to improve the science.

But he makes a second, more important in my mind, point. Teachers and teachers unions need to begin to adopt some of the recommendations and practices of monitoring and evaluating teachers that work, such as the AFT-affiliated unions in Toledo and other districts in Ohio that do peer evaluations that lead to more terminations, and more importantly improvements, than do most district administrator-based evaluation systems. Until teachers allow their profession to remain professional and put in place stronger protections for the profession, others will do it for them. And probably not well.

Science and Subpoenas - Inside Higher Ed

In the piece Science and Subpoenas - Inside Higher Ed, Felice Levine does an excellent job of outlining the research ethics issues in the Arizona cases.

Education Week: Arizona Subpoena Seeks Researchers' ELL Data

Education Week: Arizona Subpoena Seeks Researchers' ELL Data

This seems to be an egregious misuse of power. I would never turn over data that I promised to be confidential. At best, I would work with my IRB to find another expert witness of the opposite side's choosing to review the data with me present only. And it would have to be anonymous versions of the data, particularly without teachers' names on it. Once the data is turned over, I would not be able to promise that it would be used ethically, which is the commitment I made when I collected the data and the informed consent. If I were one of the participating teachers, I would be waiving that consent form around and making sure there was no transfer of material of any sort that might implicate me. This kind of action would be stifling for future research on contentious issues where the participants' responses were promised confidentiality for the purposes of candor.

How should we teach our future teachers?

How should we teach our future teachers?

There is a lot not known about how we should teach our future teachers. A lot more needs to be implemented that is currently not being implemented in colleges of education. Until we, as a community, acknowledge what we are not doing well and align our work to the needs of the field, while supporting generative growth in teachers, we will continue to be attacked and replaced.

I am not a fan of Teach for America, but I recognize that most programs in schools of education are not satisfactory. I have pushed my colleagues to include classroom management and working with students with special needs into our methods courses, with practical foci, not just the ideas. What we know about learning is that we have to meet students, including preservice and inservice teachers, where they are. We spend so much time trying to get them to appreciate the things we find interesting, when they are worried about things that will matter in classrooms but are often seen as beneath the academy. On the other hand, I don't think expanding the pool of places that can offer quick and dirty programs will be the answer.

We need to sit down and really rethink a lot about teacher education. I do think the university structure that is focused on courses and fitting with the university culture and timeline instead of timelines best made for students to learn to become good teachers is an impediment. If I didn't try to fit a program into a semester system, but just moved between coursework and fieldwork in ways that make more sense for learning a clinical practice, I would be able to do so much more as a teacher educator. Medical schools do not operate on the regular semester calendar, so why should we? We need to be more creative and willing to envision new ways of thinking about teacher education that is not hamstrung by university constraints, as Race to the Top will allow others to do this without us. The handwriting is clear for teacher education, and we should be listening, not just trying to defend the status quo.

Education Week: Panel Finds No Favorite in Teacher-Prep Pathways

Education Week: Panel Finds No Favorite in Teacher-Prep Pathways
I am glad this report finally came out. It is very frustrating to teach in a teacher preparation program where many either think research has nothing to say, or that the research is definitive in what we should do in teacher preparation. I hope the call for more research is heeded, and that the focus is on what program elements matter, for whom, and why. I am skeptical that these large data-sets can do support that kind of research without greater clarity about measuring "field experiences," for example, beyond hours spent student teaching and not looking at quality and growth. Fundamentally, until we as teacher educators become more critical of our practice, and the level of regulation of teacher education programs is realigned to allow for real experimentation with true oversight, we are not going to be able to learn much. Teacher education is a major industry in the US, and in most places it is not treated or regulated in ways that support research-based or research-generating practice. I hope this report spurs change.

Bracketology - NCAA 1985 - 2009 - Leonardo Aranda's posterous

Bracketology - NCAA 1985 - 2009 - Leonardo Aranda's posterous

This is really cool. It would be nice to always name the regions, but he is right about the inconsistency with which teams are placed in a region. But the relative imbalance across some of the regions is pretty sharp. In the top right region, not team beyond the #1 team wins. Does not bode well for WVA this year against DUKE if you are looking at the standard brackets for this year. Interesting. I share in the spirit of my totally busted bracket (as the defending champion who is about to go down in her bracketology group). Happy spring and enjoy the games this weekend.