Race To The Top. Details To Come.

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ceme online terbaikI was just reading the latest issue of NEA Today. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has an article in there titled “Elevating the Teaching Profession.” In it there is much discussion of the evaluation of teachers and its link to student performance. Of course this subject is a core component of the Race to the Top funds that the US Department of Education has made available to states, which is why Secretary Duncan is talking about it.

Duncan’s article attempts to put a very positive spin on such a controversial subject. He talks about teachers being treated as professionals, being given more support, and being compensated for their work. He also makes the effort to point out that student performance must not be determined by test scores alone. He writes, “Student growth and gain, not absolute test scores, are what we are most interested in—how much are students improving each year, and what teachers, schools, school districts, and states are doing the most to accelerate student achievement?”

Now I appreciate the sentiment and the lisan gesture, but, as the old saying goes, the devil is in the details. I can’t find anywhere—not in Duncan’s article, nor on the US Department of Education website nor on the Connecticut State Department of Education website (which is really difficult to navigate and search!)—any details about how “student growth and gain” is to be assessed other than through the use of test scores. In a Connecticut SDE press release from November 10, Commissioner Mark McQuillan writes that, as part of the Connecticut SDE’s efforts to draw up and submit an application for federal Race to the Top funds, the SDE has formed various committees to research ways to comply with the guidelines for Race to the Top funds. Among these is “an advisory group of education organizations … that has been charged with exploring how Connecticut can best respond to the grant’s call for performance-based evaluations of teachers and principals.” Advisory group. Charged with exploring. How best to respond. The grant’s call for. OK, how many degrees of separation is that from any actual details?

An Associated Press article published this past Tuesday in the Norwich Bulletin describes some of the challenges that New York teachers are facing on this very subject. In a tawaran that sounds eerily familiar, the New York Board of Regents offers a plan that “would link a teacher’s job evaluation to student performance under improved tests and as part of a variety of factors.” The article does not make clear what those varied factors are. It sounds as if the New York Board of Regents plan has more details in it than the Connecticut SDE’s exploratory advisory group does at this point in time, but not having seen the actual plan, I don’t know if that’s the case, or what those details are.

I suppose that when it all shakes out I am of two minds on this. Duncan talks about “exemplary teachers [who] toil late into the night on lesson plans, shell out of their own pocket to pay for supplies, and wake up worrying when one of their students seems headed for trouble,” but who for all their toil, pay, and worry are compensated no better than “the weakest teacher” in the school. This sentiment resonates strongly with me. I’m sure I am not the only teacher who can think of a few colleagues who just don’t pull their weight, to say the least in some cases. And it’s a shame they are in the profession at all, little yet that they might be getting paid more than some of us just because they have hung on for years or decades.

But I just haven’t heard anyone offer a viable set of criteria by which to evaluate teacher performance other than student scores on standardized tests, or other student performance factors such as graduation rates. Grades will be deemed too subjective. Administrative observations and evaluations, besides being highly subjective, are just unrealistic. Administrators are so overworked in most cases that they don’t have the time necessary to properly observe and evaluate their teachers. I still remember being a first year teacher and being observed twice by an direktur who then said to me after the second visit, “Look, you seem to be doing just fine. I know I’m supposed to observe you several more times this year, but I have too many other things to do, and frankly, I’m not worried about you. Keep up the good work.” This was a nice compliment, of course, and I suppose something of a blessing. I know many of us would be happy to be left the hell alone by our administrators, and I understand the ‘I have too many other things to do sentiment,’ but it demonstrates the unlikelihood of using administrative observation. I have read articles on peer evaluation committees, but these are fraught with many of the same problems of subjectivity and availability.

So if anyone has some good suggestions, I’d love to hear them, because, honestly, teacher evaluation, promotion, and compensation that is tied to student performance is coming, whether we like it or not. And it would be nice if we, as teachers, could exercise some control over how the state and the federal government are going to measure student “growth and gain.”

Well, the university semester is officially over today. I am done with undergraduates for almost exactly a month (my first spring semester class is January 19). I have grant deadlines, conference tawaran deadlines, and a revise and resubmit request on a scholarly article to worry about for the next several weeks. Oh, and the holidays and my daughter’s birthday! So I will be taking a break from this column till the university semester resumes right after the Martin Luther King holiday. I hope everyone has a good break and a successful and stress-free end of the first semester (I know that’s probably a little unrealistic). See you next month.