tplyons said:
I don't mean to sound like I'm pickin in you because I agree with the notion that testing isn't necessarily the best picture of total teacher effectiveness, but someone show me a reasonable and accurate way to measure it otherwise.
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How does the general public feel about...
- Thread starter MakiSupaStar
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I don't mean to sound like I'm pickin in you because I agree with the notion that testing isn't necessarily the best picture of total teacher effectiveness, but someone show me a reasonable and accurate way to measure it otherwise.
K-Frog said:
Put some monitors in a room unannounced. Or mount a camera in the corner that's nicely concealed. And eval that, as qualitative data to add to the quantitative data being collected as well
I think students' test scores should be a component of teacher evaluations, but not the end-all. A lot of employee evaluation is a subjective assessment of their performance in a number of areas including interpersonal skills, attitude, effort and others. The elephant in the room is the teachers' unions' resistance to evaluation of any kind. I have been involved in many facets of education for about the last 12 years, and I've seen a lot of excellent, innovative teachers in the classroom. I've also seen some dogs. As a former manager in an unrelated business, I can tell you it would kill a business if it were not able to get rid of underperforming employees.
In education, it is nearly impossible to excise bad teachers. They are negatively affecting our children, the children's future, and our future. I agree that teachers have a tough job. But teachers who are burnt out and riding to their retirement need to be fired. I've seen them, and it's disgusting. These teachers discourage students and help them onto the path of dropping out.
I also believe that the excellent teachers who distinguish themselves should be eligible for a bonus based on merit. Ask the unions how they feel about that. I have dealt directly with the school board president of one of the state's largest school districts, and he is owned lock, stock and barrel by the unions. I find this to be a distinct conflict of interest. Will a board controlled by the teacher's union act in the best interest of the students before the teachers?
In education, it is nearly impossible to excise bad teachers. They are negatively affecting our children, the children's future, and our future. I agree that teachers have a tough job. But teachers who are burnt out and riding to their retirement need to be fired. I've seen them, and it's disgusting. These teachers discourage students and help them onto the path of dropping out.
I also believe that the excellent teachers who distinguish themselves should be eligible for a bonus based on merit. Ask the unions how they feel about that. I have dealt directly with the school board president of one of the state's largest school districts, and he is owned lock, stock and barrel by the unions. I find this to be a distinct conflict of interest. Will a board controlled by the teacher's union act in the best interest of the students before the teachers?
Catbuster said:
How many hours of video have to be watched, by how many people, of how many teachers? That may not be reasonable.
We live in a school district that is very proud of it's standardized test scores. A ridiculous amount of time is spent teaching to the tests and therefore the kids miss out on a lot of learning that could have happened otherwise. All of my kids have complained about projects and units that get cut because the teachers have to get the kids through their test prep books. I'm not positive, but I've always been under the impression that the teachers' reviews were based on test scores. The more I think on it, the more sure I am that is the case, based on things I've heard a few teacher friends say. Either way, I don't like it, my kids don't like it, most of my friends with kids don't like it, and my friends who are teachers don't like it. But it seems to be the way it's going to be.
My son would like to know, if he passes his proficiency test this year, in the 10th grade, why does he have to take 2 more years of high school? The state doesn't require that he actually learn any more to graduate. (Rhetorical-type question there. He knows he needs the other 2 years for college.)
My son would like to know, if he passes his proficiency test this year, in the 10th grade, why does he have to take 2 more years of high school? The state doesn't require that he actually learn any more to graduate. (Rhetorical-type question there. He knows he needs the other 2 years for college.)
As a teacher, all I will say is that most people have no idea how hard of a job it is. Honestly, if I could go back to university, knowing what I know now, I would have chosen a different profession. Certain aspects of my job, like working with kids, I really enjoy, but alot of it is hard work that takes very dedicated people to do well.
With troubled teens, we (teachers, principals) are told to keep them in school as much as possible. Its their only hope. If they are not in school, they are likely on the street engaging in criminal behaviour.
Personally,
I don't think that it is a teachers job to raise someone's kids, to make them "better people". I believe that is the job of the parents.
