Comments on: Common, National Standards. Has Anyone Asked a Teacher? (August 2009)

By: John Moore

John Moore — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 16:50:22 +0000

Here is a more comprehensive take on the issue of how to evaluate students, teachers, and schools (http://bit.ly/cmHtuA). In essence the author suggests less high-stakes testing, better high-stakes tests (less testing allows more time for creating better tests), more testing by teachers in schools (and quality control by spot testing those tests and by providing test libraries), and better evaluation of schools by visiting boards of experts who would talk with teachers and administrators and observe a school’s progress.

By: John Moore

John Moore — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 15:49:05 +0000

A good start would be to look at differential learning–how much did a student improve scores while working with a particular teacher. However, the measurement would have to be more complicated than just giving a MC test before and after the teacher worked with the student.

In my university we have peer evaluation of teaching as well as student evaluation. If peer teachers observe both the teacher and his or her students, this is another measure that could be applied. Teachers are much better equipped to discern whether a student displays real understanding (as opposed to rote learning).

By: Clint

Clint — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 18:37:31 +0000

I know our county pushes for a lot of teacher professional development into diverse ways to teach students. They also focus on PLC’s pushing to help with extended learning for those students who do not achieve. Who you consider that the students in EL deserve a different style of evaluation as would those teachers? Where would you start in a plan to evaluate both teachers and students?

By: John Moore

John Moore — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 21:58:24 +0000

I think the issue is far more complicated than just tying teachers’ salaries to student performance. Teaching to a test is a sure way to improve performance at lower levels of Bloom’s taxonomy, but we need much more complex learning than simply being able to answer multiple-choice questions. Good teachers will enable their students to achieve such multifaceted learning, but will anyone be able (or take the time needed) to measure such learning accurately? Probably not.

Student performance also depends on where the students were when they came into the class. If you measured Harvard students’ performance you might decide that Harvard faculty are super teachers and deserve the big bucks they earn, but their students started pretty well up on the ladder. Someone teaching at a two-year college in Boston might make a bigger incremental improvement in his or her students’ learning, but just looking at test scores would not reveal it.

I would be willing to see a system where there were differential pay increments partly based on student performance, but I think there is a lot more to evaluating a teacher than just student performance.

By: Clint

Clint — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 21:08:39 +0000

This is in response to the Florida and East coast talking about adopting this policy last month.

By: Clint

Clint — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 21:07:34 +0000

I was just curious. What do you think about the teachers salary being subject to student performance as a national standard?