Two other observations from observing some Northern California “Distinguished” Schools:

– The School ranking (STAR) tests are given in late April / May. Teaching (to the test, incuding sample tests for homework) effectively ends once the tests are over, meaning as ineffective as the education is, for all practical purposes, something like 25% of the days in school (following the test) are “wasted.” These tests should be moved to the end of the school year.

– The schools attempt to “weed out” test takers that they believe will lower the school’s scores. They do this by contacting the parents of said kids, suggesting that they stay home as the tests might be too upsetting to take (parents can elect to have their kids not participate).

I heard recently that some of the kids are “rebelling” — figuring that the tests don’t affect THEIR personal record. I heard that some just draw pictures using the “fill in the dots” answer sheet. One would suspect that even school administrators can recognize a picture of a snake or penis and just tear these tests up. Wonder what they would do if the kids got together and ALL of them just answered all questions “C”?

What a Great System.

Making standardized scores just one of several factors used in evaluating teachers makes a lot of sense to me. Some of these should be in the school’s control, some in the teacher’s control and some under the parents’ control.

1) Average student family income (maybe just Free Lunch/Reduced lunch class percentages, if that’s easier)
2) Student/teacher ratio
3) Rate of change year-over-year of any of the factors, averaged
4) Hours of physical education/recess per week
5) Rate of student graduation
6) Much shorter but more frequent testing
7) Let teachers choose from different series of tests that will best map to their lesson plans. The more high-value concepts covered in the test series, the greater the weight.
After-school enrichment program participation

I’m not a big fan of 360 feedback. It’s fine enough for informational results that cannot/will not be leaked back to senior officials/management, but as soon as there’s even a whiff of a possibility that it might be used against you or your boss/principal the value disappears instantly. Both players, without colluding, mutually decide on the least-damaging statements or decisions. The only exception is if someone’s a true, evil bastard and someone is willing to take the chance that their honest feedback might lead to the person leaving or a change in their behavior. That requires the belief that most people will jump at once in the same direction on that leader/principal. Not worth all the hassle and consultant dollars that are usually spent to do it. Nothing’s worse for morale than knowing merit raises are nonexistent yet they found $300,000 to waste 2 days of the organization’s time.

What drives me absolutely insane is teachers unions resistance to improving students’ lot. They’re all for anything so long as it doesn’t change their side of the playing board. Obviously, just using test scores has horrible consequences, but sometimes even bad things are better than doing nothing if it is accompanied by a change in mindset or the rules of the game. I had hopes that NCLB might shake the unions and teachers out of their complacency and counter-propose some serious ideas. But it never happened. the unions never questioned for a moment that they’d eventually get the upper hand, that they could wait out Bush and the local insurgents (Bloomberg, etc.). And so here we are. Race to the Top is terribly flawed, but better than nothing. I have no problem with charter schools. If you’re going to hold people to more accountability, I don’t believe you should micromanage the way they get there.

I hate tenure. With teachers, there should be some stability for the sake of the kids but not to their detriment either. One-year contracts are good, with two-year contracts for great teachers and three-year contracts for outstanding teachers. I went to Stuyvesant. What made that school great were the kids, filtered for ambition and skill, influencing each other with peer pressure. There were some great teachers there – as many as the principals could get in – but Stuyvesant can never achieve its full potential because any tenured teacher in the system with enough seniority can knock out a new, teacher with great promise but just starting out. So the bulk of the excellent teaching burden went to those few good teachers who also happened to get tenure at Stuy, as well as the fly-by-night new teachers who would appear for a year or two before disappearing.

Final thought:
Drawing a blank here, but you have to come up with a way to measure student EFFORT. Teacher effort too, but to a lesser extent. Effort is the key. At the end of the day, it’s the most important lesson you can teach a child. You can get things wrong, you can take longer than other kids to get it right, but you have to find a way to reward the trying while also rewarding the result. (Rewarding speed is counterproductive.)

@Bergsten

“The schools abdicate all responibility. Their problem isn’t them, it’s ours. “Your kid is acting up, what are you going to do about it”?

My answer is, “who are the responsible adults Why aren’t they dealing with the problem?””

Given that you are the parent, I would say that you are the responsible adult. I think that it is the parent’s job to teach their kids manners and how to act in public. More generally, I think it is fair to say that raising children is the parent’s job.

A lot of good comments on here.

I teach in one of the largest urban districts in the country.

I agree with you that NCLB is a fairly well thought out theory. There are two legitimate flaws I see with it, though. 1- it’s unattainable. All schools are supposed to have 100% passage rates by the year 2014. That will never happen. Children with severe learning disabilities will never be able to pass certain tests. Sure, some of them might, but not all. 2- It uses a bad system of judgement to determine progress. Lets imagine a class in 2010 has 86 percent passage of the math exam. The next year, the bar for that teacher is around 90%. Now, lets say her next class that comes in had a 40% passage rate the year before. It is absolutely ridiculous to think that a 90% passage rate is going to be possible. Rather than gauging effective teaching through passage of a test, it should be done on progress made by students.

However, NCLB does disaggregate data, which had not previously been done. It also puts tremendous pressure on administration to succeed- which is good, and bad. Good in that it allows for in effective principals to be given the ax, bad in that it is not accurately measuring how effective a principal is (see problem 2 above).

I severely disagree with you (and some of the comments above) that teacher performance should not be primarily based on student test scores. Well, let me rephrase, I think teachers should be primarily judged on student achievement (and I think that you have to measure progress, not a final test). When you begin putting in other factors, like classroom observations, etc. – you get a bunch of bureaucratic work that does not truly judge anything. Many administrators in my district (different everywhere, I’m sure), have no clue how to teach subjects out of their own discipline. They come in, and judge you off a piece of paper that has been ‘proven’ to increase student achievement. My score on that observation last year was an 85. Not bad. A teacher down the hall from me received a 90. At the end of the year I had doubled the amount of kids that passed the CRCT in both meeting and exceeding the standards than the other teacher. Politics and many other things come into play when you begin letting human emotions determine performance.

The end result of education is how well we are educating our children. Teacher evaluation should rely on a very high percentage of student performance (75% or up). I saw someone speaking on test anxiety above. I agree that it does exist to some degree, but students nowadays are tested on a weekly basis, and I think that anxiety has to be dissipating some.

This testing system is flawed, but I think it’s the best to come around yet. So, therefore it’s the best to judge a teacher yet.

The last thing I want to point out that I think you got wrong is that a teacher is more born than made. If that’s not what you were getting at, I apologize, but it is how I took it.

Teaching is a very scientific process, that can be studied, dissected, and judged. You can make a teacher the same way you can make any other profession. Certainly, there are those that have more gifts than others, that have a better way with children- but science is beginning to show us the most effective ways of teaching children. Teachers are not born, but simply taught how to do it effectively.

In the end though, after all that being said, I have an hour a day with a kid. The rest of the world sees him much more than me, so my influence is small– the real power lies in the family.

@jweinberg — I agree completely — it IS ultimately the parent’s responsibility for child rearing. However, while school is in session, the responsibility for the students rests with the adults who comprise the school staff. And, it’s their responsiblity to actually teach. If “I” have to do their jobs, I don’t see what benefit there is to my kids to send them (other than babysitting so I can work to pay their salaries and learning social skills).

@everybody-else — This is just about the only Blog I’ve seen where people actually read and comment intelligently on other’s comments. Very cool!