A teachers job is to educate. Provide the tools that allow the students to develop the skills necessary to achieve the predetermined academic goals.
Reading, Riting, Rithmatic.
If a kid makes it to graduation, takes a test and doesn't (can't) pass it, that it a direct reflection of the ability of the teacher to teach. They should be held accountable for doing their jobs.
Are not teachers in the public school system "public employees".
How about if other "public" employees didn't (couldn't) perform their duties?
What would we do with a fireman that couldn't put out a fire?
A Hwy. dept. worker that couldn't build a road?
A water works guy that couldn't keep the H2O flowing?
No child left behind? a political crock.
But..... I do think that a standardized test makes sense. If a student can't pass it, they should be left behind!
Get the public school system out of the business of raising our youth.
Give the teachers a practical (educational) curriculum to teach, and hold them to teaching it.
Whether their performance is graded on the student's test scores, monitoring, individual assessments or whatever, there should be some system in place to judge a teachers ability to teach.
I.M.H.O. - of course!
I don't think that it is a teachers job to raise someone's kids, to make them "better people". I believe that is the job of the parents.
A teachers job is to educate. Provide the tools that allow the students to develop the skills necessary to achieve the predetermined academic goals.
Reading, Riting, Rithmatic.
If a kid makes it to graduation, takes a test and doesn't (can't) pass it, that it a direct reflection of the ability of the teacher to teach. They should be held accountable for doing their jobs.
Are not teachers in the public school system "public employees".
How about if other "public" employees didn't (couldn't) perform their duties?
What would we do with a fireman that couldn't put out a fire?
A Hwy. dept. worker that couldn't build a road?
A water works guy that couldn't keep the H2O flowing?
No child left behind? a political crock.
But..... I do think that a standardized test makes sense. If a student can't pass it, they should be left behind!
Get the public school system out of the business of raising our youth.
Give the teachers a practical (educational) curriculum to teach, and hold them to teaching it.
Whether their performance is graded on the student's test scores, monitoring, individual assessments or whatever, there should be some system in place to judge a teachers ability to teach.
I.M.H.O. - of course!
nortonrider said:
Yep. That's pretty much my take on it. As a society you could set the bar a lot higher. A kid should AT LEAST be able to pass with a minimum amount of competency on a standardized test. Not sure how that will help the kid in life, but if that's what the public wants I could easily generate great test takers. Personally, I want to create knowledgeable problem solvers, with a passion for learning things. Students that question and dive into things, accepting the risk of failure only as a hurdle and an opportunity to learn something. That's a much harder thing to achieve and measure than test takers.
I'm sensing a general sentiment that there is a need for teacher assessment. I'm perfectly fine with this. I should be expected to perform and to teach children. That's my job. I get scrutinized daily by my students, their parents, the administration, and in turn by the district and state. On top of this, as part of this grant I'm observed and evaluated yearly (part of that includes my students test performance). The union negotiated the evaluation on performance as a school-wide thing. This way the teachers that don't teach a core subject (math, English,science, history) are also accountable, as well as able to share in the school's success regarding the bonus. I teach English and computers, but even as a computer teacher I pull in a great deal of content from the other curricular areas, and as a staff we all agreed upon this. Because my school was a 'Needs Improvement' school our school has gone through administrative changes, restructuring, and as a staff we have clocked hundreds of hours of 'training' by state consultants making 2-3k a visit. So we've been getting evaluated in one way or another on test scores for years already. The opportunity for a bonus based on something we considered ourselves well-versed was a no brainier for us.
I have no problem putting my tenure on the line. There's a probation period to get in, I'm ok with a probation period until you're out (unless you commit an egregious act). I just want the evaluation to be fair. We're close at my school. Hell, teachers are human too. We get sick, we get divorces, addicted to drugs and alcohol, diagnosed with terminal illnesses, depression, mental illness, and we deal with the death of loved ones just like everyone else, So we might throw up a couple bad years here and there. 30 years is a long time and life happens in between. But all this talk about weeding out bad teachers can easily turn into a witch hunt designed to eliminate our union. I've been at this for 12 years now and I can count on my hands the number of teachers that need be fired. Yes they exist. That's out off all the schools I've visited, all the teachers I've worked with at my school, other schools, as a sub, student teacher and within my professional capacity interacting with teachers across the country and state. So while a bad teacher protected by tenure and the union is a problem, I don't see it as an excuse to eliminate my collective bargaining rights, and protection from accusatory students, parents, and administrators with an agenda.
