Taking Stock of America’s Teacher-Evaluation Tempest

• In Event: Division H Vice-Presidential Invited Session: Taking Stock of America’s Teacher Evaluation Tempest

Abstract

All the same.

All three presenters in the proposed symposium will be providing independently conceived analyses regarding the current status of American teacher evaluation, particularly those teacher-evaluation programs catalyzed by the Race to the Top and ESEA Flexibility Programs. Each presenter, paying particular heed to what is transpiring in states’ teacher-evaluation frameworks during the months leading up to the AERA annual meeting, will offer a separate analysis of those aspects of states’ teacher-evaluation systems that appear to be working well and those that seem to be experiencing problems. Suggestions for countering any identified shortcomings will be proffered. Because the three presenters will deliberately not be exchanging their presentations before the annual meeting, what may result will be considerable similarity or, more likely, substantial differences in presenters’ perceptions of states’ teacher-evaluation practices.
All three presenters agree, however, that almost any truly potent educational intervention has the potential to do great good or great harm. Just as a sharpened scalpel, unlike a picnic-quality plastic knife, can be employed to save lives if used by a surgeon or, in contrast, to take lives if used by a maniac, so too can teacher evaluation have a decisively positive or a negative effect on American schooling. Teacher evaluations make a difference for they have a significant effect on the way teachers teach.
One of the most telling criticisms of U.S. high-stakes accountability testing has been, at least in some settings, its negative impact on what takes place in classrooms. We have seen far too many instances of curricular reductionism wherein teachers teach only toward accountability-tested content. So too, have we seen excessive test-preparation with so much test-driven drilling that any joy stemming from students’ learning has been squashed. And, finally, we have seen too many instances of flat-out cheating in an effort to raise students’ scores on accountability tests. These three consequences of accountability testing are, unarguably, harmful to the students who are affected by them.
But those negative responses to accountability pressures have arisen when the quality of teachers’ schools are at issue. Now, with the installation of more demanding teacher-evaluation programs, we see that teachers’ themselves are being evaluated. If the fear of adverse school evaluations can cause teachers to engage in educationally undesirable acts, is it not likely that the prospect of adverse personal evaluations might drive many more teachers to engage in educationally inappropriate behaviors?
But that’s the negative side of the coin. Is it not also possible that if the evaluation of teachers is meaningfully linked to students’ learning, we will arrive at more accurate identifications of those teachers who need to be lauded, those teachers who need to be helped, or those teachers who should be sent to other callings? It is because teacher evaluations are so remarkably potent that we must fashion them with consummate care.
The three presenters will bring their best, independent thinking to the consideration of these important issues. Moreover, the proposed symposium’s deliberately structured interactivity will be ideal for reviewing those analyses.

Author

• W. James Popham, University of California - Los Angeles