Will an evaluation system for teachers be flawed ?

[UndertheOcean]

sure it will .

But so is the evaluation system set up for students through all academic levels . They still have to go through it , every year .

what's good for the goose and all that jazz.

[dkf]

1. Yeah I'm kind of amused that teachers are now telling us tests and scores have no value.

Seems to me they used to do that to us all the time.

[zipplewrath]

2. give the teachers a test

They'll take it. They already do to get certified. You want someone else to take a test and have the teacher get graded on it. That's like me testing your subordinates to find out how smart you are.

[JuniperLea]

4. I'm accountable for the training I give others...

I'm "graded" for it in my reviews... and my raises and bonuses are based on how well I train, meaning how well my "get" their training.

[GreenPartyVoter]

5. But are you training adults, because that's really a different situation.

[JuniperLea]

8. Barely out of college, most of them...

Some with no college experience, which makes things very difficult. Most have no study skills at all... and not much of an attention span either.

[joeglow3]

11. Which is why I did have to take 4 years in college to be trained for it

I am also not graded on which medicines I would prescribe for illnesses. Whats your point?

[zipplewrath]

7. And teachers are "accountable"

The question is how. There is a myth being created that teachers are unaccountable. It just isn't true. It's just that the performance of their students is only a part of that accountability. There are those that want to make it the sole feature of their accountability. Remember, public schools have to take "all comers" so to speak. Your company hires folks with some reasonable expectations of them being "trainable". Same with private schools. But public schools are required to take a much large segment of the population, and teach a cirriculum designed by amateurs, and a required methodology of teaching.

If you could demonstrate that your trainees were skipping class, sleeping in class, or any number of other activities that would interfer with their training, you could effectively get them fired or taken out of your class and not be ranked upon their performance. But teachers have to take the kid in who was beat last night by his father, got stoned on the way to school, skipped portions of last week, and now sits, half asleep, in their class and "teach" him. And then the state wants to give him a test and grade the teacher on his performance.

[JuniperLea]

9. Why isn't it a teacher's responsibility to get kids to class and engaged?

It sure was their job when I was a kid in school. I know... I tested them thoroughly in that regard.

[zipplewrath]

23. It is PART of their job

But they have 25 students and their time has to be balanced. Unfortunately, systems like FCAT and NCLB insist that the maximum effort be placed upon the least performing students, which means that the highest performing students will suffer.

[Catshrink]

105. Actually, I have 177 students now.

It's hard enough trying to keep those that are here in mind, on task, and learning. Now I'm supposed to chase them down and get them to school? Where is the parents' responsibility?

[WinkyDink]

41. What does "get kids to class" mean?

[JDPriestly]

75. JuniperLea, let me tell you a story.

My oldest daughter attended our local high school which was listed as one of the worst in our city. She was an outstanding student and especially enjoyed science and math.

Her chemistry teacher was brilliant and dedicated. During the Christmas holidays, he invited my daughter and other students to his home so that they could use his advanced computer system to work on AP chemistry.

I will never forget the parent-teacher meeting with him. He was such a sweet man, and with pain on his face, he said, "If only I could get them to come to class." The children in our gang-ridden neighborhood just skipped school. Peer pressure, difficult homes, poverty, lack of any promise for a good future -- all these factors caused them to be apathetic and unwilling to give school a chance.

The teacher was a winner and made my daughter a winner. She got a full scholarship to a good college, and got higher grades than the other girls in her chemistry study group although they had gone to the top private schools.

I'm sure that teacher's classes test scores at our local high school were far worse than the test scores of the students in schools in Beverly Hills or Westwood or Santa Monica or the Valley. But I will bet that my daughter's chemistry teacher was the best in the state if not the nation.

So, that is why you cannot evaluate teachers based on their students' test scores.

One student out of 30 may do exceptionally well mostly thanks to the teacher's skills, while the rest of the students do not respond for reasons having nothing to do with the teacher.

I think that the people best able to evaluate a teacher are the teachers they work with. I propose a system in which schools encourage teachers to work together and support each other and then evaluate each other's teaching based on specific criteria, performance in particular areas such as preparing organized lesson plans, speaking clearly, waiting for feedback from students to be certain they have understood, courtesy in the classroom, quiet disciplining of students, mature emotional control, mastery of subject matter, etc. Of course the evaluations should be absolutely confidential, and accumulated over a period of several years before action is taken.

You had better believe that in your job, your students are giving feedback about you.

[joeglow3]

12. I agree

However, I have NEVER discussed this and had a teacher agree to ANY means of evaluation. When I say principals should be forced to sit in and evaluate teachers, the response is that politics would come into play.

Welcome to the real fricking world. Do these people REALLY think this never happens in the real world?

[zipplewrath]

21. Dunno about individually

But in actual practice, all schools have at least annual evaluations. Quite honestly, I'm not sure what value a principal brings to it, but several school systems have peer reviews amongst other measures.

[JDPriestly]

76. There is another problem.

That is academic freedom. Teachers need to have the freedom to express their own ideas. If you have administrators evaluating teachers, you get repression and fear and lack of creativity in the classroom.

I am proposing a method in which teachers evaluate each other -- confidentially and based on specific criteria -- and after working together in team teaching.

All teacher in a school should work together, help each other out -- and evaluate each other.

Teachers should be given enough opportunity to have contact with each other and watch each other teach to be able to assess each other's teaching. That would also encourage teachers to learn from each other what is working in a particular school and what is not.

Members of a team tend to identify those who are not carrying their share of the load much faster than anyone outside the team can.

That is my proposal as to how to assess teachers. Teaching depends on personality. How do you evaluate a personality? You can describe a personality, but you really can't give it a grade. That's the problem.

[joeglow3]

78. I don't agree with "academic freedom" in grade schools.

There are basic skills we can agree need to be taught: reading, writing, spelling, math, science, history, etc. Now, I agree that there are creative WAYS to teach and would not want that limited. However, academic freeom, IMHO, is not an issue until college (and MAYBE high school).

