Public Education Meets Carrot and Stick: Kids Lose

The only advantage I can imagine to being stuck on the tarmack for 2 hours at Austin-Bergstrom Airport last week while the plane was being de-iced was that I got time to read Greg Anrig's excellent book, Beyond the Education Wars: Evidence that Collaboration Builds Effective Schools, which  has been sitting on my Kindle for a few months now. Anrig, is vice president, programs, at The Century Foundation, author of several books and a former journalist.

Anrig's book begins with a brief history of management theory, focusing on two dominant theories put forward by Frederick Winslow Taylor and W. Edwards Deming. Taylor's thoeries eminated from the idea that workers could not be trusted and so he designed a management style based on punishment and reward. Taylor determined how much a worker should be producing and set workers goals accordingly and then tied their pay to productivity. Modern exemplars of the Taylor approach are bill collecting agencies, customer service call centers and national retail chains (Walmart?).

Decades later, Deming, working in Japan after World War II, argued that long term business success required constant incremental progress, the kind that required workers and management to be deeply engaged in sharing information and ideas with each other. Modern day exemplars of the Deming model include Toyota, Sony, Southwest Airlines and Kaiser Permanente.

Clearly, as Anrig points out, the national political debate over education reform has been driven by the Taylor model of management. There is a direct line from the Taylor model to such reformy ideas as merit pay, standardized testing and tying teacher evaluations to test scores. In other words, education reformers have embraced Taylor's carrot and sticks management style of education that failed the American auto and steel industries and that is currently used for only the most low levels of employment.

Anrig shows that there is ample evidence that this carrot and stick method will not work in schools and plenty of evidence that a more collaborative approach, such as that endorsed by Deming, and used by many of the most successful corporations in the world, is a better way to go.

Anrig cites solid research reports starting in 1990 that support the concept of a collaborative design for school improvement. These studies include those done by the Consortium for Chicago Social Research, The National Center for Educational Achievement and Century Foundation fellow Gordon MacInnes all of which come down to two key findings, strong leadership matters and a strong culture of collaboration between teachers and school leadership matters most of all.

The studies found that change is slow and incremental, but it can be successful in any setting, including in high poverty areas, although change is even more challenging there.

Education reformers do not trust teachers. Because they do not trust teachers, just as Taylor did not trust industrial workers long ago, reformers put forward management plans that seek to control workers, rather than engage professionals in systematic improvement. Education reformers wish to motivate change with the carrot of merit pay and the stick of the highly flawed Value Added Measures (VAMs) tying teacher evaluation to student scores on standardized tests.

We know, and Anrig's book very persuasvley lays out, what works. Collaboration works. Teachers and principals working together to improve schools works. Having teachers compete for merit pay through flawed VAMs, not only will not work, but it will destroy the very collaboration that is so necessary for a highly functioning school culture.

We want teachers working together to share instructional ideas, to puzzle out solutions to persistent problems, to design authentic assessments for students. The concept of the professional learning community, where teachers meet to share ideas and solve problems holds great promise for the continuous improvement of teaching and learning. The test and punish model of the corporate education reformers will inevitably kill collegiality and cooperation and, ultimately, public education.

Concerted group action is the enemy of corporate education reform movement. That is why the reformers demonize teacher unions and support policies that will turn teacher against teacher. By driving a wedge through the profession, the education reformers hope to destroy public education and turn it to a for profit enterprise run like a widget factory. This is one way to distract the public from the real issue facing school improvement - poverty. And poverty is one thing the corporate education reformers do not want to touch. Really dealing with poverty would upset the status quo that is paying off so handsomely for the 1%.

In these times, it is more important than ever for teachers to stick together, not only in the sense of unions, but also in the sense of building and maintaining the kind of collegial culture in the every school  that reasearch has shown is the one true way to effect continuous improvement.

Reading Anrig's book will help arm all in the profession against the false narrative of the corporate education reform movement.

