How should teachers be routinely evaluated?

[LoZoccolo]

[wickerwoman]

1. What do you think LZ?

[Canuckistanian]

2. How about the way they did it for the past 50 years?

That worked, didn't it?

You can read my words, right? And comprehend what they mean? So I'll assume you were the product of a "normally evaluated" teacher.

What's wrong with the "status quo" in your opinion?

[Radical Activist]

22. No, it hasn't.

I don't know if you went to school in Canada. My public education experience involved some excellent teachers and some others who absolutely should not have been allowed to keep their job.

[uncommon]

40. Is it working?

Really?

[ProgressiveProfessor]

42. It was marginal at best

We need to do better than that

[Catshrink]

3. I like pie.

[woo me with science]

6. Just as productive as your other post. nt

[Catshrink]

7. Don't stalk me, Bro.

[woo me with science]

12. Yet here you are, chasing people who try to talk seriously about education,

so that you can post merely to mock or dismiss them. Or maybe, as in the other thread, to exhort them to shut up. Yet you accuse me of stalking?

That's quite a piece of logic there.

As opposed to yours, my comment is substantive. You have accused others of nastiness toward teachers. I am merely responding to point out the nastiness and utter lack of substantive content of your posts in both threads.

[Catshrink]

15. Seriously?

Seriously? There's no point in offering up substantive posts to people who have already formed an opinion. Are you new to this issue? I don't recall seeing you posting in education threads. We've been discussing it for a very long time. You don't know me and apparently haven't been following along.

Sorry if I don't bow to your great intellectual prowess. Sometimes the best response to bullshit is just bullshit.

[woo me with science]

24. How on earth is, "How should teachers be routinely evaluated?" a bullshit question?

This is GD, Catshrink. Are you seriously suggesting that everybody who reads this thread has already formed an opinion, and therefore the question should not even be asked? Are you in some kind of personal pissing match with the OP? Or have you simply decided that anyone who would possibly be interested in this thread is, by default, full of shit?

I'm asking you seriously. After all, you just defended another OP that essentially told everyone who isn't a teacher to shut up about education. Now, when someone posts a completely reasonable question about teacher evaluations, with no vilification of teachers anywhere to be seen, you come here purposely for no other reason than to mock it.

I enjoy mocking bullshit posts from time to time. The difference is that I single out the posts that deserve my mocking - those that include truly outrageous and/or inane content. That's not what you're doing here. You appear to have decided to wage a defensive and childish assault on even potentially substantive education threads, simply because you don't like some of the posters or their opinions.

That's not a very pretty role for a teacher.

[Catshrink]

25. As I said, I like pie.

The prettier the pie, the better.

[woo me with science]

27. Fortunately,

the vast majority of DUers will not judge all teachers based on the (remarkably consistent) quality of your contributions here.

[Catshrink]

33. You know, I make a very good pie crust.

It has great structure.

[msanthrope]

29. But what about people who haven't formed an opinion?

You know, those DUers who may not have an opinion, and who read these education threads.

Do you think you build a broad consensus for teachers with your comment "I like pie?"

[Catshrink]

30. Actually, all the teachers I know like pie, too.

[Radical Activist]

16. ding! ding!

correct answer.

[Ignis]

43. LOL @ "people who try to talk seriously about education"

I sure hope you're not referring to the OP here. :rofl:

[proud2BlibKansan]

34. Key lime!!

[Catshrink]

37. Cherry!

or Costco Peach Pie. yum!

[Count Olaf]

4. by parents and other teachers?

Quite often other teachers have the best insight into who is doing the work required and who is just slacking.

[femmocrat]

13. How about if the teachers evaluate the parents?

Some of them would FAIL.

Quite often teachers have the best insight into who is doing the parenting required and who is just slacking (or worse).

[MadHound]

23. Hey, sport, we're already evaluated by parents, each and every day

Parents calling, parents e-mailing, parents coming by your home. Parents voting, but never in enough numbers to fully fund schools or pay teachers a decent salary. Parents running for school board and pushing their single minded stupid shit like creationism or prayer in the classroom or how teachers should teach, even thought those parents don't have a single clue how to handle a classroom effectively. Parents leaving death threats on your answering machine, or worse, your front porch.

Or there is the other extreme, parent who don't care. Who are too busy with their own lives, or too fucked up in some form or fashion to give a damn about their kids. Worse yet, well, I'll let you figure that one out. Teachers are mandated to call CPS for a reason.

A large part of the problem in education are the parents, yet the only ones who get constantly hammered for matters out of their control are the teachers.

Oh yeah, we're already evaluated by parents:eyes:

[woo me with science]

5. Some interesting replies in this thread:

http://upload.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x9048260


I have argued before for a system that includes measures of the improvement of their students over the course of the school year. There are districts testing several slightly different versions now, but they all have in common that the focus of assessment is the child's actual progress from the beginning of the year to the end rather than absolute achievement of a class compared to other classes of the same grade.