[JDPriestly]

84. Academic freedom is especially important in grade schools today

because of the attack on science by the extreme right. Teachers have the responsibility to teach the truth as they know it. No teacher should be required to teach a third grader that global warming is not due to burning carbon products. No third grade teacher should be required to teach that the world is only as old as the Bible says it is. They should not be told what to teach about science.

[joeglow3]

85. I see that as a district issue

There should never be an issue at the teacher level.

[WinkyDink]

40. Well, bully for Private Enterprise!

[Igel]

53. Still not the same thing.

You're responsible for the training you give others. What if they don't want to be trained? Can't read. Can't handle the math. In other words, your bosses or the people who hired you screwed up. The programmers are really trying to program in IBM 360 machine language because that's the textbook they found at the local library.

That's a bit more like it. But there are outs in that scenario. The bosses or people paying for the training will try to get the best people for the job that they can. They look for aptitude, a track record of being able to "get it," or at least being motivated to work at "getting it."

Now, let's tweak it. The amount of time for training is fixed. And the trainees have a Constitutional right to your services, if you keep the job--you can't kick them out, and if you flunk them the parents are on your tail.

And let's still have it be a non-random sample, but one skewed positively towards achievement. This year, you get a group that was picked for the job. You're wonderfully effective. In fact, most of your students came in with a decent background, making it easy, and they actually overachieved. You're a superstar.

Next year, you get a group that really wants to be someplace else, resents that you consume oxygen, and who believes that they're going to be basketball players in a year. Their "job" as they see it is to put up with you. And when you tell them to read the policies and follow them, you find out that you're teaching 1/3 of them how to read, 1/4 of them how to speak English instead of the potpourri of languages they know, and and you're trying to get reward systems in place because if they don't follow the policies they don't give a rat's ass about you get fired and they don't see that they get any real penalty because, gee, they have a Constitutional right to be there. On the other hand, because you had to babysit over half the class--if you failed them, there'd be hell to pay, and your boss and their parents insist that the bottom achieving students get the most attention--few of the competent students in your class actually learned what they could have. At best they're adequate. However, given your situation you believe that "adequate" is the new "excellent" so if they learn the minimum you give them an A. And you wonder why after 3 years with mixed ratings the bosses say that standards have been watered down.

Your "accountability" is now subject to a roll of the dice. Your evaluations depend not on what you do as a trainer, but on whether or not you can make up for the crappy 9th grade the hirees had because maybe if they function at a 10th grade level you can teach them something.

There. Now it's the same thing. But it's not what you mean by "accountable."

[dkf]

6. Having smart teachers is not the end goal. Having smart students is.

[joeglow3]

10. Ummm, welcome to EVERY job in America

[zipplewrath]

22. My boss isn't graded on how smart I am

He's graded on how he uses me, regardless of how smart I am.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

31. Your boss' job also isn't to improve your academic achievement.

A teacher's is.

[joeglow3]

55. My boss's job is to improve my technical achievement

If, after a couple years, I am only able to perform the tasks I could when hired, both of us would face scrutiny.

[uncommon]

73. And students aren't employees. They are a product, as far as our education system is

concerned. The teachers are the manufacturers of that product.

If the product is defective, it comes back on the manufacturers.

This is the analogy.

[JCMach1]

72. Give the politicians the test first and PUBLISH THE RESULTS!

[WinkyDink]

39. THAT? Is the #1 Anti-Teacher Problem. Thank you for finally expressing it for one and all.

[rucky]

60. They have diagnostic value.

Nobody argues this. But it seems to be mistaken for a cure. When a test score indicates a deficiency in an area (or overall), the only thing being discussed is punitive action (pull funding, fire teachers) - none of which is remedial (and isn't that the point of diagnostics?) in a way that directly helps the kids. If you really want to fix schools, you'd put more resources into fixing troubled areas - not staving them to death, cleaning up the mess, and rolling the dice again.

Plus, not all assessments are created equally, and high stakes, standardized testing is not even close to the best method to measure learning. Teachers assess learning all the time in the classroom - they do it directly, and they do it different ways that are tailored to different learning styles and student needs. But these assessments are tossed out the window by the bean counters. All the sudden, everything that grades are reflective of are meaningless. Class time is spent preparing for standardized tests instead of lessons. It becomes a distraction from learning, not a measure of it. When it's tied to teacher evaluation, it's a measure of how well the teacher has prepared the students for a test that is faulty - at the expense of more reliable assessments.

What this comes down to is trust. If teachers were trusted to be responsible for students' learning, we'd measure their performance more like we do with other professionals - peer and supervisory review. You don't fire cops who work in high crime areas, why would you automatically fire teachers who work in areas where survival trumps learning?

[madfloridian]

3. Test the students....that IS the teacher's grade.

That's really quite amazing considering that we are supposed to be teaching uniquely different students.

But then again, that is the new Democratic policy.

Must. fall. in. line.

[Taverner]

13. Why not do it like corporations do?

3 part yearly evaluation

1 - feedback from students and parents
2 - feedback from peers (other teachers)
3 - feedback from administration

Make it qualitative, not quantitative

[MadHound]

14. That's actually similar to what is being done now,

The exact methodology varies from school district to school district, but still, very similar. Oh, and let's not forget the fact that teachers are observed and filmed while teaching as well.

[Taverner]

15. I don't see a problem with the teachers then

Hmmmm...maybe its the administration???? hmmmm?

[MadHound]

16. There are bad teachers, no doubt,

But the problems with teachers are far, far down on the list of problems with our education system.

Funny how we have a very simple solution in front of us, namely fully funding every school and paying teachers what they're worth, but so many people don't want to do what is obvious or simple because it takes up precious money. Instead, they want to do education on the cheap, and then wonder why education is doing so badly.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

19. We spend more than anyone in the world on education as a percentage of our GDP

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/edu_tot_exp_as_of_gdp-education-total-expenditure-gdp

Combine that with the fact that we have the highest GDP, and I would strongly disagree that it's the money that's the problem.