I'm was just curious on how the outside people perceive schools and teachers. No I'm not talking about the sensationalized media crap, but the school and teachers in your local neighborhoods with your children. We are ultimately public servants and if this is something the public values then like I said, I'm fine with it. It's not really a hard thing to accommodate.
crappy logic. if a teacher is 50/50 responsible with the parent for a kids education when they are getting payed to educate my child then that same teacher is responsible to come here to this warehouse and help me knock out all these customer returns that need done.
a teacher is getting payed to teach, if that teacher fails at teaching then he or she doesn't deserve that job
evaluating teachers based on test scores alone is moronic at best. Nothing in life is should be evaluated one a single metric, all factors for each individual case should be considered and measured. but hey, that would mean they'd have to teach reasoning and critical thinking again.
Man, it's hard for me personally to talk about this and leave politics out of it TBH. It's my opinion that the teacher's biggest friend and foe at the same time, is their own union.
A quick easy answer - like Munji wrote, having be be a small part of an overall evaluation, yeah I can see that. I can also absolutely see a bonus based on merit.
A quick easy answer - like Munji wrote, having be be a small part of an overall evaluation, yeah I can see that. I can also absolutely see a bonus based on merit.
I'm of the opinion that it is almost impossible to objectively measure the quality of teaching.
They aren't.
They're responsible for academic instruction. The parent is responsible for actual education.
...and that responsibility includes monitoring and voting on your school board - the same folks that hire/fire the folks that hire/fire the teachers.
I don't think you'll see much disagreement - just a lot of questions about how to define "fails at teaching".
You know, I'll generally take most Canadian education systems over the US any day of the week, but even up here, a teacher tends to be one of the most undervalued civil servants. The pay is utter crap for what the job entails, and teachers are more and more having their hands tied when it comes to disciplining students or even failing them. At the same time, harried parents are increasingly offloading the parenting onto their kids' teachers. It's not a recipe for success.
While I was editing a book a couple of years back, I came across a study published by the American College of Paediatricians (or something. I don't remember if that was the actual name, though it had 'college' and 'paediatricians' in it) that drew an unbroken line between TV before the age of two and attention deficit at around seven. Add the fact that kids are being sugared to hell by parents and the school system alike and you've got a whole generation of problem kids that didn't have to be that way. And let's face it: one person's indigo child is another's pint-sized a55hole.
None of this happens in a vacuum. We know with absolute certainty that a kid who doesn't get enough sleep, nutrition and attention will go off the rails, so when you plop your offspring down in front of the tube with a juice box and a chocolate bar, then let him sit there all night, you are taking an active role in reducing his chances at success in school. The fact that the lunches served at school tend to be nothing but crap just exacerbates things.
On the flipside, I know more than one teacher who lacks any sign of learnin' outside what she has to know to teach. That's unacceptable. A teacher needs to have a basic curiosity about the world and to show that he or she is always engaged in knowledge in some way to be successful beyond a narrow definition of what the job entails.
EDIT: sorry, accidentally erased the rest of my last paragraph while fixing a typo:
Beyond that, teachers need better resources and to not be afraid of getting the school sued if they fail a kid with just cause. And we have to lose the philosophy that teacher are proxy parents.
We also eventually have to deal with the fact that an undereducated and disenfranchised population is in the government's interest. because in both Ottawa and Washington, governments are operating with a degree of impunity that should be making everyone here worried. And so long as we're all zoning out to Jersey Shore that's not going to change
While I was editing a book a couple of years back, I came across a study published by the American College of Paediatricians (or something. I don't remember if that was the actual name, though it had 'college' and 'paediatricians' in it) that drew an unbroken line between TV before the age of two and attention deficit at around seven. Add the fact that kids are being sugared to hell by parents and the school system alike and you've got a whole generation of problem kids that didn't have to be that way. And let's face it: one person's indigo child is another's pint-sized a55hole.
