Teacher Evaluations
In today’s society, education is a vital resource in order to be successful. Educators spend countless hours preparing lessons in order to teach students what they need to know in order to make it to the next grade or level. What some people do not think about is how effective or how good the educator is at his or her job. So, how do they get evaluated? Students’ standardized test scores. The term that is used for this is called, the value-added approach. According to David F. Labaree (2011) this means, “..you calculate the effectiveness of individual teachers by the increase in test scores that students demonstrate after a year in the classroom” (p. 9). This could potentially put a lot of pressure on not only the student but the teacher as well. Educators should not be evaluated just on the test scores of their students. Labaree has argued, “we should hold teachers accountable for students outcomes, offering bonus pay to the most effective teachers and shoving the least effective ones out the door” (p. 9). This statement seems a little unfair for the teachers who are effective, but unfortunately just have students who do not test well. According to The Chicago Teachers Union (2012) a CPS teacher of middle school environmental science, biology and pre-engineering believes,“…Students are not taught to think critically or deeply at this time. They are presented with so much information over a broad range of topics that is loaded in to their short-term memory to be forgotten as soon as the standardized test is complete” (p.4). While it is necessary for some type of standardized test to be given to students at the end of the year, it is also necessary for other approaches to be used to evaluate a teacher to help alleviate some of the pressure.
One piece of evidence for good teaching is by looking at the end of the year course averages for every student. If there is a good ratio of good grades, then chances are, that teacher did a good job of preparing his or her students. Another evidential component is, announced and unannounced in class observations, where a principal or someone comes and evaluates a teacher in a classroom setting. In an article from Education Next by Grover J. “Russ” Whitehurst and Katharine M. Lindquist (2015) they state, “Teacher evaluations should include two to three annual classroom observations, with at least one of those observations being conducted by a trained observer from outside the teacher’s school” (p.1).
The No Child Left Behind Act, which passed Congress in 2001 according to Mike Rose (2011),” did jolt some low-performing schools to evaluate their inadequate curricula and engage in staff development aimed at improving their students’ mastery of the basic math and reading skills measured by the tests” (p. 34). From his perspective, this is one of the positive reasons why standardized testing for teacher evaluation is good. Overall, It is still important that society does not focus on just one approach in order to evaluate teachers, but by looking at other factors as well. In doing so, this will allow educators to gain an accurate depiction of how much progress students are making in the classroom on a yearly basis.
Works Cited
Cooley, A. (2012). Chicago Teachers Union, Local No. 1 v. Hudson. Encyclopedia of Education Law, 1–7. doi:10.4135/9781412963916.n60
Labaree, D. F. (2011). Targeting Teachers. Dissent, 58(3), 9–14. doi:10.1353/dss.2011.0068
Rose, M. (2011). The Mismeasure of Teaching and Learning: How Contemporary School Reform Fails the Test. Dissent, 58(2), 32–38. doi:10.1353/dss.2011.0042
Whitehurst, G. J., & Lindquist, K. M. (2015). Getting Classroom Observations Right — Teacher evaluation research. Retrieved June 13, 2016, from http://educationnext.org/getting-classroom-observations-right/
