eduskeptic

The noise surrounding the process of evaluating teachers is varied and loud. It is the same noise that has surrounded this issue since the beginning of teachers. It is a long history.

Most recently, the national Department of Education, under Arne Duncan, has been advocating for a process to grade teachers, leading to merit pay. It is a difficult process, and no matter how it is done it will infuriate some, and make others think we’ve finally reached the land of milk and honey.

The Los Angeles Unified School District, which, all by itself is larger than some cities in the United States, and has more operating expenses as well, released a report grading 6,000 teachers. Of the 6,000 who were graded, or evaluated, 1,000 were deemed to be good. The other 5,000, not so good. The report’s author is Richard Buddin, a Rand Corporation Senior Economist. It is 21 pages long, and can be downloaded as a pdf. The link to the article which has the pdf link is here. The Los Angeles Times did it’s own study of the 6,000 teachers, and released the names of the teachers.

Releasing the names of 6,000 LA Unified teachers has been on the controversial side. Arne Duncan, the U.S. Secretary of Education, when asked his opinion about releasing the names, stated that he had no issues with doing so. “What do they have to hide?” Arne, who has absolutely no experience in the classroom except as a student, is pushing for merit pay, and national standards for evaluating teachers.

It is difficult to understand how 5,000 teachers out of 6,000, in one district, spread out over the entire spectrum of schools in this very large and complex system, can be in the not so good column. On the face of it, it seems to be questionable, at best. It will take some time to figure out exactly what the criteria were for this outcome. What kinds of students, what ethnic, socio-economic mix, percentage of intact/broken families, special needs, ages, and more, were involved in the evaluations, and over what time period?

Ed in the Apple writes about the methods and has quite a bit to say on the subject. The dialogue about the structure of any kind of study is, and will continue to be, intense. It is very important for any study of this kind to be completely transparent. Who paid for it, who established the criteria, and what and who, exactly, were studied to come up with the data?

Years ago, in a notebook/sketchbook, the Eduskeptic,  while sitting in yet another staff development day at the elementary school where he ended up teaching for 24 years, wrote, “Here we go again, taking officious leaps into the void, led by someone who has not been there, and it’s getting late. Now what?” This was on Aug. 29, 1989. This describes Arne Duncan, and apparently his entire staff of non-teachers, quite well. It’s not that Duncan is not without passion, as he is full of it. He’s just someone who has no idea, at all, what it means to be a teacher in a public school. Duncan would not make it.

The qualities that make a good and effective teacher are, perhaps, not all that quantifiable. The complexities of making judgements about teachers based on how students perform on standardized tests are great indeed. While complex, it is a job that still needs to be done. It will not happen overnight, and no matter how much the politicians want it to happen during their tenure, it won’t. Schools don’t lend themselves to overnight change, at least not very well. Perhaps if the good Secretary would tend to putting together a set of qualified people, teachers and non-teachers alike, to make this happen, it would. It still won’t be on his timetable though, no matter how many sound bites he appears in.

The Washington D.C. school system has not enjoyed the best of reputations over the years. The local school board hired Michelle Rhee to turn the system around. Rhee holds a teaching credential, but taught just 3 years before abandoning the classroom for a more corporate setting. Her opinion of how well she did seems to be more than a bit inflated. Her claims cannot be verified (Google it, find out for yourself), and the D.C. board didn’t and doesn’t seem to care. Perhaps it just doesn’t matter in the case of the D.C. school system.

There are more than a few administrators who couldn’t handle the stress of the classroom. All whom I have spoken with are pretty up front with the reasons they chose administration over teaching. Each job demands a certain personality. This isn’t to say that one is better than the other. On the contrary, those who leave the classroom to become principals and various kinds of superintendents are wise to do so. Teachers who aren’t suited for the admin roll are wise to admit that as well. The jobs are very different, and not at all necessarily connected in any real and meaningful way.

Managing a school system is a complex endeavor. Small school districts are just as complex as big ones. They are all multi-faceted entities. Without a sure and steady hand at the district level, things could spiral out of control very quickly, likely resulting in a trip to court, with smiling lawyers all around.

The issue that seems to be the sand in the gears is when the admin types summarily decide that they know more about teaching in a classroom than classroom teachers. Put aside that they either left the classroom due to burn out or common good sense, or that they were never in one to begin with (a la Arne Duncan), and that premise seems totally unfounded. There is stronger language to use of course, but to what point?

Michelle Rhee seems to take pleasure in the ability to fire teachers. She recently let 245 or so in the D.C. district go. Fired, actually. This is not to say that some of them just absolutely didn’t belong in a classroom. Some of them probably were pretty sad as teachers. What isn’t noted is the criteria used in firing them. This is where teacher evaluations get into some pretty rough territory.

The Eduskeptic does think that teachers need to be evaluated. Over a career that spanned 36 years, the evaluations that I received were few and far in between. None of them was rigorous, and there was, as far as I can tell, nothing in the evaluations that did much more than allow the principal and the Eduskeptic talk about how the lessons went, and how well they were, or maybe weren’t, done.

It would have been obscene for anything like this to be used in deciding either merit pay, or retention in the teacher ranks.

If the available information about Rhee’s 3 years in the classroom is anywhere near the truth, she may well have had to fire herself, were she in charge back then.

Body counts do nothing to further the betterment of teachers, administrators, or children. Rhee’s, and the D.C. school board’s, apparent sense of divine right to make history by firing as many teachers as they can in the name of making things better is just plain misplaced.

What would be good is to know the criteria they used. The D.C. teachers union is surely looking into that, and it will be good to know what they come up with, as that criteria is bound to be an issue when the first lawsuit is filed.