[MadHound]

24. Well, I would have to disagree with you,

You want quality teachers, you have to pay for them. Very few of the best and brightest college students even take a look at education as a field because the cost is so high(education majors rack up some of the largest number of college hours) and the pay for teachers is so low.

Meanwhile, in the top education systems in the world, teachers are treated and paid like doctors are here, with respect and in the six figures. Pay and status like that is what gets the best possible candidates into the field of education.

There are thousands of schools across this country that aren't fully funded, and very little is being done about it. Sixteen billion for school construction and repair was taken out of the stimulus budget, only to be replaced by that least stimulative tool, tax cuts. Go drive by any school in a large city and odds are you'll see a school surrounded by classroom trailers, which are far from the ideal place to teach any class.

Frankly, our school funding system sucks. It requires not a majority to pass a school bond, but a super majority, which means it is the minority voice that is listened to. It is time we put a halt to this as well.

Sorry, but despite your graph, the fact of the matter is that schools across the country are strapped for cash. Don't believe me, go to your local school and see for yourself. Thirty plus kids crammed into a classroom is just the beginning.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

27. I would certainly agree that the funding needs to be more equitable.

The problem is one of control - if the state or the feds take a greater share of the funding responsibility (which is the only way to achieve funding equity), they're going to take more of the control along with it. And not even the cash strapped ones you speak of (of which I have been to many, by the way, in more than a dozen different states) want to cede the authority that comes with it - and that includes the teachers who don't like the idea of academic standards coming out of Washington DC. I would be entirely in favor of having schools be funded predominantly at the federal government level and do away with back asswards local school boards and local property taxes determining the quality of a child's education. Would you?

As for teacher pay, you are wrong yet again. Our teachers are the 5th highest paid in the world, adjusted to U.S. dollars: http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/edu_pri_tea_sal_sta-education-primary-teacher-salary-starting (starting salaries) http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/edu_pri_tea_sal_aft_15_yea-teacher-salary-after-15-years (after 15 years of experience) Where you get this information that other countries pay their teachers like we do doctors is beyond me, but it is in no way based in reality.

Part of the problem is that teachers don't take into account the remarkable benefits they receive that the vast majority of other Americans do not, mostly in backloaded benefits like lifelong health care and a nice pension. Parceled out on a dollar-for-dollar basis, teachers do make every bit as much as engineers and government lawyers - those people just get their money up front. Which, by the way, is a perfect model for bankrupting a school district, which should be no surprise since the union contracts are modeled on old manufacturing labor contracts, nearly all of which eventually had to be restructured (or much worse, pensions got raided) because people are living a lot longer than they expected when the contracts were initially signed. The only reason the school districts haven't gone under is because the government is backing them, but the net result is that a large portion of any new money that goes into education today is used to pay for teachers long since retired. I would never in a million years advocate for cutting existing pensions, but at some point, this deal needs to be taken off the table for new teachers or we're going to perpetually continue to have this problem. Actually, it's going to get significantly worse as our society continues to require more and more teachers.

As for recruiting the best and brightest to go into teaching, there's an organization that does it remarkably well. I'm guessing you don't like them very much, however. http://teachforamerica.org/

[MadHound]

33. OK, thanks, you don't need to say one more thing,

The fact that you're using TFA as a link, source and example tells me all I need to know about your agenda, none of it good. You're using bogus facts, cooked up explanations, and then hold up TFA as a model of excellence. Say no more, there is no arguing with you, nor any expectation of holding a civil, sane and rational discussion with you.

So I suggest you go your way, and I'll go mine, and we'll leave it at that.

TFA:rofl:

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

36. Pray tell - what's so wrong with TFA?

Want to even bother giving any kind of fact?

[kwassa]

63. Two years and they are out of the profession.

Their success record is questionable, their schooling minimal before they enter teaching.

It takes years to learn to be a really effective teacher, not two. It adds to the sense of instability and turnover in the school.

I don't hate TFA, I think they provide idealistic and energetic young people to enter schools that need it the most, and that is a good thing. I think claims made for TFA and the philosophy behind are pretty questionable, and claims made for the young teachers effectiveness suspect.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

65. On the first part in your title: So what?

Most Americans switch professions these days. No one stays in one spot very long. Why in the world should teachers?

Questionable? It seems to be the only report that's been used to criticize TFA is the Mathematica Policy Research one that showed TFA teachers only showed small gains in math and little to no gains in reading. As for the "schooling", for one they're recruited from the top 1/3 of college graduates. Secondly, the quality of teacher colleges is, by and large, total garbage. My wife went through one of the best in the country and it was an abysmal experience. But beyond that anecdote, check out this report done on Texas schools of education by the National Council on Teacher Quality: http://www.nctq.org/edschoolreports/texas/docs/executive_summary.pdf

Finally, it actually does not take years to be an effective teacher. Literally, it takes one year in the classroom. The Brookings Institute studied exactly this and found no gains in teacher effectiveness beyond their first year in the classroom. Further, they also studied the impact of a teacher's education and found literally no difference between someone with a master's in education and someone that simply went through a certification process.

Got anything else?

[kwassa]

67. Consistency is important.

I haven't talked to you before, and I had forgotten you are one of the idealogues on this issues.

1) Switching professions is not the norm, despite your attempt to make it so. Leaving after two years leaves no lasting imprint, no experience, no institutional memory, nothing.

2) Teacher colleges vary widely in quality, though your prejudice is duely noted. Mine was quite good in many regards. An Ivy-League education is in no way a predicator of teaching talent.

3) It does take years to become a really good teacher. Teachers and administrators know this, despite any Brookings Institute report. The idea that one does not improve after one year defies common sense and human experience both.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

68. Ideologue?

:rofl: If you say so. But I'm the one bringing stats and scientifically based reports from reputable organizations and you're not, so perhaps you might want to rethink things.

