School Principals Swamped by Teacher Evaluations

"School Principals Swamped by Teacher Evaluations", that's the title of an article on an ABC News report this past weekend.

Sharon McNary believes in having tough teacher evaluations.

But these days, the Memphis principal finds herself rushing to cram in what amounts to 20 times the number of observations previously required for veteran teachers – including those she knows are excellent – sometimes to the detriment of her other duties.

"I don't think there's a principal that would say they don't agree we don't need a more rigorous evaluation system," says Ms. McNary, who is president of the Tennessee Principals Association as well as principal at Richland Elementary. "But now it seems that we've gone to [the opposite] extreme."
[...]
"There is no evidence that any of this works," says Carol Burris, a Long Island principal who co-authored an open letter of concern with more than 1,200 other principals in the state. "Our worry is that over time these practices are going to hurt kids and destroy the positive culture of our schools."
[...]
In Tennessee, the biggest complaint from many principals is simply the amount of time required from them for the new observation system. Veteran teachers, who in the past only needed to be evaluated every five years, now get four observations a year. Untenured teachers need six.

Each observation involves a complicated rubric and scoring system, discussions with the teacher before and afterward, and a written report – a total of perhaps two to four hours for each one, Ms. McNary estimates.

This last observation is one JTF talked about in one of our most popular articles.

Let's just think for a minute about these observations.

There must be 2 per year per teacher of at least 30 minutes each. 30 minutes + 30 minutes = 1 hour. 1 hour x 146,000 teachers = 146,000 hours of observation per year.

But these observers aren't just going to magically appear. They will need time to organize the observations, to get to the classes, to record their findings and to issue a report. Conservatively this adds another hour per year per teacher to the effort.

Now we are at 292,000 hours per year just for this provision alone.

If someone were to work 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, 52 weeks a year it would take them over 140 years to complete this task. Since these observations have to be completed annually that means we're going to need at least 140 more administrators just for this provision alone!

This dawning realization is also hitting home in Ohio now too,

Nordonia Hills is one of dozens of school districts across the state that are piloting the new evaluation program -- which state education officials have been working on for the past several years.

Superintendent Joe Clark said the district has been involved in the state's move to revamp the teacher evaluation process since he came on board in 2009 as assistant superintendent. Charged with performing human resource and personnel management for the district, Clark said he felt the teacher evaluation system needed a drastic upgrade.

This year, pilot evaluations are being conducted on six teachers -- three each at Nordonia High School and Ledgeview Elementary.

Nordonia hills has 236 teachers according to the Department of Education. It's taken them 3 years to get to the point of observing 6 of them.

Clark said many aspects of the program remain to be worked out. He said "student growth," one factor in the process, has yet to be specified, for example.

That student growth measure is 50% of the mandated evaluation. You can begin to see when we say Teacher evaluations are years away from completion, we're not exaggerating.

The Nordonia Hills superintendent did his own math

Clark said the process requires an evaluator -- typically the building principal or assistant principal -- to observe teachers in class twice for at least 30 minutes each time. The process also involves meetings prior to, and after each observation session.

Likewise, the new process is much more time consuming. Clark said evaluating 80 teachers at Nordonia High School would require 480 meetings.

"And that's not counting the time to write up the evaluations," Clark said, adding "How is that possible? There's only 180 school days in the year."

Teacher observations are an important and valuable tool for professional development and evaluation. Few would argue that. The problem becomes one of time and resources. HB153 was passed without any consideration to the mammoth amount of work needed to implement these corporate education reforms. Indeed, HB153, rather than add resources, cuts almost $2 billion dollars from public education.

It's going to be very convenient indeed for corporate education reformers to look upon this impending failure and blame everyone but themselves for not getting results. Why, it might even let them engage in more teacher and union bashing, and argue that their reforms failed because the status quo stood in the way.

An Open Letter to Gov. John Kasich

A great letter from an Ohio teacher to Governor Kasich in response to his request for merit pay feedback (brought to our attention by another teacher).

Dear Mr. Kasich,

I do not teach a tested subject area. I am an elementary music teacher with nearly 350 students that I work with once every 3 days for 50 minutes. I recommend that I be assessed on how I benefit my school community. My students present musical performances at least once per year for their families and the entire student body. My fourth grade students are successful recorder players, my fifth grade students produce a CD of their original compositions each year, nearly all of my students sing tunefully and beautifully, and every single one of them is an appreciative consumer of many different musical genres and a respectful audience member. I serve as a staff liaison to my building PTO, I am my school’s technology coordinator, I sit on our Intervention Assistance Team, I coordinate the afternoon car pickup, I monitor the cafeteria for 30 minutes each day, I volunteered on my district’s levy committee, I have mentored student teachers, and I regularly present professional development for my colleagues. I also hold master’s degree in literacy and a license to teach reading, and I frequently integrate other subjects and technology into my music curriculum, which helps my students perform to the best of their abilities on standardized tests.

How would you quantify all that I do for my school community? I would love to use all of the above information to negotiate my salary. I could certainly argue that I’m worth quite a lot because of my education, experience, and the myriad of essential roles I play. I was going to begin my “Idea” with stating that the average salary for an American with a master’s degree is about $65,000 (with eight years of experience and an MA I make $57,113), but that really isn’t the point. I didn’t choose a teaching career for the money; I just want to be respected for all that I do for my kids.

[readon2 url="http://www.klsriley.com/2011/05/28/an-open-letter-to-gov-john-kasich/"]Continue reading...[/readon2]

We're gonna need a bigger boat

There's a line in the movie Jaws, where it dawns upon Martin Brody that they are up against a serious shark and need a bigger boat. Well there's an article in the Dayton Daily News today that suggests school districts might need a bigger boat too, if they are to comply with some of the crazy provisions of S.B.5

The new merit pay system mandated in Senate Bill 5 will be applied to Ohio’s 146,000 K-12 teachers and indirectly impact 1.78 million students in 613 school districts.
[...]
Senate Bill 5 calls for teachers to be evaluated each year by April 1. The reviews would be based on: licensure level; whether teachers attain ‘highly qualified’ status; student test scores; at least two observations of at least 30 minutes each; and other criteria picked by the local school board.

Pay, firings and layoffs will be based on these evaluations.

Let's stop there just for one second. We won't dwell on licensure level, status or even student test scores. We'll get to those for sure another time.

Let's just think for a minute about these observations.

There must be 2 per year per teacher of at least 30 minutes each. 30 minutes + 30 minutes = 1 hour. 1 hour x 146,000 teachers = 146,000 hours of observation per year.

But these observers aren't just going to magically appear. They will need time to organize the observations, to get to the classes, to record their findings and to issue a report. Conservatively this adds another hour per year per teacher to the effort.

Now we are at 292,000 hours per year just for this provision alone.

If someone were to work 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, 52 weeks a year it would take them over 140 years to complete this task. Since these observations have to be completed annualy that means we're going to need at least 140 more administrators just for this provision alone!

Is this what was meant by providing school districts the tools they need to save money?

Ohio School Boards Association lobbyist Damon Asbury, a former school district superintendent who has assessed evaluation systems, said the best ones boil down to using multiple data points, including observations made by different observers. Asbury said high quality, annual evaluations of every teacher will put heavy pressure on administrators.

“That is not to say it can’t be done but it’ll require more time and effort,” he said. “We may find ourselves in need of more administrators.”

We're going to need a bigger boat, or at least one that doesn't have so many holes in it.