Teachers' Contribution to Stratification Under Evaluation Pressure

• In Event: Early Career Elementary Teachers' Efforts to Plan and Enact Ambitious Mathematics Instruction

Abstract

Objective. This study aims to build theory related to how accountability policies, particularly teacher evaluation policies, seem to affect achievement gaps in classrooms by combining sociology and policy research perspectives. Teacher evaluation policy has emerged as a popular instrument for improving teaching quality (Ballou & Springer, 2015; Delvaux et al., 2013). At the same time, despite policy movement toward standardized and rigorous teacher evaluation systems, evidence regarding policy effects on student achievement gaps has been limited.
Perspective. From the categorical inequality perspective, schools contribute to social stratification through two processes: “creation of categories and the assignment of individuals to categories” (Domina et al., 2017, p. 314). Even if schools compensate for homes and communities that lack resources for student learning, such categorization paves the foundation for social stratification through uneven distribution of resources and opportunities, shaping incentives and student motivation, and providing signaling and identities (Domina et al., 2017). Accountability policies create categorical definitions based on student achievement and reinforce them. As teachers are now evaluated based on their students’ test scores, it is plausible that teacher evaluation pressure reinforces social stratification through widening achievement gaps.
Data and Methods. We combined teacher survey data collected as part of a larger project and student mathematics achievement data from four Midwestern school districts (i.e., data from the Indiana Statewide Testing for Educational Progress assessment). Our sample included 57 teachers and 1,462 students. Teachers’ perceived pressure was calculated by taking means of their responses to three survey items: (a) I need to change my current teaching practices in order to earn a high score on teacher evaluation; (b) I need to earn a high teacher evaluation score to keep my job; and (c) I need to earn a higher evaluation rating than other teachers at this school. We applied Hierarchical Linear Modeling including various teacher-level and student-level control variables. The main variables of interest were the interaction terms between teachers’ perceived evaluation pressure and different student background variables. For example, we tested whether the association between students’ prior and current test scores became stronger or weaker when teachers felt more pressure associated with teacher evaluation.
Findings and Significance. We found that, in general, perceived pressure did not have a significant association with student achievement. However, the interaction terms between (a) evaluation pressure and students’ prior test scores and (b) evaluation pressure and students’ SES had significant associations with student test scores. When teacher evaluation pressure is perceived to be at a high level, the associations between prior and current test scores and that between student SES and current test scores were stronger. That is, teacher evaluation pressure seemed to exacerbate gaps between high-achieving and low-achieving students and between high-SES and low-SES students. Given previous findings that teachers who perceived a high level of evaluation pressure tended to move away from ambitious mathematics instruction (Author, 2017a), this finding shows that such changes in instructional practice in response to teacher evaluation pressure may harm low-achieving, low-SES students more than their counterparts.

Authors

• Jihyun Kim, Sungshin Women's University

• Qinyun Lin, University of Chicago