State Looks To Student Learning For Teacher Evaluations

By Monica Brady-Myerov (@bradymyerov)
Mar 23, 2011, 4:16 AM
10 Comments

BOSTON — The Massachusetts Board of Education is revamping a broken teacher evaluation system. A task force has recommended making student test scores a significant part of a teacher’s review, something that is not currently done.

But there are unanswered questions about how much this should be weighted against other factors, such as classroom observations.

Grading teachers in part based on student grades is a revolutionary concept in the field, says state Education Secretary Paul Reville.

“We are going to introduce the notion that student performance is relevant to a teacher’s performance and should be considered, and for the first time we are going to establish that as a policy of the commonwealth of Massachusetts,” Reville said. “I think that’s a huge step forward.”

But it’s a step into a minefield. The task force that gave its recommendation to the board Tuesday says teachers should be judged in three categories: classroom observation; feedback from staff, students and parents; and multiple measures of student learning and growth.

Task force member Linda Noonan, who represents the business community, says they purposefully did not assign percentages to each factor. But Noonan says they agree that student performance should be a “significant factor” in evaluation.

“There is no definition of significant factor,” Noonan said. “It is up to the commissioner because the task force did not define significant factor. It’s extremely vague and undefined.”

The task force recommends using MCAS scores over a three-year period and other evidence of student growth, such as in-class writing assessments or math tests that show progress. Reville says MCAS alone wouldn’t be enough, as only 17 percent of teachers have administered the test for three or more years.

The state’s largest union, the Massachusetts Teachers Association, supports using test scores to rate teachers, but union President Paul Toner doesn’t want it to be weighted.

“The task force was right in not to put a specific percentage on this measure because the research is very clear that growth scores can provide some useful information, but they are also subject to high errors rates,” Toner said.

Toner says tests results can falsely identify excellent teachers as weak ones. But Jason Williams, head of the grassroots group Stand for Children, says results matter.

“We are also very disappointed that student outcomes were not chosen to be the most significant factor in how we evaluate those who are charged with the duty of ensuring that our children have that equal chance in life,” Williams said.

The proposed new evaluation structure also takes a stronger stand on what to do about bad teachers. If a teacher is given an unsatisfactory rating and doesn’t improve after one year, they will be demoted or fired.

“So it shortens the period,” said Deputy Education Commissioner Karla Baehr. “Right now it’s not entirely a clear process of how long it takes. The task force is describing a one-year process.”

If the Board of Education adopts this recommendation, the Legislature may have to change the collective bargaining law to take the evaluation process out of teacher contracts. That could meet union resistance. Others also warned this would be a hollow system without more money for better training principals how to be effective evaluators.

The recommendations now to go Education Commissioner Mitchell Chester, who will present his proposal in April.

Please follow our community rules when engaging in comment discussion on wbur.org.

Penti

I wish you had asked FairTest about using MCAS to evaluate teachers. This story is missing an important dimension.

Guisbond

Thanks for the FairTest plug, Penti! Yes, for future reference, Monica and other reporters can talk to FairTest and investigate many sources of solid information about the problems with using test scores to evaluate teachers.

For anyone interested in what the research says about evaluating teachers by student test scores, here’s a link to an article, with references, by FairTest’s Monty Neill. It’s called “Student Test Scores Are a Dangerous Way to Judge Teachers,” and you can read it at the Citizens for Public Schools site: http://www.citizensforpublicschools.org/editions-of-the-backpack/spring-2011-backpack/student-test-scores-are-a-dangerous-way-to-judge-teachers/.

Another important article is Mike Winerip’s from the New York Times, about a New York teacher acknowledged by all to be outstanding, whose rating by New York’s value-added system was way below average, in the 7th percentile. It’s called “Grading New York Teachers, Perhaps the Numbers Do Lie,” and you can read it here: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/07/education/07winerip.html?_r=1&ref=michaelwinerip.

Lisa Guisbond

Penti

I wish you had asked FairTest about using MCAS to evaluate teachers. This story is missing an important dimension.
Nan

I fully agree that there should be changes to teacher evaluations, and that teachers are a vital component in the education of our children, but nowhere in this story was there mention of the role parents must play. Too often teachers are faced with parents, who should be their partner in education, who are either disengaged or enabling of bad behavior and/or study habits. I don’t know what the answer is, but felt it MUST be addressed as an element of the education/evaluation process.
Jhayesboh

Is increasing the role of MCAS the best this task force can come up with? If it measures anything, MCAS measures minimal competence in just two subjects, and does so a few times over a 12-year period. Even if MCAS were good at what it was designed for, it would not be good at this!
clandestine

I find it amusing that Sec’y Reville seems to think Massachusetts is “introducing the concept” of using test scores to assess outcomes. Ever heard of NCLB, Mr. Secretary? Massachusetts teachers HAVE been assessed by student test scores for several years now.

I also find it amusing that Mr. Williams at Stand For Children seems to think that test scores are the only tool we have to assess outcomes, and in fact, that they do a good or even acceptable job of that. What about GPA, whether a student graduated at all or graduated in 4 years, whether a student attended vocational or technical school/2- or 4-year college, evaluations of preparedness from first-year college professors…? Test scores are a totally inadequate way of measuring outcomes.
Kateaux1

Many factors need to be taken into consideration regarding teacher evaluation. Groups of students come in at different levels. Who will teach Special Education children or children who don’t speak English well if they are judged with a heavy weight on MCAS? If you are trying to see if a teacher is doing a good job you should see if the individual students are progressing from year to year, not an average of MCAS scores from across a class.

Another item to consider is if the teacher has an effective rapport with students, other teachers, the administrators and the parents.
Lizwisniewski

Thus endeth collaboration for my team of third grade teachers – I am going to let them know at our next meeting that we are all in this for ourselves and I am not going to help them get their student’s achievement up – it does nothing for me, most likely, it would hurt my own job security. So next meeting I am announcing “Girls, every teacher for herself!”
Xo14384

This puts all the blame on the teacher and takes it off everyone else. What if students blow off the test? What does this say to teachers?
Jmradosta

Stand of Children is not a “grassroots” campaign. It is actually a highly organized, group funded by such corporations as Bain Capital, with the goal not of improving education, but of abolishing collective bargaining and removing teachers not because of their effectiveness, but of their salary. Look at their own website.