None of this happens in a vacuum. We know with absolute certainty that a kid who doesn't get enough sleep, nutrition and attention will go off the rails, so when you plop your offspring down in front of the tube with a juice box and a chocolate bar, then let him sit there all night, you are taking an active role in reducing his chances at success in school. The fact that the lunches served at school tend to be nothing but crap just exacerbates things.
On the flipside, I know more than one teacher who lacks any sign of learnin' outside what she has to know to teach. That's unacceptable. A teacher needs to have a basic curiosity about the world and to show that he or she is always engaged in knowledge in some way to be successful beyond a narrow definition of what the job entails.
EDIT: sorry, accidentally erased the rest of my last paragraph while fixing a typo:
Beyond that, teachers need better resources and to not be afraid of getting the school sued if they fail a kid with just cause. And we have to lose the philosophy that teacher are proxy parents.
We also eventually have to deal with the fact that an undereducated and disenfranchised population is in the government's interest. because in both Ottawa and Washington, governments are operating with a degree of impunity that should be making everyone here worried. And so long as we're all zoning out to Jersey Shore that's not going to change
I agree with this.
Our education system (the whole system) isn't doing a good job if 40% of Chicago high school students don't graduate and 47% of adults in Detroit are functionally illiterate*. To start fixing that problem, we need to start measuring it. I'm not saying it's all the teachers' fault, nor am I saying that a standardized test can measure everything that a teacher imparts to students. But measuring students' performance on tests is a good place to start. If, say, 60% of students in a class are reading at grade level at the beginning of the year and 70% are reading at (the next) grade level the at end of the year, something is working well. If it goes down from 60% to 50%, something isn't working.
By all means, we should be teaching kids critical thinking, creativity, etc. But we need to start by teaching them basic reading writing, and arithmetic. Thousands of people are getting through our education system without acquiring the necessary skills to read a bus schedule or fill out a job application. That's unacceptable in a country as rich as the United States.
* Source: Invalid Link Removed
Considering you just cited two measurements of it - it's hard to claim we need to start measuring it.
I teach as well, and the problem I have with teacher evaluations based on student test scores is that it becomes easy for teachers to teach only to the tests instead of an entire curriculum. Standards should be placed high, so students have to strive to achieve instead and be rewarded when standards are exceeded, instead of lowering the standards so everyone gets by. Just my opinion based on my experiences as a teacher and student.
I teach. The question I never hear answered is: If the schools are already underfunded, where is the extra money going to come from to pay the teachers that have higher test scores? The obvious answer is the bust the unions, lower the base pay and then give the money back as test scores reach whatever level is demanded. In other words, there really would be no merit pay. While this overarching view many appeal to many people, it really is not going to solve any problems.
Teaching to the test for money would be a real mess. Already there are an amazing amount of laws, rules and regulations covering the administration of the tests. If you add to that teacher pay, it would get out of hand very quickly.
The bottom line, for me, is that a school is a social institution and trying to run it on a tried and true capitalist regime is bound to end up in failure. We need to understand that the training of children is going to be messy... any dealings with humans are messy and marginally (at best) disorganized (check out the workings of any government). It may from time to time not be cost effective... but it is important.
Teaching to the test for money would be a real mess. Already there are an amazing amount of laws, rules and regulations covering the administration of the tests. If you add to that teacher pay, it would get out of hand very quickly.
The bottom line, for me, is that a school is a social institution and trying to run it on a tried and true capitalist regime is bound to end up in failure. We need to understand that the training of children is going to be messy... any dealings with humans are messy and marginally (at best) disorganized (check out the workings of any government). It may from time to time not be cost effective... but it is important.
I think that system motivates teachers to insure their students succeed at taking the tests, and detracts from teachers focusing on trying to insure their students succeed at life.
But hey man! Times are tough all over, and after you and your ilk nearly destroyed the American economy a few years ago something had to be done!
But hey man! Times are tough all over, and after you and your ilk nearly destroyed the American economy a few years ago something had to be done!
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