On career changing: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_often_does_the_average_worker_change_careers_in_his_lifetime

On teacher colleges: I produced a report from a national organization specializing in teacher quality. What do you have?

On experience: I have a report based on scientific findings - what do you have? As to the second part, the idea that it defies "common sense and human experience", what defies common sense is that you can't see how one might improve in ways unrelated to actually imparting knowledge to children. Such as, how to be more efficient in grading papers or how to lesson plan more quickly. This is precisely what Brookings found when they dove in after the initial results - After the first year, teachers figure out how to better manage their classrooms. Beyond that, teachers simply got better at their own quality of life issues and personal efficiency, but how they deal with children goes mostly unchanged.

[kwassa]

69. This whole movement is about idealogy

You brought up no stats that prove that all teacher colleges suck, by the way.

The evidence so far is not very deep in any area of this issue. The amount of science is scant, so small that the current reform movement is largely a belief system with very little factual underpinnings, which is why I call it an idealogy. A few studies are not enough to base national educational policy on, and the US Department of Education says so, in relation to the value-added models and their application in teacher evaluation.

This is precisely what Brookings found when they dove in after the initial results - After the first year, teachers figure out how to better manage their classrooms. Beyond that, teachers simply got better at their own quality of life issues and personal efficiency, but how they deal with children goes mostly unchanged.

and this finding defies common sense, too. Better classroom management comes from how they deal with the children, from trying new things, for expanding one's repetoire. The two are strongly connected. Effective management means effective teaching and learning. And guess what? This comes with time.

What is your teaching experience, by the way? I'm a public school teacher.

The basis for this "reform" movement is an underlying assumption that the educational problems are the fault of the teachers, not the parents, not external factors such as poverty, not lack of community support, but soley the teachers. This is magical thinking, at best.

edit to add: just checked your link on how often workers change jobs. It doesn't really support your point, because even if they changed five times, the high end, that would mean every six years in a 30-year career, not every two.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

70. And the response to the reform movement is that teachers can't be blamed for anything.

Which is magical thinking, at best.

I already posted the report on teachers' colleges, but here it is again because you can't be bothered to actually read: http://www.nctq.org/edschoolreports/texas/docs/report.pdf

On the "defying common sense", perhaps you should learn to read because I rather plainly said that after the first year, a teacher shows no increase in efficacy. And I also said that happens because they learn to manage classrooms within that first year. I hope you're not a language arts teacher.

And by the way, my wife was a public school teacher and I'm in education policy and have visited schools across the nation. Nice try though, sport.

[kwassa]

80. So you are in policy, but haven't taught yourself?

I was wondering if you had any experience in the classroom, but it appears that you have not.

So, do you work for TFA, or one of the other politicized educational policy outfits out there? There are a few of these. You certainly write like a member of one of these organizations.

On the "defying common sense", perhaps you should learn to read because I rather plainly said that after the first year, a teacher shows no increase in efficacy. And I also said that happens because they learn to manage classrooms within that first year. I hope you're not a language arts teacher.

You try your best to be insulting, don't you?

You can re-state it as often as you like; saying that there is no increase in efficacy after the first year also defies common sense. Teaching is like anything else in life; the more you do it, the more you learn, the better you get at it.

It fits the ideology, however, particularly that of TFA. I will also point out that you in no way responded to what I wrote in my previous note.

Teachers are evaluated right now, and how that is done is going to change, and the value-added measurements will happen. There are many people making grand claims, though, for things that are largely unproven yet. I think that many aspects of teaching are not ever measured, and that some may just be unquantifiable. That is certainly the case now. The best part of the Obama initiative is that more things will be measured, if the proper data systems are developed and put in place. The worst part, of course, is the teacher-bashing ideology that has led these initiatives has alienated many in the profession.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

81. Prove your claims.

I've got research on my claims about teachers effectiveness with regard to experience. What have you got? Anecdotes and this alleged "common sense".

Tell me, have you never experienced a situation anywhere in your life where conventional wisdom turned out to be completely wrong?

Frankly, if these policies are alienating people like you - whom I would not want teaching my kids - I'm all for that. You can't even come up with a fact based argument - just nonsense and rhetoric that you've probably parroted from the NEA.

[kwassa]

82. Your attitude is revealing.

You got one study from Brookings. Bully for you. One study is one study, and I would have to see lots of replication before I believed that human experience is essentially wrong.

You also didn't answer my question about what policy institute you work for. You probably do work for TFA or one of their fellow believers. I was right; you are an ideologue.

My argument is fact-based, based on my training, experience, and my fairly extensive reading on this reform movement. I teach in Montgomery County, Maryland, and we have a great school system.

Insulting my argument doesn't prove yours. You haven't answered most of mine. You apparently can't.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

83. Wow - you don't know what a fact is, do you?

What you've presented is an anecdote - not a fact. I can't believe a teacher doesn't know how to distinguish one from another.

You have a "great" school system in Montgomery County solely because you have a lot of rich people living in Montgomery County. Rich people that actively get extra help for their kids and expose them to out-of-school learning opportunities that most people don't have. I'm guessing you've never bothered to go to Crimestein (don't pretend you don't know what I'm talking about), the Silver Spring schools, or the Gaithersburg schools.

[kwassa]

86. You are misusing the word "anecdote".

And you make education policy?

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/anecdote

anecdote <ˈænɪkˌdəʊt>
n
a short usually amusing account of an incident, esp a personal or biographical one

I'm not speaking about any incident. I am speaking about a breadth of experience. Before you hurl insults, you might see to your own education.

While we are at it, shall we look at the word "fact"?

fact (fkt)
n.
1. Knowledge or information based on real occurrences: an account based on fact; a blur of fact and fancy.
2.
a. Something demonstrated to exist or known to have existed: Genetic engineering is now a fact. That Chaucer was a real person is an undisputed fact.
b. A real occurrence; an event: had to prove the facts of the case.
c. Something believed to be true or real: a document laced with mistaken facts.
3. A thing that has been done, especially a crime: an accessory before the fact.
4. Law The aspect of a case at law comprising events determined by evidence: The jury made a finding of fact.
Idiom:

My life experience fits under definition #1:knowledge or information based on real occurences.