Anrig, Greg. (2013) Beyond the Education Wars: Evidence that Collaboration Builds Effective Schools. New York: The Century Foundation Press.

Fighting Back at Standardized Tests: A Teacher’s Guide

              A guide for teachers who want to strike back at the over use of standardized tests

At the end of its first conference in Austin, Texas yesterday, the Network for Public Education and Board Member Diane Ravitch held a press conference to announce a call for a Congressional investigation into the “over-emphasis, misapplication, costs, and poor implementation of high-stakes standardized testing in the nation’s K-12 public schools.” Read the NPE’s letter to Congress here. As this was going on, teachers in two schools in Chicago were refusing to administer the ISAT, an Illinois state test that the teachers claim is a waste of time. Meanwhile testing OPT OUT movements are growing across the country and especially in New York State in response to the clumsy rollout of the Common Core and allied standardized tests by the NYDOE.

Most teachers are rightly concerned about the impact of standardized testing on students, on curriculum, and now on their own job security. Most also know that boycotting the proctoring of the test is not a viable option for them. How should a classroom teacher, tenured or untenured, respond to the overuse and misuse of standardized tests while maintaining a professional stance?

I suggest three steps for teachers to take.

1.    Get well informed about the legitimate uses and rampant abuses of standardized tests.

2.    Proactively demonstrate to parents, administrators and colleagues in your building that your in-class, daily assessment of your students is far superior to the information provided by standardized tests.

3.    Get active outside of school hours with groups that will support efforts to bring the message of standardized test abuse to the political powers and the general public.

Getting Informed

This will be by far the easiest step. The misuse of standardized tests has been well documented for many years, going back to before No Child Left Behind (NCLB). NCLB and Race to the Top (RTTT) have exacerbated the problems by ramping up the stakes involved in student performance on these tests.

Here is a summary of the issues related to standardized testing. To learn more, I suggest you consult the fact sheet put out by Fair Test that you can find here.

·         Standardized tests can be one part of a comprehensive assessment system. However, they offer just a small piece of the picture. Better methods of evaluating student needs and progress already exist. Careful observation and documentation of student work and behaviors by trained teachers is more helpful than a one-time test. Assessment based on student performance on real learning tasks is more useful and accurate for measuring achievement -- and provides more information for teaching -- than multiple-choice achievement tests (Fair Test 2012).

·         Standardized tests are not good enough to provide the primary source of information on student achievement.

·         Standardized tests are not good enough to provide the primary information on the achievement gap.

·         Standardized tests are not good enough to provide the primary information on school quality.

·         Standardized tests are not nearly good enough nor were they ever intended to provide the primary information on teacher effectiveness.

·         When standardized tests are used as a primary measure of student performance, students from low-income and minority-group backgrounds, English language learners, and students with disabilities, are more likely to be denied diplomas, retained in grade, placed in a lower track, or unnecessarily put in remedial education programs (Fair Test 2012).

·         The U.S. is the only economically advanced nation to rely heavily on multiple-choice tests. Other nations use performance-based assessment to evaluate students on the basis of real work such as essays, projects and activities (Fair Test 2012).

·         An emphasis on high-stakes standardized tests tends to narrow the curriculum to a focus on those things that will be tested.

·         An emphasis on multiple choice testing is not supportive of the development of more complex reading, writing and critical thinking abilities.

·         Standardized, fill in the bubble tests are wildly inappropriate for very young children.

·         The proliferation of standardized tests steals instructional time from teachers and learning time from children.

·         Standardized tests are generally not helpful for diagnostic purposes because the score reports come in long after the student takes the test and often without any item analysis of types of questions students had difficulty with.

Providing a Better Alternative

As classroom teachers we assess student learning daily in a much richer way than can be captured on a standardized test. We need to make our students and their parents aware of the rich assessment protocol that we follow and how that helps us get to know each student as a learner.

