The LA Times has just run a fantastic piece on assessing the value of teachers, which really gels with my thoughts. It’s detailed, it’s insightful and it’s very powerful because they are explicitly naming the best and worst teachers coming out of their analysis. Absolutely worth a read, and the article is already stirring up powerful emotions – especially amongst the teachers union, who is organising a boycott of the paper (and sounding more than a little scared!).
The LA Times have performed analysis to produce a “value added” score for each teacher. This is basically using historic test scores for students to predict future performance and then comparing that to what the students actually did. E.g., if a student was in the top 10% and falls to the top 30%, it might be because of the teacher – or it could be just they had a bad year. If, however, this is true averaged over multiple students and multiple years, it suggests a problem with the teacher.
I’ve put a few excerpts below, with a little commentary, but I’ve posted my main thoughts on ranking teachers separately (have a read of that too!) The section “Study in Contrasts” is a particularly powerful pair of case studies, looking at two different teaching styles. One is seemingly effective, the other not, but there’s, arguably, little external incentive for teachers to improve or excel. As the reporters note,
Public school students are graded and tested all the time. Schools are scored too — California rates them in an annual index.
Not so with teachers.
Nationally, the vast majority who seek tenure get it after a few years on the job, practically ensuring a position for life. After that, pay and job protections depend mostly on seniority, not performance.
I absolutely agree with that – why should an old teacher be paid more than a young one if it happens that the young teacher is better read on modern education techniques, more enthusiastic, more knowledgeable and more proactive? (Hypothetically speaking, of course.) And, scarily, even if you identify the bad teachers and provide additional coaching, improvement is a slow process:
Bass acknowledged that it could take years for foundering instructors to improve, if they do at all. In the meantime, about 20 students a year will continue to sit through their classes.
“It’s tragic,” Bass said. “It means we’ve failed them.”
…
“It’s criminal,” Dixon said. “If you get a bad teacher in second and third grade, you’re doomed.”
Dixon has begun trying to remove the four teachers, a painfully slow process in California. It’s far more likely that they will feel the pressure and transfer to another school, she said.
“That’s not right,” Dixon said, “but it’s reality.”
That’s not to say that ranking teachers won’t be without difficulties. What do we do when parents all want the same teacher for their students? This is perhaps a hard problem, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t produce the data. Imagine if doctor’s statistics were readily available. Would you actually keep going to a doctor you knew misdiagnosed more patients than average? And again, the teachers’ responses are scary:
But many others say it would be impossible to accommodate every parent’s desire for the best teacher, and publicizing disparities would only turn one educator against the other.
Broadous Principal Stannis Steinbeck refused even to discuss the differences among her instructors, hinting at the tensions that might arise on staff.
“Our teachers think they’re all effective,” she said.
It’s that last quote that kills me. The Economist has a balanced analysis of the situation, and I’ll leave you with their closing quote:
There is no perfect way to evaluate teachers, but that is true of many jobs. (Should The Economist judge me on how much traffic this post gets? How much ad money it generates? How sharp the analysis is? Can that even be measured? How should each be weighted?) The problem is that the big teachers unions have not been credible participants in the conversation about reform, resisting efforts to incorporate test scores in the evaluation process, and fighting the consequences that must accompany bad evaluations. For its part, the Times plans to publish an online database with ratings for more than 6,000 elementary-school teachers based on test-score data. That is not fair to the teachers, who deserve a more comprehensive evaluation. But who is to blame for the absence of one?