You might not accept the level of proof of that, but that is a different matter. Neither of us accept the proof of the other.

I've worked at Einstein, if that is what you are referring to, two other Silver Spring schools, and several Gaithersburg schools, three of which were Title 1 schools. Some of the schools are more challenged than others, and yes, socioeconomic status is the chief indicator, still, of good schools.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

91. "Anecdotal Evidence"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anecdotal_evidence

The expression anecdotal evidence has two distinct meanings.

(1) Evidence in the form of an anecdote or hearsay is called anecdotal if there is doubt about its veracity; the evidence itself is considered untrustworthy.

(2) Evidence, which may itself be true and verifiable, used to deduce a conclusion which does not follow from it, usually by generalizing from an insufficient amount of evidence. For example "my grandfather smoked like a chimney and died healthy in a car crash at the age of 99" does not disprove the proposition that "smoking markedly increases the probability of cancer and heart disease at a relatively early age". In this case, the evidence may itself be true, but does not warrant the conclusion.

In both cases the conclusion is unreliable; it may not be untrue, but it doesn't follow from the "evidence".

Evidence can be anecdotal in both senses: "Goat yogurt prolongs life: I heard that a man in a mountain village who ate only yogurt lived to 120."

The term is often used in contrast to scientific evidence, such as evidence-based medicine, which are types of formal accounts. Some anecdotal evidence does not qualify as scientific evidence because its nature prevents it from being investigated using the scientific method. Misuse of anecdotal evidence is a logical fallacy and is sometimes informally referred to as the "person who" fallacy ("I know a person who..."; "I know of a case where..." etc. Compare with hasty generalization). Anecdotal evidence is not necessarily representative of a "typical" experience; statistical evidence can more accurately determine how typical something is.

Accounts of direct personal experience are commonly equated to anecdotal evidence where this form of evidence is not one of the above categories of anecdote, hearsay or conclusion deduced from generalisation. Unlike anecdotal evidence the reliability of accounts of personal experience is normally capable of assessment for legal proceedings.

When used in advertising or promotion of a product, service, or idea, anecdotal reports are often called a testimonial, which are banned in some jurisdictions. The term is also sometimes used in a legal context to describe certain kinds of testimony. Psychologists have found that people are more likely to remember notable examples than typical examples.<1>

[Taverner]

51. Oh we spend a lot

A lot of it goes to administrators. Middle management. The red tape, if you will.

But do the schools get the money? Do the teachers?

[Recursion]

79. +1000

The dysfunctional school systems I've dealt with were swimming in cash.

[JDPriestly]

77. Administrators are overpaid and have to justify their salaries.

So it is the administrators.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

17. Yeah, and in most states, 95+% of teachers reach "satisfactory or better"

Despite the fact that in some areas, more than half the kids can't even read at grade level.

It's a broken, pro-forma system of rubber stamping.

[MadHound]

25. Wow, where are you getting these "facts"?

Because frankly they sound more like the right wing, anti-education talking points to me. Please provide a link.

And having been through a public school evanluation, I can tell you , it is far from rubber stamping.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

29. How about you provide a fact for a change?

I've already rebuffed several of your arguments with facts that come from an organization that doesn't have any political stand whatsoever. Why don't you step up to the plate with something beyond rhetoric for a change?

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

32. You know what? I'll do you one better.

From a series of U.S. Department of Education data tables, with the information populated from the Schools and Staffing Survey, which is filled out by schools themselves each year.

http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/sass/tables/sass_2004_01.asp
http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/sass/tables/state_2004_40.asp

Average number of public school teachers in public school districts who were dismissed in the previous year or did not have their contracts renewed based on poor performance, by years of teaching experience, and state: 3.1 (emphasis mine to point out that this is the number, not percentage)

There are 3.7 million teachers in 15,500 districts. If an average of 3.1 of them are fired in each school district for poor performance, that means only 1.29% of all teachers in any given year are deemed unfit to be teachers.

There is no profession or group of people in the entire world for which I can say that 98.7% of them are doing a good job. That is damn near criminal in a country where we have as many students as we do dropping out and unable to even read at grade level.

Like I said, pro-forma rubber stamp.

[Joe Fields]

34. Thank you for using facts to back your argument.

Instead of half truths mixed with propaganda.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

37. I'd just love to get a single fact - bogus or otherwise - in return!

All I'm getting from MadHound is pure propaganda. It's pathetic, at best.

[YvonneCa]

87. Check the bibliography in...

...Diane Ravitch's book. She's been Asst. Sec. of Education under Lamar Alexander AND researches educational history. LOTS of facts there...and ALL documented.

But you probably already knew that.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

93. Diane Ravitch is a profiteering hack.

She's well documented to say whatever someone will pay her to say.

[YvonneCa]

95. I had a feeling you had heard...

...about her book. Have you read it?

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

98. Yeah, and I think it's pretty clear how I feel about it and her. (nt)

[Igel]

54. You're right.

However, two things make the system too flawed to be of use. A couple of others make it difficult to fix the system.

First, the evaluation system is unable to identify good teachers from the average teachers from the bad teachers. It's able to spot teachers that are stellar *in given contexts* but doesn't take into account the contexts very well. So a teacher will do wonderfully with disadvantaged Latino inner city youth, but put them in a majority Turkish, middle class school or a mostly white suburban private school and they suddenly have no appropriate skills or are reduced to "average."

The minimum a decent evaluation method has to do is take into account not just starting average student test scores and final test scores--there are tricks for short-term goosing of the averages, after all who looks at standard deviations--but what reasonable expectations for *those* students are. Instead we have "minimum" expectations centered on completing a curriculum made up by college educated adults whose kids are very likely to be college educated.