Formative Assessment  - As teachers we are constantly watching and interacting with our students to assess their understanding and to determine if they have achieved the objectives of a lesson. This formative assessment helps us adjust our lessons mid-stream and provides invaluable information for side conferences and small group instructional interventions that we might need to get all students to achieve the learning goals.

While much of this assessment happens quickly and informally while instruction is taking place, it is important that teachers document their observations for future reflection, planning and reporting. I have found that these “anecdotal notes” help me get a clear picture of the learner and provide me, not only with data to reframe instruction, but also with a knowledge of the individual child as a learner that I can then articulate to parents, administrators and to the student him or herself.

Summative Assessment – Occasional, well crafted, teacher created quizzes and tests that are based on the material taught in class are also part of the teacher’s toolbox in diagnosing learning and adjusting instruction. Occasional summative assessments have the added benefit of focusing student learning on the key ideas that they must grasp.

We can group both of these types of assessment as “authentic.” Formative assessment is authentic because it is tied to the actual student performance of learning tasks under the watchful eye of the teacher. Summative tests are authentic in the sense that they are tied to the actual material taught in the classroom.

Combining these two types of assessment allows the teacher to truly know each child as a learner. This knowledge is powerful in conversations with parents, administrators and colleagues. Nothing convinces parents that their child is in good hands better than a teacher who can look them in the eye and say, "This is what I see about Johnny as a learner and here is why I think so." Parents who get this type of information about a child will see that this kind of rich knowledge is not available from standardized tests.

Taking Action

Social media has made it possible for people of common interest to join together in concerted action as never before. Numerous parent and teacher groups have been formed around Facebook and other platforms to provide moral support, share information and create events. It is the responsibility of the concerned professional to find a way to support these groups, provide information and get involved in ani-test abuse actions. The groups out there right now include Opt Out of State Tests, Children are More than Test Scores, and Lace to the Top. Join these groups on Facebook and lend your voice to the cause.

The teaching profession has been taking unjustified hits for many years now. The corporate education reformers have stolen the narrative about public education, so that now the public thinks of “failure factories” and “bad teachers” and “school choice” and “accountability” as the story of American public education.  These corporate reformers are well-financed and they are on a mission. All of us must find a way to raise our voices to defend public education and represent the profession by taking action and by providing our clients, the parents and children, with the kind of high quality assessment data that only the professional educator in the classroom with the child every day can provide.

All Kinds of Kinds: Evaluating a Teacher

               Evaluating a teacher demands nuance, not numbers.

The Grammy Award winning singer/songwriter, Don Henry, has a song with a refrain that says, “Ever since the beginning to keep the world spinning, it takes all kinds of kinds.” I think the same is true when we look at the teaching profession.  

As a student in elementary school, secondary school, college and graduate school, I have had a few great teachers, many good teachers, and a poor teacher or two. I remember my third grade teacher, Ms. Miyamoto. Ms. Miyamoto was from Hawaii. She taught us to dance the Hula, how to prepare and eat poi, and other basics of Hawaiian language and culture. I remember mostly how she was unfailingly kind. For an 8 year-old-boy in 1955, her classroom was a valuable lesson in diversity and respect for other cultures. Ms. Miyamoto was a new teacher and she had her challenges with what we now call “classroom management.” I am not sure how she would be rated as a teacher today, but for me she was a good teacher indeed.

In sixth grade I had Mrs. Stout. I can say without equivocation that Mrs. Stout was a great teacher. I don’t know how she did it, but Mrs. Stout made every child in the classroom, including the class clown (moi), believe that they were intelligent and destined for great success. The one thing I remember that Mrs. Stout taught us was how to outline. She said we would need it in high school and college. She always assumed we were going to college, even in this working class suburban neighborhood in 1958 where college was far from a bygone conclusion. She made us all feel good about our potential.

