Creating a “modern” teacher evaluation process

The current Georgia legislative session was supposed to be a relatively quiet one when it came to bills impacting K-12 education. Though Governor Deal’s education reform commission presented a slew of recommendations in December to revamp education funding and policy in a number of different ways, in his “state of the state” speech, the Governor called for a one-year delay on any legislative action on any of the recommendations in order to allow a teacher advisory committee and legislators time to “vet” the full report so that it could be discussed “based on facts, not rhetoric.”  So it seemed as if there’d be little action focused on schools this session (except, of course, for a funding increase–it is an election year after all).

But recently not one but two bills have been introduced that would reduce the weight required to be given to standardized test scores as a part of a Georgia’s teacher’s evaluation under the state’s “Teacher Keys Effectiveness System” (TKES).  Starting this year, that weight is supposed to be 50%—half of a teacher’s evaluation based on how her or his students performed on the prior year’s state tests.  The two bills out there in the legislature right now would lower that percentage to either 30% or 10%.

Why the shift in attitude for an evaluation process that was just started a year ago?

There has been mounting concern about the role and uses of standardized testing in the United States.  Many parents in states across the country have been lamenting the negative impact the amount of required testing has had on their students’ school experience.  And with many states required to use tests in teacher evaluations as a condition for grant funding and/or waivers from the more draconian provisions of the former federal education law, teachers—including those here in Georgia—highlighted the myriad problems with this move towards using one-time state test results as so much of their annual performance appraisal.

In my blog a year and a half ago, I shared my own thoughts about what was then the “new” TKES.  And, based on what I wrote then, I applaud these efforts to reduce the weight of standardized tests in teacher evaluations.  But what would really make me happiest is if the percentage were left entirely up to individual schools or districts to decide.  And if that (wishful thinking) were to be the case, I’d advocate that for ANCS, the performance of a teacher’s students on state standardized tests would not be given a set percentage weight but would be but one of many student outcomes considered in giving feedback to our teachers.

Many of the lawmakers and others who have called for state tests to make up a sizable portion of a teacher’s evaluation do so using the logic that if a teacher’s primary job is to educate students, the main evidence of his success—test scores—should be used in evaluating his performance.  Furthermore, proponents of this approach argue that such a system makes it easier to recognize “ineffective” teachers so that they can be moved out of the classroom, leaving students with only the best teachers working with them.

Yet, in my view, that line of thinking is based upon some flimsy assumptions.  First, looking past all of the variables beyond a teacher that might influence the test scores of a teacher’s students, I’m fairly certain that standardized test scores are not the only measures of student learning that are important to us, yet those don’t get any “weight” in the student performance section of an evaluation.  In fact, recent research has shown that even with increasing test scores, a school (or teacher) may be doing little to boost students’ critical cognitive abilities that aren’t captured on most state tests.  Secondly, the belief that we need a system like TKES to more readily identify those “ineffective” teachers is pretty asinine.  I’d venture that most school leaders could tell you which teachers need the most support regardless of TKES. And I’d also venture that most school leaders would tell you that many of their most effective teachers are growing increasingly frustrated with bureaucracy like this state-imposed evaluation system.

In his “state of the state” speech, Governor Deal called on us to “modernize” our state’s educational system.  Yet and still, we subject our state’s teachers to an evaluation system that is antiquated and formulaic.  On just about a weekly basis I see an article in the news about a successful major company—Google, Apple, Adobe, etc.—moving away from practices like prescribed annual employee reviews and adopting approaches that give managers flexibility in assessing employees and building organizational cultures built on actual evidence of what works in driving performance.  These organizations–usually cited as part of the “workforce” for which we are preparing students–offer some valuable lessons for how we could truly modernize how we treat, support, and evaluate the employees of our public schools.