Evaluations Should Develop, Not Punish, Teachers

One of the current narratives in education reform is the notion that in order to raise student achievement, we must "fire bad teachers." A recent piece in the New York Times, Teacher Grades: Pass or be Fired (featuring a 2010 TFA DC Corps Member), discusses the culture of fear and pressure resulting from new evaluation systems, such as the Impact evaluation used in DC Public Schools. In addition to taking student test scores heavily into account, Impact is based on five evaluations throughout the year - three by the principal and two by "master educators," many of whom are brought in from outside of DC. Several hundred teachers in DC are expected to be fired this year based on their Impact evaluations.

While I believe that teacher accountability is an important part of successful school reform, I fear that the narrative may soon change from complaints that it is nearly impossible to fire bad teachers once they are tenured to the issue of teachers being fired left and right based largely on standardized test scores. Using standardized test scores to rate teachers is a highly contentious issue. However, I will focus on a different aspect of teacher evaluations brought up by the article: "some educators say [Impact] is better at sorting and firing teachers than at helping struggling ones."

There are lemons in every profession, and teaching seems to be notorious for the "dance of the lemons." Teachers who shirk their responsibilities and repeatedly fail to make gains with their students should not be kept on. As Michelle Rhee has said in interviews, parents do not want to hear that their child's ineffective teacher was just granted more time to improve (meanwhile, students suffered).

However, I find it hard to believe that all attempts were made to aid "ineffective" teachers before they were let go. No matter what teacher training or education program teachers come from, the true learning process for the teacher occurs when they set foot in the classroom. But the instruction for teachers should not halt when they receive their teaching certificates. Ongoing training, professional development, and mentoring could go a long way to ensure that teachers are given the means, not just the time, to improve.

Numerous traditional teachers whom I have spoken to over the past year have asked me about (or just assumed that I had) a mentor teacher. While there were multiple teachers at my school who took me under their wing and helped me survive my first year of teaching, I do not know many city teachers who have designated mentor teachers. As I understand it, mentor teachers should meet with teachers every week to look at lesson plans and discuss/trouble shoot problems in the classroom. Mentors also observe teachers in a non-threatening way and without a rubric - they are there to guide, not judge, new teachers. Along with building a cooperative culture in the school, mentoring allows teachers to learn from the true teaching experts, their school's veterans.

Teachers should be held accountable to evaluation systems that take many factors, including test scores, into account. However, what seems to be missing from the conversation about teacher evaluations is the lack of meaningful professional development and mentoring for teachers, especially those deemed ineffective. If teachers must be observed five times throughout the year under the Impact system, there should be ample time to identify struggling teachers early enough to provide interventions. Such interventions could take the form of teachers observing and debriefing with exemplary educators, observations by mentor teachers from the same school, and meaningful staff development with specific strategies and suggestions for teachers.

Although there are positive incentives in the form of bonuses for excellent teachers, there should to be a meaningful way to help struggling teachers before the end of the year evaluations. No one aspires to be bad at their job. High stakes evaluations and the "fire bad teachers" narrative create a culture of fear and low morale among teachers. Evaluations should help identify struggling teachers and the specific supports they may need early enough in the year to provide true opportunities for growth.