In eighth grade history, I had Mr. Laidacker. I doubt that Mr. Laidacker was any administrator’s idea of a great teacher, but he was for me. Mr. Laidacker was strict (some said mean), aloof and totally involved with himself. He ignored the 8^th grade curriculum (American History) and spent nearly the entire year teaching about his passion, The Civil War. And I mean passion. Mr. Laidacker knew more about the Civil War than Abraham Lincoln. And he could tell stories about the war that lit up the mind of at least one 13 year-old in that class. I can still remember in detail the report I did for him on Civil War medicine. Mr. Laidacker was not liked by most of the students in the school, but he is one major reason I became a history teacher. That passion was infectious for me.

I am sure that anyone reading this can name teachers who had similar ompact on them. The point is that teachers who were good for us, as individuals, may not have been good for other kids. But it takes all kinds of kinds in this world and all kinds of teachers to educate a child. Because of this evaluating a teacher demands nuance, not numbers.

The current mania for weeding out “bad teachers” and evaluating teacher effectiveness through student standardized test scores is wrong headed in the extreme. Teaching is one part art, one part science, and one part mystery. One child’s favorite teacher may be the wrong teacher for another child. Evaluating a teacher is a complex process, that certainly includes evidence of student learning, but it also includes many, many more things. This evaluation cannot be reduced to a number on a standardized test or on a rubric. This type of reductionism does a disservice to the complexity of the enterprise.

The evaluation of a teacher requires a knowledge of and sensitivity to this complexity. That is why I consider teacher evaluation to itself be part science, part art, and part mystery. The science is the easy part. Was the lesson well-planned? Were the students engaged? Did the teacher answer questions thoughtfully? Was the objective achieved? Did the students learn?

The art is more difficult. Was the lesson made relevant? Was it differentiated appropriately? Did children feel safe taking risks in this classroom? Did small groups function well? Were routine matters handled briskly? How effectively were problems handled? What is being learned in this classroom beyond the subject of the instruction?

The mystery is even more difficult. Did magic happen in this class? Did students feel cared for in this classroom? Was there an atmosphere of mutual respect? Does the teacher’s passion come through? What students might be inspired by this teacher? Was the joy of leaning evident?

I like to think of the act of evaluating a teacher as informed impressionism. Just as the impressionist painter, Claude Monet, used thousands of brush strokes to form the whole of a painting of a garden, so the skilled evaluator looks through multiple lenses to gain an impression of the whole of a teacher. This evaluation should be informed by student learning data, but that data is only one part of multi-faceted picture. It must also be informed by multiple observations of teachers working with children and working with colleagues. It is the product of the review of lesson plans, but also the product of conversations with the teacher that probe decision making and the ability to improve through reflection.

In other words, teacher evaluation is not easy and it requires considerable resources in personnel, time and money. The current calls for judging the complex act of teaching through reductionist and faulty value added models and theoretical rubrics are an insult to the complexity of the profession. If we are really serious about understanding and improving the evaluation of teachers, then let’s get serious about just how difficult that task is.

The House That Gates Built

When I taught in the primary grades, I loved to read aloud to children cumulative story books like There was an Old Woman Who Swallowed a Fly, The Napping House, and The House that Jack Built. Here is a reformy version of that last title. If you want to read the original you can find it here.

The House that Gates Built

This is the house that Gates built.

This is the money that lay in the house that Gates built.

These are core standards that were bought with the money that lay in the house that Gates built.

These are the tests standard and uniform

That measure growth on core standards

That were bought with the money

That lay in the house that Gates built.

These are the children all forlorn

Who take the tests standard and uniform

That measure growth on core standards

That were bought with the money

That lay in the house that Gates built.

These are the teachers all tattered and torn

Who are judged by test scores of children forlorn

Who take the tests standard and uniform

That measure growth on core standards

That were bought with the money

That lay in the house that Gates built.

These are the TFAs newly shaven and shorn

Who replace the teachers all tattered and torn

Who are judged by test scores of children forlorn

Who take the tests standard and uniform

That measure growth on core standards

That were bought with the money

That lay in the house that Gates built.