Besides focusing on what is important - the facilitation of actual student progress - this approach would also address concerns we hear all the time about unfairness to teachers who work in disadvantaged versus advantaged districts. In fact, teachers with students who are already performing below expectations may actually have a BETTER chance of showing significant progress in their students, because there is literally more room for improvement.

[Catshrink]

36. I do this every year and post the results.

My kids make significant gains for the most part. Some kids just fill in the scantron with patterns or fill in A's all the way down the sheet, #1-50. There are 30 questions on one of the tests, 35 on another. See the problem with this? Some kids don't take it seriously.

And, for the record, I still like pie.

[Forkboy]

8. By how much they like Oasis.

[Catshrink]

14. And pie.

[femmocrat]

9. Why is this such a hot topic anymore?

No one posts about how other professions are evaluated. It has become the "in" thing to hack away at the teaching profession recently.

[Nye Bevan]

18. How is suggesting that the best teachers be rewarded for their success

"hacking away at the teaching profession"?

[Radical Activist]

20. If someone is insecure about their performance

I can understand why they may feel that way.

[Catshrink]

39. Not insecure at all...

and teachers are evaluated all the time - by admins who drop in, other teachers, students, and parents. What teachers resist is an unfair evaluation tool or method that is used in the same way to evaluate every situation. Your boy Arne is putting us on the road to massive implosion in our public schools. But that's okay - the TFA kids with their 5 weeks of boot camp and the Billionaire Boys will bail him out. :rofl:

[Catshrink]

38. Yeah...how about we evaluate all doctors because of the US infant mortality rate?

I'm a patient so I get to design the system and decide who's a bad doctor.

[uncommon]

44. As a patient, you DO get to decide if the doctor who is treating you is doing an adequate job or not

and you can ask to have them replaced.

[Catshrink]

45. And what will the medical establishment say about that?

[Davis_X_Machina]

10. Here's how to not do it...

Problems with the Use of Student Test Scores to Evaluate Teachers (PDF from the Economic Policy Institute)

Students' fifth grade teachers turned out to be the best statistical predictor of how the students did in the fourth grade.

[mmonk]

11. If their student population has few or little learning disabled students

thus resulting in higher standardized test scores and if they haven't been a teacher long and are still cheap, then they are to be rated A+.

:sarcasm:

[Nye Bevan]

17. How about at each school, each parent gets to request which teachers they want

to teach their child for the upcoming school year. They would rank their requests in order of preference. The teachers who get the most requests are evaluated the highest. This should work because all of the parents at my kids' schools know who the great teachers are, who the good ones are, and who the poor ones are. Of course to decide which kids get which teacher there would need to be some kind of lottery as not everyone could get the best teachers. But I think this system could be made to work.

[Radical Activist]

21. Wow.

That would be a dramatic change. Patterns would become obvious very quickly.

[MadHound]

28. And you think that parents will evaluate teachers in a sane and sensible manner?

Do you have any friends who are teachers? If so, talk to them about how sane and sensible parents truly are.

Then come back and revisit this idea of yours.

[MichiganVote]

19. Local school boards determine this process. I see no reason to change that.

[Bluebear]

26. If they are awesome, like Rahm Emmanuel?

[Donald Ian Rankin]

31. By another teacher sitting in on their class is the least worst way, I suspect.

In the same way that universities use external examiners, senior and trusted teachers should be paid to spend a few days a term sitting in the back of another teacher's class, watching.

This should be done entirely unannounced - the fact that schools get a week's notice here in the UK makes inspecting them a) entirely pointless and b) incredibly stressful, as everyone is required to spend a week panicking and papering over all the cracks. Just have someone - a teacher who teaches, ideally, rather than a professional examiner - turn up and watch for a few days, unannounced.

You'd also want some kind of targetted evaluation for teachers whose headteachers or pupils' parents think their no good and draw attention to this fact running in parallel, but for routine evaluation I think that the procedure I've outlined is probably the best option.

[OmahaBlueDog]

32. Let me tell you how they should not be evaluated

They should not be evaluated simply on the outcome of standardized test scores.

Beyond that, you'd need to define routine. A Special Ed teacher working with Down Syndrome kids has completely different challenges than a 5th grade teacher in Bethesda, Maryland. A 5th grade teacher in Bethesda, Maryland has far different challenges than a 5th grade teacher in Palmer Park, Maryland. Those teachers face completely different challenges than a 5th grade teacher in Liberty City (Miami), Florida.

So define "routine", and maybe we can help with "how." As I've said before, an will say again -- this isn't like stamping pie plates or milling bar stock.

[ibegurpard]

35. ask your local school board

[Cruzan]

41. Frequently, informally, constructively

In the ideal world the principal (or some department level designee) would make frequent unannounced visits to all classrooms on a regular basis. In addition, and prior, to this there would be sufficient communication, guidance and advice regarding textbooks, curricula, semester outlines/syllabuses, and lesson plans such that there is a firm and clear understanding and agreement at the administrative level (and above) not only what all the teachers are teaching, but where there are problems and how to help. The classroom visits themselves are just a small part of the administration's responsibility for education management and serve only as the final 'hands-on' piece in helping the teacher do a better job.