Second, a lot of evaluation is beside the point. Not only does it not evaluate to determine teachers that are "good" in some abstract and the contexts in which they'd be "good" in practice, it doesn't evaluate what's needed to foster improvement. Is the teacher evaluated on content knowledge, on district policies, or on pedagogical methods? The teacher should know all of them, but often the content is weighted disproportionately, or policies trump methods. Sometimes they're ranked on how well they implement methods that are inappropriate, or tackle the lowest decile of students. And if they're doing things almost but not quite right, what happens? They get a brief report. If they're lucky, they're evaluated by somebody who was a good teacher, but that's not all that likely--they're more likely to be evaluated by an average or mediocre teacher. No coaching, no training, very little guidance on what to do.

The system's hard to fix in part because while a union says how it's entirely behind quality manufacturing of a product and it's really there to help the consumer, we all know it's a lie. PR. Spin. The union is there to represent the members. From time to time a sex abuse case leaks into the newspapers; from time to time an employee gets passed through the entire termination process and gets canned. In both cases, the union is there to protect not the student, not the parents, not the school board, but the union member. What makes it hard to fix is the reluctance to acknowledge the obvious.

Another part of the system is hard to fix because of one of the basic postulates taught: Any student can, with appropriate instruction and time, learn pretty much anything. That, of course, is utter nonsense the way it's usually unstood. If pressed, "with appropriate instruction and time" is the clincher: Yes, Johnny can learn quantum mechanics, it'll just take 233 years of private tutoring skewed towards "tactile" learning of subatomic physics. Sue can learn to play violin--given weekly lessons and 7 hours a day practice for 64 years. One-size-fits-all education, even with "differentiated instruction," still has an undifferentiated curriculum and set of criteria. My host family in Brno one summer acknowledge that Milos, the son, was a good mechanic; that was his high school curriculum, he graduated with the near equivalent of an AA as a mechanic. Their daughter Lida was clumsy but very good at language and the humanities; she was on a college track. No need to motivate Milos to do well in 4th year English, no need to motivate Lida to do well in calculus.

A third is that poverty decreases learning. It doesn't, not directly; it's correlated, but not causally connected. You can mimic much of the effects of middle-classness on elementary student achievement simply by having the kids read during the summer. You can improve reading-readiness by reading to your kids. You can model reading by actually reading during your time off. This isn't constrained by poverty. Even the most destitute public library has sufficient resources for this. The public library is free. Poverty's budget accommodates "free". The people that are the primary partners for teaching in the middle class are much more frequently uninvolved if they're poor. The middle class parents, educated parents, don't assume that their kids' education is entirely the responsibility of somebody else. Sometimes this actually is unavoidable. But "unavoidable" is used to cover, out of sympathy, empathy, compassion, or fear of being called racist, much that can be avoided.

It's also appropriate to point out that not being fired from a job doesn't mean you're doing a good job. It means you're doing an job at least acceptable enough to avoid being fired. I've known few people who were fired from jobs that didn't *try* to be fired.

We'll ignore little problems like a scarcity in some content areas. I'm being certified to teach one of the hard sciences at the high school level (Russian, too, but nobody much cares). I'm not done coursework; I haven't taken the standardized tests. I got 4 email requests for interviews from 3 principals. A fourth principal called me at 9:40 one night and was disappointed when I said I wasn't on the job market. A fifth argued with me: Why student teach when you can be an intern and get paid for it? They'd work around gaps in my training. She wasn't just arguing for me to come in for an interview; she was desperate for a science teacher a week before school starts at a school rated "unacceptable".

[Taverner]

48. It's not always the teacher's fault the students can't read

Students and Parents have to put in just as much effort.

Old adage: you can lead a horse to water....

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

49. It's a teacher's fault for advancing them.

Key words: "at grade level".

Meaning, they got promoted despite not having the ability to read where they're supposed to be able to read.

[Taverner]

50. And again, anyone would get the same results given the conditions

Ever been to an innercity school?

Let me put it this way: kids bring their own TP because the bathrooms don't have any.

They also don't have dividers (the stalls)

The teachers often have 50+ to a class - so they are supposed to know each student intimately enough that they know if they can read or not. School has 5 periods, so that's 250 students.

So teachers either become martyrs, cynical or apathetic.

Anyone would, given the conditions.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

58. Have YOU ever been to an inner city school?

I've been to schools in Harlem, the Bronx, Sacramento, Los Angeles, Washington DC, and other areas associated with the "worst" schools in the country. None of what you said even comes CLOSE to resembling what you describe - especially the 50+ to a class part.

[Taverner]

61. Come to Oakland, CA

Come to the Western Addition, SF, CA

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

64. Come to LA, DC, or NYC. (nt)

[Taverner]

66. Well at this point its he said he said

So...no where really to go with this conversation any more

[YvonneCa]

89. ...

...hard to debate the all-knowing...;)

[YvonneCa]

88. In 24 years as a teacher, I never had the power...

...to retain a child. The PARENT had it in the early years and the administration had it the rest of the time.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

92. I call BS on that.

Plenty of kids get held back for having poor grades. I in no way, shape, or form believe that teachers have no power to hold a child back, and if they don't, why in the world isn't that priority A#1 for teachers?

[YvonneCa]

96. Call it whatever you wish. It's the truth and...

...it's a big reason teachers are speaking out now. Our truth is being twisted...

As to priority A#1 for teachers... they are usually kept very busy working for kids...priority A#1.

[WinkyDink]

44. Corporations use "students and parents"? Not even a close comparison.

[Taverner]

47. Jeez, do I have to spell everything out for you?

Corporations don't use parents and students, they use shareholders and customers

Same idea...

[Starry Messenger]

18. The evaluation system for students is flawed

yet we are basing the (new) teacher evaluation upon it. It's not good for goose or gander. Plus, there is ALREADY AN EVALUATION SYSTEM IN PLACE FOR TEACHERS!

