Earlier today (06/19/2012), the Baltimore Sun featured an article about the School Effectiveness Review (SER) process that Baltimore City Public Schools (BCPSS) is using to evaluate schools. Essentially Baltimore City contracted a third-party to come into BCPSS schools and using a pretty extensive rubric, evaluate the schools on a variety of measures. The Sun article focused primarily on measures regarding instruction, with the first round of SERs finding that 40 percent of schools were "not effective." With a large focus being put on instruction in Baltimore City by CEO Andres Alonso and CAO Sonja Santelises, as seen by the development of the instructional framework, these findings shine some light on the need for effective teachers.
In my mind, effective instruction is a trait teachers develop over years of being in the classroom. It takes trial and error, celebrating successes and learning from failures (a lot of them). To develop your practices as a teacher to be consistently effective takes time. Baltimore City is pushing to bring in young and talented individuals to teach and while that youthful energy is always necessary, these teachers are not going to be effective consistently for their first couple of years. It is going to take time to train these individuals to be effective instructors. During that time period it can only be expected that many teachers, and schools, will be rated as not effective. I know that many of the turnaround schools are staffed with a majority of teachers who have been teaching for less than 5 years. Of course there are some fantastic teachers who have not been teaching very long, but they are rare. Also, many teachers are leaving the profession from being simply burnt out. Many teachers leave the profession before they fully develop their skills. The time it takes to develop those skills is taxing and it is unfortunate that people burn out before they realize the fruits of their labour.
A quick note. My school was administered a SER this past May. The observers came into my classroom for a 20 minute segment of my 90 minute class, took some notes, and then left. They did this for all teachers, sans a couple whom they observed twice. While the observers did hold focus groups with students and staff and spent some time just observing the school, to base a review of a teacher on a 20 minute segment may not be the best method to determine if they are effective or not. If the observers do not know the context of the lesson in terms of the overall unit, or whether the lesson was a review lesson, or any of these other factors that determine the function of a specific lesson, then their ratings may not accurately reflect what the teacher is doing.
While the 40 percent figure given seems startling, we should not jump to conclusions just yet. Many of our teachers are not effective because they just have not had the time to develop effective teaching practices. Also, effective teacher instruction is being heavily linked to initiatives such as the adoption of the Common Core standards, and that will add another dimension to this debate of standards (and their assessments) as they relate to how teachers are evaluated. It may all seem a big mess but I do hope that the SER process will help to determine practices that work better than others so that struggling schools can be given opportunities to support their teachers to eventually be highly effective teachers.
The article can be found here: http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2012-06-18/news/bs-md-ci-school-effectiveness-reviews-20120618_1_city-school-evaluations-sonja-santelises
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5 comments:
I agree that many teachers leave the profession before they fully develop their skills, but how can we actually retain these teachers? Is there anything that can be done that will really incentivize people to come into - and stay - in the profession?
I agree with you that effective teaching and effective delivery of instruction is something that takes time and does not come naturally for most people. Therefore, because of the nature of our work and the fact that students only (ideally) go through our class once, time is not on our side. Perhaps the question that first needs addressing is the teacher preparation process. Is our current system the best way to create effective teachers? Then, I agree with Naush, that the question of retention must be addressed. What will be the propelling factors that push teachers to work through the difficult years and unsatisfactory ratings so that they can become masters of their craft and make long-lasting systemic changes?
I'm curious to know how exactly the SER process will be utilized. Will principals and teachers at said ineffective schools receive some sort of disciplinary action? Or professional resources? What sort of pressures or supports will be provided in response?
It seems from the article there is a draw to use this in order to better the teachers in these schools. But I can't help but feel uneasy about the method in which it is being implemented (i.e.: multiple observers walking into your classroom for 20 minutes, taking notes, and leaving.).
Evaluation is incredibly important for an organization or individual improve. But if evaluation is made with the intent of being support, it must be coupled with a strong follow-through and preferably solutions.
My inclination though is that evaluation is serving several purposes rather than support alone.
I agree with most of the statements made in that there is simply not enough given to determine if a teacher is satisfactory or can really be called a good teacher. I think that even with the rubric that is coming out (instructional model) and with the current evaluation system it is still too based too heavily upon opinion currently. The upcoming evaluation is said to be based more on evidence. Which is a good thing. We see if a defendent is really guilty based upon evidence why not use evidence for teachers.
However, I do also agree that there is a lack of training for educators currently that would help develop their teaching styles. I wonder where is there more effective training? And although some of the problem is retention and keeping the veteran teachers motivated and keeping folks within the education field, I have to question is bringing in youthful educators a real solution to the problem? I feel some youthful instructors care and really want to make a difference for personal gain (they themselves do not want to fail be uase have yet to fail) or because they really want to see a change in the gap between those who are more fortunate and those who are not. But there are some that are not in education for the right reasons (old and young) and the question is how can we get those teachers out and replace with other that do care and have a passion to teach and can bring that to the classroom? Sometimes the most effective teaching is not one who can bring in the best technology advances, but those that can make the lessons more engaging and usually from my observations it comes mostly from the teacher whose passionate resignates throughout the lesson and becomes contagious to the students. They seem to make the most changes and produce the best scores; which, lets faces it, ultimately determines if a teacher (from the outside looking in) is most effective in their instruction.
When reading the article, I thought it was interesting how qualitative the review was, citing specific things teachers said, instead of just numbers in a category that add up to a total "score". In the article, the reporter cites observer comments of teachers telling students to shut their mouths and isolating students - practices that frequently occur in my school. As I struggled with my management skills, I sought help from my administration. They told me I was too nice and I needed to tell my students to shut up and listen, and I needed to threaten them and yell at them. The only "help" I had all year for behavior was when the administration, in front of all my students asked me to identify the "bad kids" so they could remove them from the classroom. This was actually NO help and put me in a terrible position with my students and my ability to effectively instruct them. I think that it's easy to walk through a school and judge what appears to be happening, but there are so many things that are happening as a result of (frequently) misguided leadership. Leadership decisions may not be evident in the practices at the school, and as effectiveness reviews continue, perhaps it would be important to have a way for teachers to confidentially express why they think certain actions in the classroom and the school occur. Our school had to do something similar with the State this year without the principal present to evaluate the validity of the teachers' beliefs as to why the school was not meeting AYP. An observer might come to my classroom and wonder why I have boys on one side of the room and girls on the other side. Well that's because I was told to do this after my male students were told by the administration that they would be lucky to live until 15 or at least to stay out of jail. Then they told me in front of my students to separate them by gender and teach those who wanted to learn - the girls. This is NOT effective but what am I supposed to do as a teacher? School reviews should look into the interaction between the leadership and the teachers who, in our school's case, are trying to do the best by the kids but sometimes get our hands tied behind our back.
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