These are the reformers smearing teachers with scorn

Who hire the TFAs newly shaven and shorn

Who replace the teachers all tattered and torn

Who are judged by test scores of children forlorn

Who take the tests standard and uniform

That measure growth on core standards

That were bought with the money

That lay in the house that Gates built.

This is the Secretary, apparently sworn

To defend reformers smearing teachers with scorn

Who hire TFAs newly shaven and shorn

Who replace the teachers tattered and torn

Who are judged by test scores of children forlorn

Who take the tests standard and uniform

That measure growth on core standards

That were bought with the money

That lay in the house that Gates built.

This is the President, champion of reform,

Who appointed the Secretary, apparently sworn        

To defend the reformers heaping teachers with scorn

Who hire the TFAs newly shaven and shorn

Who replace the teachers tattered and torn

Who are judged by test scores of children forlorn

Who take the tests standard and uniform

That measure growth on core standards

That were bought with the money

That lay in the house that Gates built.

Responding to TEACHNJ Enthusiasts

Saturday's Trenton Times had this editorial enthusing about TEACHNJ the new teacher evaluation law.
http://www.nj.com/times-opinion/index.ssf/2013/10/opinion_teachnj_reforms_are_ma.html

I wrote the letter below to the editor in response.

To the editor:

I was certainly entertained by reading Janellen Duffy’s rather breathless endorsement of TEACHNJ in Saturday’s (October 12, 2013) edition of the Trenton Times. In these days of rampant cynicism it is nice to read such gosh-golly-gee-willikers enthusiasm in print. Alas, if only Ms. Duffy had saved her enthusiasm for something worthwhile.

TEACHNJ is a law that resulted from the determination of Commissioner Cerf and Governor Christie to use student test scores to assess teacher effectiveness. This effort alone is fraught with problems. First of all, these tests are designed to measure what students have learned, not teacher effectiveness. Using a test designed for one thing to measure another violates the first rule of statistical measures. Secondly, the ability of the Student Growth Percentiles (SGPs) to determine teacher effectiveness has been consistently questioned in the education literature.

 Only 20% of teachers teach classes where students are evaluated using State tests (math and language arts in grades 3-8). It would obviously create discord in a school if a few teachers’ jobs were on the line due to test scores, while the other teachers skated by. The DOE solved this problem by making all other teachers develop Student Growth Objectives (SGOs). While this might serve the purpose of keeping some peace in the school building, there is no evidence that SGOs are an effective way to measure teacher effectiveness. The DOE’s own website points teachers to an article that says, “there are not yet any research-based models for evaluating teachers’ impact on student learning for non-tested groups”(Goe & Holdheide, 2011). This is the kind of measure we are to use to make tenure decisions?

To read Ms. Duffy’s article you would think that teacher evaluation and professional development did not exist prior to TEACHNJ. In my experience as a school district administrator, I have seen rigorous programs of evaluation and professional improvement in many New Jersey school districts. I have seen the vast majority of teachers well prepared and willing to work to improve. I have seen the vast majority of administrators who are knowledgeable about instruction and dedicated to helping teachers do well. TEACHNJ is a slap in the face for every education professional in the State.

Should teacher evaluation and professional development be better? Certainly. Will tying teacher evaluation to test scores and growth objectives improve student learning? The research would indicate that it is not likely. If teachers based their instructional practice on research as shaky as this, they would certainly not receive a good evaluation. Perhaps it is time to evaluate the evaluators.

