Earlier this week, the New York State Legislature passed a bill that
will make teacher evaluations public information but keep teachers'
names private. This is a new step towards holding teachers accountable
for their performance by the public. As a large state such as New York
begins to implement this reform, other states might follow. With this
information available, the questions are: Who will use it? And what will it change?
It could be a useful indication of a school's success if parents could
access teacher evaluations at a school, even without names. The parents
who will access this information will first have to know that it exists.
This will of course depend on how public access to the evaluations is
publicized, and most likely the information will be online so those
interested in reading the evaluations will need access to the Internet.
What this all means is that less-informed parents, usually parents of
the neediest children, will not be the primary readers of these
evaluations.
If states and districts across the country begin to open their evaluation systems up to this scrutiny by the public, it will be important to make sure that the teacher evaluation process itself is improved so that those who end up accessing the evaluations see an accurate picture of the teacher. In Baltimore City, the teachers and administrators are still struggling to understand how to implement a new evaluation system, and as with any system there are learning curves and personal politics that surround the implementation. The new framework might help teachers improve their craft and view the evaluations in a less critical way, but the movement to publicize the information might reintroduce a punitive feeling.
It is unlikely that publicizing my effectiveness against the Baltimore City rubric is going to make me a more effective teacher. It is likely that I am going to feel that my abilities as a teacher are not fully represented in that medium and it is unfair, whether my name is attached to it or not, that the public display of my evaluation reflects my practice to someone who has probably never met me. Furthermore, parents who have other options of schools for their children might see the evaluations as a way to pursue those options. But for parents who do not know how to transfer their student, or are unable to transfer their child, will not experience that same interest in accessing the evaluations - because the results will not mean that choosing another teacher is even a possibility.
Evaluations are something that an administrator, as an instructional leader, should conduct to help teachers improve their craft. Similar to an annual review at a company, or even other parts of the public sector, it is about professional growth, and the qualitative evaluation material should remain between teacher and supervisor.
"Bloomberg: NY teacher evaluations should be public"
http://online.wsj.com/article/AP078f1fb1da0247fb94af47b9c48f1526.html
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5 comments:
I agree with your final comment that evaluation material should remain between the teacher and the supervisor. It really is the best way to ensure that comments, suggestions and final ratings are used in a constructive, not punitive way. I also agree that in order for teachers to be comfortable with a posting of their evaluations, the way they are conducted and how they are derived must change. If the goal is national or even just state-wide comparison of teacher performance, then the evaluations need to be unified because at this point in time we are unable to say, strictly from an evaluation, that a successful teacher in one location is outright going to be a successful teacher at any location. A few questions also came to mind for this. The first one is will or should evaluations for first year teachers be posted? Perhaps it is only fair that evaluations of teachers with tenor to be posted for public audience. That is not to say that first year teachers should not be accountable, but I think the learning curve in our profession should be considered.
Finally, I agree with you that the question of access and action are both things that need to be considered. We would have to uncover the specific purpose for releasing this information and then what exactly can parents do as a result of this knowledge, and will their actions be produce meaningful results that will then create changes to our school system?
While I like the notion of trying to bring transparency to the public school system, I am just not sure how the public would make use of teacher evaluation material. Sometimes we teachers cannot even understand the evaluation, let alone an outsider! Plus, as the article states, it is not like parents can pick the teacher for their child, when enrolled in a public school. Overall school ratings, with a breakdown of teacher evaluations might be more beneficial in helping parents decide which schools to send their children to. I doubt real meaningful change will come out of this initiative. It will probably just give someone a terrible job of having to upload all these teacher evaluations, or transferring the information to an online website accessible to th epublic.
I wonder what use public evaluations can be if the names of the teachers aren't included. Will the evaluations be grouped by school? Or will they be totally anonymous, rendering them utterly useless for anything other than aggregate data? As Ali Baba mentions in his comment, the only immediately apparent result will be a huge job added to someone's workload. Is this really the best use of the city schools' resources?
As I read this, I started thinking about how evaluations might change if they became public. Would our administrators feel more pressure to give higher or lower evaluations? Would our teachers feel more pressure to work harder for their students? My initial thoughts are no. Nothing would change. It would just be another public record that wouldn't necessarily impact much with the exception of a few media outbursts. Evaluations should stay between teacher and evaluator. That is where the discussion will be the most applicable to our students, and our students is where we need to remain focused.
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