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

20. There's no such thing as a perfect evaluation system for anything.

That's no reason not to conduct and continually improve evaluation systems.

[YvonneCa]

90. ASSUME...makes an...

...ASS of U and ME.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

94. I didn't even use the word "assume", but thanks for playing.

[YvonneCa]

97. You made two assumptions without using the...

...word 'assume.'

Your assumptions in your own words:

"1. There's no such thing as a perfect evaluation system for anything. 2. That's no reason not to conduct and continually improve evaluation systems."


I agree with # 1, although it assumes one has researched it. As to #2, I disagree because the assumption there is that evaluations do not currently take place (and they do) and that they are not in the process of being improved (which they are).


These two assumptions are you projecting on me a point of view which I do not have in order to make a case in a debate. THAT is called a 'straw man argument.'

And...I'm pretty sure you know this, too. :7

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

99. I never said or implied that evaluations aren't conducted.

Nor have I said that are not in the process of being improved. This is one such improvement that can and should be made.

Honestly, Yvonne, you're usually a lot better than this. There was no strawman, nor was there any form of assumption made in my post. That's you projecting onto me.

[YvonneCa]

101. I'm sick. Should have...

...called in. ;) But that doesn't mean I think you are correct. :7 Have a good day!

[Imajika]

26. They don't want to hear that...

Nothing that is proposed beyond the status quo or "more money" is acceptable to some of these people.

I can't figure out why the education lobby feel teachers shouldn't be evaluated just like the 75% of Americans in the private sector (and most others in the public sector).

Why does it matter what the final evaluation standards are? Try different things till they get it right and improve on what we are currently doing. You take a job, you meet their requirements. If you don't, your warned/counseled and then terminated. That is how the vast majority of workplaces operate. The education lobby seems to want to hang on to the status quo seniority system with no defined rules for paying on merit based on actual accomplishments. Suggest such a thing and you get a bunch of complaints that it is too difficult to measure what makes a good teacher. If that is true, then find some - to include more and better tests for the students and teachers. Suggestions of ways to shake things up and improve the results of many of these god awful public schools are met with stubborn refusals to accept even the slightest change. This is no different than any bureaucracy or failed corporate department within the private sector - they all resist change in the same way. Go in and try to alter things in an attempt to achieve better result and you get nothing but howls of protests and endless roadblocks designed to protect the stats quo.

I suspect these arguments have become much more about teachers salaries and benefits than improving education results for the kids.

[EFerrari]

30. It is about wages and benefits and other kinds of resources for schools

and always has been. BushCo just LIED and said it was about the children. Arne is simply building on what BushCo started.

And of course we need money for the schools. I don't know anyone who is happy with the status quo but this program is not about improving our schools. It's about capturing their resources and busting the unions.

[Joe Fields]

35. I strongly suspect that you are correct in your suspicions.

I get evaluated every day in my job. Most of the criteria I am assessed on is fair, some not so fair, but that is life. As the OP mentioned, every evaluation system will have a flaw or two.

[Scruffy1]

38. They real problem with evaluation

I see all of these posts comparing public education to private businesses as far as job evaluation methodology. Having both taught in public schools and in industry I think that this comparison is invalid. The first thing that comes to mind is that businesses get to select their employees-public schools do not. Another problem is that student turnover makes comparisons difficult. A 30% yearly turnover is about average in my area so we are not comparing the same students year to tear.
My wonderful Great Aunt who taught for over 30 years in Denver and is staunch Republican told me of one class she had where not one student who started in September was their in May.
I believe that this whole education thing is a bunch of Republican Anti-union rot and of course, being democrats, most DU'ers will fall for it. Politicians have been promising to fix education, lower my taxes, and defend my freedom my whole life-until the election is over.

[WinkyDink]

42. For your edification: THERE IS NO PRIVATE SECTOR EQUIVALENT TO TEACHING CHILDREN.

PRESUMABLY, the adults here, working with and for other adults, are fully-formed in knowing how they themselves learn best. Moreover, the vast majority of adults in jobs are motivated by the immediate prospect of money to do well. Students have the long-range motivation of a job or further education, neither of which is paramount in the minds of, say, 7th-graders. Maybe if we paid them....?

Show me the adult trainer of adults who is supposed to adapt the TRAINING to the LEARNER! What if the adult learner is the VISUAL type? Or the WORD type? Or, say, is maybe left-brained? Or prefers to work in GROUPS? Or, because of a sports activity, skips the training session, which the supervisor must then re-schedule?

Back in the one-room school-house days, when one teacher taught the same children year to year, then the ease of teacher evaluation was obvious. IOW, the "subject N" was a constant, not a variable.

But I have two basic questions:

1. How would one propose to test non-academic-subject teachers on the success of their students? Student paintings? A track-and-field meet? Low BMI?

2. Why do no or extremely few discussions mention the role of ADMINISTRATORS (principals, asst principals, etc.) in Teacher Evaluation?

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

43. I thought Obama and Duncan were replacing everyone WITH private sector teachers

So which is it?

[WinkyDink]

45. You are confused. The TfA teachers are still going to TEACH CHILDREN. There is no "industry"

equivalent.
Making a public school private does not make the "adults and children" component disappear.
Not to mention the TfA people stay two years only.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

46. I'm not confused by anything.

But I think you are confused, because the TfA teachers have been shown to get better results.

[EFerrari]

28. Teachers have been the biggest critics of the way children are evalutated.n/t

[LostInAnomie]

52. So you want to compound the flawed evaluation of students...

... by using it as the basis for evaluating teachers? Brilliant. :eyes:

[dflprincess]

56. I'm just curious - does anyone other than me think parents have at least as much

responsibility as the teachers when it comes to how well a child does in school?

Maybe we should evalutate them as well and if the score poorly they'll lose the tax deduction for the child.

