Bloomberg’s Flawed Teacher Evaluation Mandate

Better a mayor or governor willing to fight for improved teaching and learning than one trapped by the status quo. However, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s newly proposed policies seem destined to out-run the capacity of educators to implement the fair and workable system of teacher evaluation he promises.

In a recent appearance with education secretary Arne Duncan, Bloomberg hailed the Obama Administration’s Race to the Top fund, emphasizing its drive to use standardized test results to evaluate teachers and principals.  Bloomberg announced that he had directed schools chancellor Joel Klein to “ensure that principals actually use student achievement data to help evaluate teachers who are up for tenure this year.”  This sounds so sensible that that it receives little argument from anyone other than education industry insiders.

Interestingly, in the same paragraph, the mayor reveals that “we’ll also begin creating our own comprehensive evaluation system that includes classroom reviews and student achievement data.”  Hmm, there is no system, yet.  How does one fairly evaluate third-year teachers hoping to become tenured this year? 

Assuming that tenure candidates reflect the composition of all NYC teachers, start with the fact that there are no uniform and universal achievement data for more than half of all teachers.  There are no state assessments for chemistry, social studies, second grade, French, violin, sculpture, or speech to name a few subjects.  And even for those subjects and grades that are tested by New York State, the tests are designed to measure student mastery of state curricular standards, not teacher competence.  Blood pressure readings provide helpful information, but they cannot be relied on to diagnose cancer or H1N1.  The same with standardized tests — their use is restricted by design to what is being measured.  Nothing more.  

Some may think that the city’s elaborate school ranking system would allow one to judge the relative quality of teaching.  But again, the school evaluation grades “A” to “F” measure school progress, not its teachers.

Worse than the shortage of data or the misuse of available data is the absence of a system — despite years of effort — to fairly measure a single teacher’s contribution to student achievement.  If one third-year, second grade teacher has spent his time in a stable, gentrified school, how is his contribution compared with his colleague who spent her three years in a high-turnover, heavily immigrant school with two different principals?  The same for the teacher of advanced placement physics at Bronx Science when compared to the achievement of students of a colleague at a comprehensive high school in a poor Brooklyn neighborhood.  There is no reliable methodology that is available to parse the effects of cumulative knowledge and preparation.

Mayor Bloomberg would be better off to emphasize that NYC will “begin creating” its own system of “comprehensive evaluation” that includes classroom observations and reliable student achievement data.  Once tested and ready for wide application, the mayor could announce, then teacher retention and dismissal decisions will be based on a system that includes the academic performance of one’s students.  Until then, keep walking.

Comments

[Dee A]

Evaluating teachers on their students' test scores makes little sense when, as the NYS Comptroller recently found, a significant proportion of NY schools inflate their students' Regents exam grades and the NYS Ed. Dept. does nothing about it. "Oversight of Scoring Practices on Regents Examinations," http://osc.state.ny.us/audits/allaudits/093010/08s151.pdf (published and accessed Nov. 19, 2009). State Ed.'s materials for the grades 3-8 ELA and math tests, and the alternate assessment for severely disabled students, show the same pattern of countenancing gross test scoring inflation.

Enough has been written to thoroughly discredit the contents of these tests, inasmuch as students can pass many by sheer guessing, period. But when an unreliable scoring process, with no legitimate monitoring, supervision and control is added, what's left to use, whether one is assessing what students have learned or what their teachers have effectively taught?

Nothing.

Dee Alpert, Publisher
SpecialEducationMuckraker.com

[rtiludhiana]

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