Accountability, Democracy and a Problem with Fundamentalism: High-Stakes Teacher Evaluation in the USA

• In Event: The Intended and Unintended Consequences of Accountability and Datafication in Education: Global Perspectives

Proposal

This paper explores how the rationalities associated with high-stakes teacher evaluation and standardization critically undermine schools’ capacities to respond to the changing and emergent needs of their students and communities. Using pluralism (Connolly, 2005; 2017), or the view that diversity of thought and action is a necessary feature of democratic, critically-responsive institutions, the paper analyses policy documents and evaluation instruments to illustrate how a convergence around a narrowed conception of teaching and teachers drastically reduces teachers’ exposure to various teaching practices and philosophies.
Globally, high-stakes teacher accountability systems have become rooted in testing, evaluation and dis/incentivization as a means for shaping teacher practice and defining teacher ‘quality’ (Bradbury & Roberts-Holmes, 2017; Lingard, 2010). Teachers face increased pressures to rely on test data and evaluative tools (e.g., rubrics) to guide their classroom practices (Author(s) 2018; Hardy, 2018), which is reinforced in three interrelated spheres: teacher preparation, professional development (PD), and evaluation. Alignment between these domains has become a key objective of large federal grants in the US (e.g., Teacher Incentive Fund [TIF] grant), which have incentivized external actors to develop comprehensive packages that accommodate the grant requirements. TAP: The System for Teacher and Student Advancement (hereon referred to as TAP) is one such package.
Using policy documents and accountability instruments and artefacts (e.g., grant applications, professional development handbooks, observation rubrics), this study looks at TAP’s involvement in Texas and Arizona’s teacher preparation, PD, and evaluation programs. Using content and discourse analyses (Bacchi, 2000; Foucault, 2002), it (1) maps TAP’s presence in these domains, (2) identifies key features of and relationships between the domains (and TAP), and (3) uses tenets of pluralism (Connolly, 2017) to problematize goals that prioritize strict alignment.
Preliminary findings show that after winning a $5.25 million federal grant, one of Arizona’s largest universities integrated TAP into its teacher preparation program. Additionally, 58 schools that partnered with the university adopted TAP for teacher evaluation and PD. As such, many Arizona teachers transitioned directly from TAP preparation to TAP evaluation and PD, and therefore rarely accessed alternative perspectives of teaching or accountability. In Texas, TAP was first piloted in several districts (also with a TIF award), but has since become the foundational philosophy and infrastructure for the state’s all-encompassing teacher evaluation and PD program (now called T-TESS). Currently, there are motions to introduce the system into teacher preparation as well.
TAP’s ubiquitous presence in multiple domains means that many teachers experience a single philosophy, practice, and measurement of teaching. Each stage of their professional identity is calibrated to TAP, which is characterized by high-stakes accountability (e.g., value-added, merit pay) and standardization (e.g., rubric-based observation and PD). Strict alignment between teacher preparation, evaluation, and PD creates a sort of fundamentalism that makes adaptability and professional discretion difficult, if not impossible, for teachers to practice. As TAP presides as a multi-domain system, the boundaries between standard and alternative practice grows increasingly rigid, which impedes teachers’ capacities to be critically-responsive to the changing needs of their students (Connolly, 2017).

Author

• Jessica Holloway, Deakin University