[LWolf]

59. Anybody who knows anything about how standardized tests work.

We've known since before the institution of high-stakes testing that parent SES was a bigger predictor of standardized scores than anything teachers do.

But what does that matter? :shrug:

[ecstatic]

62. Of course. But we all know this country is full of horrible parents

The kids shouldn't suffer as a result. The system should be designed in a way that is independent of students' personal lives.

[proud2BlibKansan]

57. unrecced for sheer stupidity

[LanternWaste]

71. I evaluate employees on a daily basis...

I evaluate employees on a daily basis. However, I'm lucky-- they material the employees work with are equivalent in all aspect which allows a much more objective basis on which to form my criteria.

I imagine it would be an order of magnitude more difficult for me (and for them) were they to each receive materials that had little to no equitable relationship to each other, yet were still required to meet the precise same criteria in the precise same amount of time, and in precisely the same scaling. I'd probably go nutty-buckets... but then again, I'm not very clever and I enjoy jazz.

[JDPriestly]

74. Evaluation has to be systematic.

Years ago in France, a lot of the exams were oral and therefore subjective.

In the United States, teachers are taught to test more objectively. Specific quantifiable measures are established, and the student's grade depends on how many of those quantifiable measures the student meets. So, if you are asked 10 questions that require a true or false answer, and you miss five, you probably get 50% which, depending on the grading scale may mean that you have an F or failing grade.

The problem with evaluating teachers is establishing quantifiable measures that are objective.

The Bush and Obama administrations are using the objective testing of a teacher's students as the test. That is quite unfair. It obviously does not test the teacher's skills, but rather the students' performance. There is no proof that there is a measurable and consistent correlation between a student's performance and the teacher's performance.

There is no such correlation because the teacher's performance is only one of a number of variables that determine the student's performance. You can have an excellent teacher doing all the right things and a class that still performs very poorly and does not make progress.

So, the issue is not whether teachers should or should not be evaluated, but whether it is possible to evaluate teachers, to establish a standard, objective, quantifiable methodology for evaluating teachers.

Please let me know whether you understand what I am saying.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

100. By definition, a teacher is there to improve student achievement.

Therefore it is 100% impossible to have an excellent teacher and not have any measurable gains in student achievement because they would not BE an excellent teacher if they can't get any learning out of their kids whatsoever.

[YvonneCa]

103. What if that was not what was measured? Under NCLB...

...that was not how data was evaluated. If I taught a 4th grade class, they would be tested at the end of the year. When the data came back in July (and they were all gone to other teachers) I would be shown my results. Administrators would look at that and compare it to last July's test results for my last 4th grade class (a completely different group of students). If the scores were higher...I was commended. If the scores were lower...I was targetted.


Remember...the data were for two completely different groups of kids. They were not looking at whether my teaching had an impact on the students I taught. This is only ONE example of how data was flawed. There are others.

NOW...I do think that is being changed under Obama/Duncan. They understand that we have to measure growth. But...as I hope you can understand...the system was REALLY BAD under NCLB. As a teacher, I'll have trouble trusting that it has been fixed until I see it.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

108. We've covered this ground before, Yvonne.

You know where I stand and we've come to agreement on Obama doing what's right in improving data, assessments, and standards. Why you keep picking at it is beyond me.

[YvonneCa]

113. I come back to it because the debate is important. When you say things like this....

..."Therefore it is 100% impossible to have an excellent teacher and not have any measurable gains in student achievement because they would not BE an excellent teacher if they can't get any learning out of their kids whatsoever," your words are very misleading.

Yes, you and I have covered this ground before, and I think I do know where you stand on this. AND I doubt we'll ever agree here on everything about education. But I'm here for probably the same reason you are...to educate.

This is an important discussion for our country. It is not 'picking at' something to illuminate the issue. THAT's why I'm here. :hi:

[YvonneCa]

116. Edited to add this (brace yourself)...

...:7

http://epi.3cdn.net/b9667271ee6c154195_t9m6iij8k.pdf

[End Of The Road]

104. Oh really?

Where is it written that, by definition, a teacher is there to improve student achievement?

A teacher is there to teach the content necessary for the student to move on to the next, more difficult, unit or grade level.

And if there are NO consequences for the student who doesn't care to learn the content, even the most exemplary teacher won't be effective.

Teaching is a two-way street.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

107. No consequences for the student?!

They can A) not graduate or B) not get into college. Both paths lead to a life of near poverty. Those sound like consequences to me.

[End Of The Road]

109. Not for kids who already live in poverty. nt

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

110. Yeah, because consigning them to a life of birth-to-death poverty isn't a consequence.

That's just about the least Democratic thing I've ever heard on this site.

[End Of The Road]

111. So you're saying it's the teachers' job to end poverty?

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

112. /facepalm

No, moron, but it is a teacher's job to impart the knowledge and skills necessary for someone to overcome a state of poverty. That is a very large part of why we have public education.

[YvonneCa]

115. Key word here is 'impart'...

...as the teacher's job. The difference between teaching and learning. The teacher does the first, the student (hopefully) does the second.

It's that old saying, "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink."

When the second doesn't happen, there can be lots of reasons. It IS...or should be...the educator's job to try to help the family and the child understand WHY learning isn't happening and create alternate paths to learning for that child.

[End Of The Road]

117. And that was my original point, too.

I suspect Wormwood was one of those students who never tried to learn, and now blames it on his teachers.

[YvonneCa]

118. Nick is too ...

...intelligent for that. ;)

[YvonneCa]

114. But 10 year old kids don't realize...

...that. But the time they do they can be YEARS behind, academically.

[YvonneCa]

102. I do. Thank you for making this...

...aspect of the debate clear:

Your words, "So, the issue is not whether teachers should or should not be evaluated, but whether it is possible to evaluate teachers, to establish a standard, objective, quantifiable methodology for evaluating teachers."

[Swamp Rat]

106. All I see lately are pea-brained jerks who have no business setting up teacher evaluation systems

The goose is dead, killed by a standardized evaluation system.