Teacher Evaluations and Student Achievement

Student achievement will become a
part of teacher evaluation!

The idea that employees be held responsible for the product they turn out is an old one. Those who favor teacher evaluations based on how well their students learn tend to view student learning as a teacher product. Certainly one would expect superior teachers to be more successful than poor teachers when it comes to infusing student’s minds with information. Still, teacher evaluation is complex.

The Controversy of Teacher Evaluation  is Heating Up

Numerous models that include student achievement in the teacher evaluation process already exist. The topic is increasingly popular in books.

Teachers are not particularly fond of the idea. The recent teacher strike in Chicago was partially fueled by plans to initiate an evaluation system incorporating student achievement. Chicago teachers  ultimately agreed to an instrument that allowed student achievement to count as 30% of the total evaluation.

                

           Parental involvement is a huge factor in
           student success in school.

The teacher viewpoint is easy to understand. Basically teachers feel that there are many variables beyond their control that affect student learning, and there are. Chief among those variables is the influence of parents. Research repeatedly supports the importance of parents in student learning.

There are other variables that are important in achievement and many are difficult for teachers to control. Any experienced teacher can address a long list of factors that interfere with teaching and learning. A few are listed below:

• class size;
• school resources and policies;
• competition with television;
• study habits students bring to the task;
• student health issues;
• distractions within the school — fund raising, special activities, excessive paperwork, too many meetings;
• additional expectations on teachers that rob them of time to prepare.

There are additional issues that stem from school leadership. Principals who lack the qualities of a strong leader create an atmosphere that negatively effects teacher motivation. Also, principals should serve as important resources for problem-solving and enhance teacher education through worthwhile staff development.

Finally, there is an issue with inconsistency in expectations. How teachers are supposed to teach, assess, and perform their various tasks depends on where one teaches. School organization and management vary widely across the nation.

Suggestions for Using Student Achievement to Evaluate Teaching

The use of student achievement will likely become a part of the future of education. Clearly, poorly trained employees are a threat to any occupation, and poor teachers affect individual lives and the competence of the nation’s work force. Leading educational researcher Robert Marzano is promoting his version of a comprehensive model of teacher evaluation that includes student achievement.

Evaluations of teachers based on student achievement must find ways to separate educational wheat from environmental chaff. Current teacher evaluations are inconsistent across the nation. Most depend to some extent on observations of the teacher made by people who know the teacher thus interfering with objectivity.

Improving teacher evaluation by examining student progress cannot be reasonably addressed by simply correlating student grades and standardized test scores with specific teachers. Most of the factors that teaches frequently list as barriers are valid. New evaluations should consider these barriers, and human variables are devilishly difficult to manage in research.

New evaluation methods must evolve from what is known about effective teaching, not just what is observed in the classroom. New instruments might include:

• Teacher products like assessments, student notes, and various instructional tools;
• Teacher knowledge of contemporary issues in education;
• Evidence of continuous improvement in teaching skills;
• How teachers evaluate students;
• How teachers motivate and inspire.

Research is Vital for New Teacher Evaluations

Any effort to design teacher evaluation instruments must be researched-based. Education yields enormous amounts of data — much of it is never used for educational improvement. Districts need more staff directly responsible for research aimed at instructional improvement.

Teachers must be involved in designing the instrument. Teachers can address issues that create anxiety about new evaluation instruments, contribute good ideas to the design, and will be needed to promote the final instrument.

The use of student learning in evaluating teachers must have numerous trial runs to weed out problems. A sudden adoption of a poorly designed instrument will doom efforts to redesign teacher evaluation.

There must be an understanding that new instruments will evaluate teachers over a period of years. A poor result in a single year should not threaten one’s job, but invite a process of evaluating the reasons for the results and assistance in reversing a negative outcome. Teachers should be part of this process.

Teacher self-assessment would help strengthen the instrument by giving evaluator’s a look at how a teacher perceives his or her effectiveness. Also, self-assessment would give teachers a voice in the evaluation process.

For now, teachers should prepare for the eventual use of student learning as part of their evaluation. The idea has too much momentum to be ignored.

Teacher Evaluation Links:

Teacher talent Toolbox

Teacher Evaluations by Students

Robert Marzano