The VAM Moose: Coming to a School Near You

Concerned with the negative publicity surrounding the use of Value Added Models (VAMs)* for teacher evaluation, the Grates Foundation, the Foundation for Excess in Education, RheeFirst and other proponents of such models have decided to take a new approach to promoting the controversial mathematical model. “People are having difficulty grasping the complicated statistical formulas,” said spokesperson Eric “Fuzzy” Numbers. “We needed to come up with an entertaining way to promote the program. We were sitting around crunching incomprehensible data one day, and we hit on the idea of a mascot. We were thinking along the lines of Smokey the Bear or the San Diego Chicken. And so, VAM Moose was born. I think we have really hit the jackpot with this one. At first we were going with a ferret, but decided the moose was cuddlier. His motto is, “Raise those test scores or VAM Moose!" Catchy, huh?

The VAM Moose and his motto will be featured in public service announcements, billboards and internet pop-ups promoting value added assessment of teacher performance. Asked about the long series of reports from respected organizations like ETS, the Educational Policy Institute and the Rand Corporation calling into question the use of VAMs for any high stakes decisions, Mr. Numbers said, “That’s why we need the moose. We need to turn around the conversation and facts won’t help us. Nothing like a soft and cuddly mascot to sell a flawed product. Look what Tony the Tiger did for Frosted Flakes.”

In a related story, Walmart has announced it is launching a line of stuffed talking VAM Moose dolls to go on sale in time for the Christmas season. The cute and cuddly item, manufactured in Guatemala, will have a pull string that when activated has the moose say, “No excuses! No excuses!”

* For the uninitiated, VAMs are statistical models that use student scores on standardized tests to mis-measure teacher effectiveness. They have been very popular with education reformy types. For a fuller, and more sober analysis of this flawed tool please see the following.

http://dianeravitch.net/2013/10/01/why-vam-is-a-sham/

Valuing the Professional Educator: Toward an Evaluation Plan that Works, Part 2

In an earlier post that can be found here, I argued for a more enlightened approach to teacher evaluation that recognized the value of each teacher and aimed at feedback that is both useful and led to further professional development. Such an approach would include observations, teacher collaboration, and systematic feedback, as well as artifacts of instruction to include pupil progress indicators.

In this post, I would like to add some detail to that proposal. Specifically, I would like to look at what student progress indicators make sense as a part of a teacher evaluation.

The corporate reformers of education are in love with Value Added Measures (VAMs) as a central pupil progress indicator. Value Added Measures attempt to determine the effectiveness of the teacher through student performance on standardized tests. The Gates Foundation’s ambitious and flawed study of teacher effectiveness called for one-third of the measure of teacher effectiveness to be determined through VAMs.

Research, however, does not support the use of VAMs for any significant part of a teacher evaluation. A report prepared for the Governor’s Task Force on Teacher Evaluation in New Jersey by EQuATE (2011), surveyed the research on VAMs and concluded the following.

            Research studies show that the teacher’s effect on value-added scores, based on [standardized] tests, accounts for only 3-4 percent of the variation. Fully 90 percent of the variation in VAMs is attributable to student characteristics and the interaction of learning/test-taking styles with the instruments used to measure achievement. To ascribe a weight to this measure that exceeds its explanatory power would be malpractice at best.

Linda Darling Hammond, et. al, (2011) cited the following concerns about VAMs.

            1. Value-Added Models of teacher effectiveness are highly unstable.

            2. Teachers’ Value-Added Ratings are significantly affected by differences in the students who are assigned to them.

            3. Value-Added Ratings cannot disentangle the many influences on student progress.

If VAMs are a notably unreliable measure of student progress, what can we suggest that would provide a better picture of student progress? Here is one person’s list of possible artifacts of student growth.

·         Samples of student work showing growth over time

·         Common or locally developed assessments

·         Student work samples scored on common or locally developed rubrics

·         Questionnaires, Checklists or rating scales to measure non-cognitive growth

Examples of student work showing growth over time can include student writing, student journals, classwork or homework assignments, pre- and post-performance on teacher developed quizzes and tests, even sample pages from books read at the beginning of the year and the end of the year.

Examples of common assessments could include establishing a reading level using a recognized format such as DRA or Benchmark, or assessments developed at grade or department level designed for all students in a particular grade or course.

