The frenzy for accountability . . .

Amy Adams sent me a link to this New York Times article about implementation of Tennessee’s new teacher evaluation system. As a winner of a Race to the Top federal grant the state made the decision to develop a new model partly based on using student achievement data. Fifty percent of a teacher’s evaluation in Tennessee is based on their students’ state test scores and the model requires the principal to make at least four observations in every teacher’s classroom. The last part makes sense though I don’t see how it is possible in a large school with the additional requirements referred to in the article.

The state is micromanaging principals to a degree never seen before here, and perhaps anywhere. For example, Mr. Shelton is required to have a pre-observation conference with each teacher (which takes 20 minutes), observe the teacher for a period (50 minutes), conduct a post-observation conference (20 minutes), and fill out a rubric with 19 variables and give teachers a score from 1 to 5 (40 minutes).

Mr. Shelton is a middle school principal who used the following words to describe the situation.

“I’ve never seen such nonsense,” he said. “In the five years I’ve been principal here, I’ve never known so little about what’s going on in my own building.” Mr. Shelton has to spend so much time filling out paperwork that he’s stuck in his office for long stretches.

One other component of the model makes even less sense. Since not all teachers teach subjects that administer a state test such as P.E., art, music, K-3, and vocational teachers the decision was made to allow the individual teacher to choose which test they want to be judged on for fifteen percent of their testing evaluation. That has led to comments such as the following.

Several teachers without scores at Oakland Middle School conferred. “The P. E. teacher got information that the writing score was the best to pick,” said Jeff Jennings, the art teacher. “He informed the home ec teacher, who passed it on to me, and I told the career development teacher.”

All of this was done to align with what the federal education department sees as a necessary component of improving public education. For Tennessee, it has resulted in problems and requests to change the model that are currently being discussed. Why should we care? Because there is currently a process underway in our state that could also result in using test data to evaluate teachers and principals. It is the Teacher Principal Evaluation Project that has been in place for a year with some districts in year two of a pilot.

You can find information about the project on their site here and if you go to the TPEP Task Force page you can see that value added and student achievement is a topic of discussion at the meetings. Below are the agendas for the last two meetings.

November 10, 2011 – NEWESD 101 – Spokane, WA

• Agenda
• Common Cores State Standards: A Commitment to Student Success – Greta Bornemann, OSPI
• Developing and Assessing Teacher Effectiveness – Linda Darling-Hammond, Standford University
• Using Value Added for Teacher Accountability: What Could Go Wrong? – Jesse Rothstein, University of California, Berkeley

October 27, 2011 – City University – Renton, WA

• Agenda
• Overview of Student Growth for Non-tested Grades and Subjects – Gretchen Weber, American Institutes for Research
• Presentation and Discussion: How to Use Student Learning Objectives in Educator Evaluation – Joann Taylor, Austin Independent School District

To be in position for future federal grant opportunities the state will need to be using student achievement data to evaluate teachers and principals. I think this is inevitable given the current national trend and focus on teacher quality. My hope is that those engaged in this process do not replicate the problems being experienced in Tennessee. I agree with Alexander Russo in this post about both the situation in Tennessee and Florida. You can read about the Florida problems here.

These examples show just how disconnected teacher evaluation is getting from what teachers do.

I think it is unfortunate that in our state and in states around the country millions of dollars are being spent to create evaluation models whose stated purpose is to support teacher growth over time, but whose intent is to get rid of “bad” teachers. We don’t need a four tier model, required observations, and paper work to focus on instruction and support teacher growth. We need a shared vision of quality instruction and the capacity for principal and teacher leadership to create the cultures where quality is demanded and support is in place to balance this high demand.

In our system it is our focus on Classroom 10 and for this year on learning goals and checks for understanding. The conversations between teachers and principals and teachers are productive and are resulting in changed practice across our system. The layering on in two years of a new evaluation model that is aligned with our Classroom 10 goal will complicate the work and make it more difficult to maintain focus on the goal. We don’t need the threat of an evaluation to create changed classroom practice. We are experiencing it through our work and the foundation of that work is a collaborative system with the capacity to engage in difficult and important conversations about what quality learning and instruction look and sound like. This might be a model that reformers should consider.