This year's opening salvo in teacher evaluations

The Accomplished Teacher SmartBrief e-mail I get once a day, and rarely take the time to read all the way through, pointed me to two excellent resources about teacher evaluations. 

The Christian Science Monitor does a good job of running down the value and issues of teacher evaluations in today's online issue.  Among the highlight quotes include Stanford's Linda Darling-Hammond: "I went from being very enthusiastic about [value-added test scores] to extremely worried," and the counter from Dan Weisberg of the New Teacher Project: "How long do you want to wait until we have a system that satisfies all the concerns?"  The article touches on the complexities of adding value to standardized test scores, the power of effective feedback to teachers and the impact that it can have on students, the importance of teacher involvement in designing effective evaluation systems (including incentives), and some of the horror stories of objectively excellent teachers getting terrible reviews through flawed systems.  In all, a good introduction to the topic, I thought.

Aaccording to this article, the Achievement First academies of New York seem to have the balanced approach to teacher evaluation figured out.  A variety of evaluation techniques--observations by trained observers (including other instructors trained to the task), value-added test scores, and student surveys --give teachers much more valuable feedback than what the article portrays as the "traditional" teaching method--a score determined by a laundry list of practices that the observer looked for in her biennial visit to the classroom. 

Included in the same e-mail was a tip towards the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards's new resource for evaluators of teachers: the Video Observation Program.  The idea is to provide observers with videos of what good teaching looks like across a variety of subjects.  I'm reminded of my poor principals who come into my class and listen to me speak Spanish for 45 minutes--they have few resources to determine how well I'm doing my job.  (If after 6 weeks my principal can't understand me and my 7th graders can, I think that's a growth measurement.  But it's tough to fit that into a rubric: "How much more content do the students know than the principal?"  Doesn't really work.)  They can look for general best practices: Do the students know why they're doing what they're doing?  How engaged are the students?  How is the instructor assessing learning in an ongoing way?  But in terms of content delivery, how is one principal supposed to know the differences between good teaching in ELA, math, science, social studies, X number of world languages, phys ed, and technology?  NBPTS wants to provide principals, for a nominal fee, a library of videos.  This is an excellent idea; I wish it were available for free, and not just targeted at principals (and other teacher leaders).  I think it would be a valuable part of a teacher's self-improvement kit, too. 

More on "Getting it right"

For some truly spooky Halloween fun, check out this video on teacher evaluations by the NBPTS!

(No, it's not supposed to make sense.)  (EDIT: The joke above isn't supposed to make sense.  The video below IS supposed to make sense.)  (EDIT AGAIN: All right, my clarifying statement didn't clarify.  Ignore all my writing and just go to the link to watch a video about a report about a study about teacher evaluation.)

http://dl.nmmstream.net/media/nbpts/flash/031011webcast/031011loader.html

I will want to know more about this

My e-mail box gets a daily dose of NBPTS propaganda.  It's a useful summary of recent news in education, and it is honestly these days where I get a lot of the most up-to-date stuff I post about here.  (Except the things from my local birdcage liner.  Those I get from the website of my local birdcage liner.  Which I don't use to line my birdcage.  On account of I view it on a $1000 computer.)  Also interspersed with the useful stuff is adverts for NBPTS products disguised to look like useful stuff.  However, since NBPTS is a net force for good in the teacher development world, even their ads are generally useful stuff.

Case in point: They're having a webcast right now to announce the release of a report called "Getting It Right: A Comprehensive Guide to Developing and Sustaining Teacher Evaluation and Support Systems."  I would like to log in to this webcast, but I'm not going to.  The dishes ain't gonna wash themselves.  However, I will be watching like a hawk to see if they release the report in pdf form.  I'd like to read it.  If we're going to evaluate teachers, we should get it right.  And an organization called the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards probably has something useful to say on the subject.

That's a little more like it

This is what I like to see from the national-level leader of education in our country.  (We can debate how important the national-level leader is in a system as de-centralized as ours some other time.)  He says that teachers should start out making around $60,000 a year, and end their careers making around $150,000.  We all know that he has been pushing a great many of the "reforms" that are so odious to teachers' unions: relaxed charter schools, increased "accountability" for teachers (and apparently some school-level administrators, as well), merit pay, etc.  With this speech to the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, he indicates his awareness that under current circumstances, there is no reason for any competent person to become a teacher.  He also noted the political improbability of making that happen.
 
The teacher leader in me says that it's nice to see a national figure recognize something the appropriate value of teachers.  The cynic says that it's nice to see a national figure make a symbolic buy-off that will score political points without costing anyone anything.

Every year, at the district I last worked at, the superintendent took Teacher Appreciation Week seriously.  He and his wife would spend the week before that preparing little tokens of appreciation--satchels with messages of support, lapel pins of acorns ("The mightiest oak tree grows from an acorn"), and the like.  One day during that week he would make breakfast for the staff.  He would give a three-sentence speech, in effect saying, "I wish I could show my appreciation by paying you thousands of dollars, but instead I made you pancakes.  Thanks for all your hard work."  And we would all eat.

I've heard the wish for thousands of dollars, Secretary Duncan.  Now I'm waiting for my pancakes.