Rubric scored work may employ national or state rubrics used for determining writing quality or locally developed rubrics designed to assess student ability in a range of performance tasks.

Ideally, measures developed to assess non-cognitive factors related to student growth can be developed locally, but many commercially developed questionnaires and checklists are available.

In this vision of an evaluation model, the teacher takes the lead in gathering materials over time that demonstrate student growth in the classroom. This material is then shared in a collegial give and take with supervisors. The teacher has the opportunity to demonstrate effectiveness and the supervisor has the opportunity to provide feedback and make recommendations for continued growth.

Does this model demand time of the teacher and the supervisor? Absolutely. Does it demand time for teacher colleagues to develop common assessments? Yes. Is it idealistic? Perhaps. More importantly though, it values the classroom teacher as the best observer of pupil progress, the local supervisor as the key audience for this information and provides a more reliable measure of teacher effectiveness than that darling of the reformers, the VAM. Most importantly, these suggestions have the potential to impact student learning in a positive way.

References

EQuATE (2011) Creating a Better System: Recommendations for a Systemic Approach to Improving Educator Effectiveness. Report Delivered to the New Jersey Governor’s Task Force on Teacher Evaluation.

Darling-Hammond, et. al (2011) Getting Teacher Evaluation Right: A Background Paper for Policy Makers. Research Briefing, AERA

Valuing the Professional Educator: Toward an Evaluation Plan that Works, Part 1

By the time a teacher receives the first evaluation of his/her performance, the school district has already invested a great deal of time and money in that individual. First of all there were the recruiting costs involved in finding the candidate. Secondly, there was the time and effort put in through interviews, demonstration lessons and background checks to determine that the candidate was a good fit for the district and the position. Next there was the hiring process itself and the paperwork and man hours involved there. Finally, the new teacher received some sort of orientation training that may vary from a few hours to several days. In other words, the school district has chosen and created an employee of value, an asset to the district as indicated by time and money invested.

Any system designed to evaluate the performance of this employee must first recognize that this teacher is an employee of value. Acknowledging this brings an entirely new orientation to the evaluation process. Instead of an evaluation system that tries to find teacher shortcomings, evaluation becomes a process of recognizing the value of teachers to the organization and helping professionals consistently improve performance.

This gotcha’ model of evaluation is where the education reformers have made a critical error. The main purpose of the evaluation system is not to catch out underperformers (of which there are far fewer than reformer rhetoric would suggest), but to help teachers become better at what most of them already do pretty well. A sound evaluation system, focused on teacher development, will identify those who are not able to improve performance, but its first goal will be to help the valuable professionals in their own pursuit of continuous improvement.

The reformers do have one thing right, evaluation of teachers needs to get better, but not primarily because we must weed out the underperformers. What we need is to provide valuable feedback to the professionals who can use it to improve performance. The darling of the reformers, Value Added Measures (VAMs), fail as an instrument of teacher evaluation for many reasons, mostly because there is no way to come up with a reliable score as Darling-Hammond, et.al have shown here.

Another failure of VAMs is that they do little to move the profession forward. They provide little information that would be useful to a teacher trying to improve performance or an administrator trying to provide meaningful feedback to a teacher.

What would an evaluation scheme look like that valued teachers and provided the feedback they needed? Here is an outline of the basics.

1. Teachers and school leaders are empowered to jointly customize, adapt, and implement an evaluation framework.
2. Observations are a mix of a few full period visits and several shorter visits. All observations involve feedback to the teacher in some form aimed at professional development.
3.  Feedback is provided on all domains of professional practice including planning, instruction, developing a learning environment, meeting professional responsibilities and professional development.
4. A variety of pupil progress indicators including those designed and scored by the teachers themselves in conjunction with the limited use of some standardized measures.
5.  Collaboration among teachers as a part of a continuous improvement model.

In a future post, I will expand on each of these ideas and how they can work in a school or school district.