Rethinking Teacher Evaluation in Chicago

The Consortium On Chicago School Research At The University Of Chicago Urban Education Institute just released an interesting report on the Chicago teacher evaluations rubric. We bring this to our readers attention because their process includes elements such as observations, that will surely be included in the forthcoming Ohio evaluation rubric. The conclusion begins

Our study of the Excellence in Teaching Pilot in Chicago reveals some positive outcomes: the observation tool was demonstrated to be reliable and valid. Principals and teachers reported they had more meaningful conversations about instruction. The majority of principals in the pilot were engaged and positive about their participation. At the same time, our study identifies areas of concern: principals were more likely to use the Distinguished rating.

Our interviews with principals confirm that principals intentionally boost their ratings to the highest category to preserve relationships. And, while principals and teachers reported having better conversations than they had in the past, there are indications that both principals and teachers still have much to learn about how to translate a rating on an instructional rubric into deep conversation that drives improvement in the classroom. Future work in teacher evaluation must attend to these critical areas of success, as well as these areas of concern, in order to build effective teacher evaluation systems.

Though practitioners and policymakers rightly spend a good deal of time comparing the effectiveness of one rubric over another, a fair and meaningful evaluation hinges on far more than the merits of a particular tool. An observation rubric is simply a tool, one which can be used effectively or ineffectively. Reliability and validity are functions of the users of the tool, as well as of the tool itself. The quality of implementation depends on principal and observer buy-in and capacity, as well as the depth and quality of training and support they receive.

We would add that this kind of tool could be very dangerous absent due process collective bargaining protections.

Rethinking Teacher Evaluation in Chicago

Here’s What’s So Bad About School Choice

"Choice" is a mantra thrown around by many in the corporate education reform movement, often to disguise true intentions of profiteering. Here's a smart article looking at just some of the problems with "choice". We've excerpted just a small piece, the whole should be read.

Problem 3: The Driver for Parents’ School Choices Is Not Always Educational Quality

There’s another fundamental problem with this approach as well. In our economic system, consumers demonstrate how much they value an item by how much they are able and willing to pay for it. A best-selling toothpaste demonstrates it’s the superior product by the very fact that more consumers decide to buy it rather than rival brands. Kaufmann believes the same dynamic should be at work for schools.

But society has a strong interest in well-educated young people prepared to assume the responsibilities of citizenship. This is the job of our schools. Hence we have far more of a stake in the choices parents would make for their students’ schools than we do in their choices of laundry soap or cat food.

Before we hand over responsibility to parents for determining what kinds of schools will educate our next generation of citizens, we ought to have confidence in the values that will inform their decisions.

This doesn’t seem to be much of a concern for Kaufmann. He writes that “parents concerned for their children’s welfare are highly motivated to choose wisely.” He implicitly assumes that the values that parents apply in selecting schools for their children are the same educational values that we embrace as a society. Accordingly, we can assume that thousands of individual parental choices will have a cumulative impact that reflects the values that we share as a community.

Further, since the end goal is academic excellence, we can also expect that the objective measures of educational achievement available to us, like standardized math and reading scores, will be of critical importance to our choosing-wisely parents.

We agree with the conclusion of the article.

Teachers comments hit with bullets

The Governor's teacher liaison has published a draft memo condensing over 1,200 educator comments into an awful lot of cut & paste bullet points. As noted by StateImpact, these bullets have been arbitrarily lumped into 5 categories

• Big Concern #1: Who would / could / should evaluate a teacher under this new system?
• Big Concern #2: What would / could / should be used to evaluate a teacher (or administrator) under this new system?
• Big Concern #3: How would / could / should student growth be measured?
• Big Concern #4: How would / could / should this new system lead to a teacher’s growth?
• Big Concern #5: How would / could / should my pay change if we move to performance compensation?

Not included in this document is any mention of collective bargaining, even though a significant number of teachers expressed that local collective bargaining was the best mechanism to formulate evaluations and pay. It's also not possible to determine the weight to apply to any of these bullet points based on either frequency or validity, but as noted, this is a working draft document.

In the mean time we will continue to publish a wide selection of raw comments. The memo can be found below.

Concerns Ideas Memo

Ohio School Funding

We attended a meeting at the State Library of Ohio hosted by Barbara Mattei-Smith, the Governor's Assistant Policy Director for Education. The topic for discussion was the development of a new Ohio school funding formula to get us past the current "make-it-up-as-you-go-along" bridge formula.

This time, with adequate notice, lots of teachers filled the room to almost standing capacity.

MS. Mattei-Smith laid out 3 principals being worked from

• Resources need to be student centered, creating an appropriate learning environment
• Students come from a wide variety of backgrounds, and a funding model has to address that
• There are a number of delivery systems to consider such as charters, online, traditional schools, joint vocational etc

Given how Ohio's education system has been deemed unconstitutional numerous times, it is perhaps a little surprising not to see a constitutional funding formula being the number one guiding principal.

It is further surprising that the evidenced based model is being discarded, with scant solid reason for doing so. While some issues regarding the EBM were alluded to by Ms. Mattei-Smith, none seemed to stretch to the conclusion it should be scrapped, rather than modified and given time to work. Haim Ginott - "Teachers are expected to reach unattainable goals with inadequate tools. The miracle is that at times they accomplish this impossible task." As one teacher noted, it's like a team getting a new coach, and along with that change, a new playbook, schedules, uniforms and philosophy, for no other reason than there's a new coach.

Indeed, while it took a protracted amount of time and consultation to develop and roll out the EBM, the current plan for a funding formula is on a much faster track, with far less consultation. We will have to wait and see what the details are, but the proposed speed and method of development should cause concern.

Further concern should be given to reports that the Governor is considering mechanisms for consolidation of school districts. An awful lot of education policy is being churned right now, from SB5 to teacher evaluations, merit pay, and school funding with very little of it being given time for deliberative thought, consideration and consultation. As a Columbus teacher mentioned, it has all the hallmarks of blind men describing an elephant.

Right now we can only hope that the creature being created by the administration isn't some hybrid abomination, but hope isn't too reassuring.

Measuring Teacher Effectiveness: Are We Creating an Education Nightmare?

We seem to be setting ourselves up for disaster education. Efforts are underway not only to adopt value-added models to rate the effectiveness of individual teachers, but to use these models to identify those at the very bottom who might later lose their positions and those at the very top who might then be eligible for merit pay. Yet in all the policy discussions and public commentary, there's been little focus on learners and on how, precisely, we define the qualities of a good teacher.

The movement to revise methods for teacher evaluation to include such models came about in an effort to undermine current evaluation systems that tend to rate most teachers as satisfactory (Hull, 2011).

Educators are concerned because their evaluations will be tied to results of their students’ standardized testing, which are used in value-added calculations, while other factors, such as experience and training, are diminished. There's concern that the increase in testing that will be required to use those models to rate all teachers might come at the expense of learners, taking the joy out of learning and making it boring, as President Obama pointed out ("Remarks," 2011). And there's concern about our lack of agreement on what it means to be an effective educator.

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