When Tennessee was one of the first winners named in the federal Race to the Top competition, Secretary Arne Duncan praised the state’s officials for having “the courage, capacity and commitment to turn their ideas into practice that can improve outcomes for students.” Now, it appears that commendation was premature.
The new teacher evaluation system, based on students’ test scores and classroom observations, has had some unanticipated consequences. “I’ve never seen such nonsense,” says Will Shelton, principal of Blackman Middle School, “In the five years I’ve been principal here, I’ve never known so little about what’s going on in my own building.” You see, the evaluation system has translated into four observations per teacher per year, regardless of their past performance, with each observation taking over two hours (pre-observation conference = 20 minutes; observation = 50 minutes; post-observation conference = 20 minutes, and completing a 19-variable rubric = 40 minutes). If a school has a teaching staff of 20, that works out to be a minimum of 29 full school days each year the principal must spend on teacher evaluations; for a staff of 50 it’s 72 days.
Furthermore, for untested subjects the evaluation rules are complicated and somewhat nonsensical—math teachers can be evaluated on the school’s reading scores, music teachers on the school’s writing scores, and a number of other questionable requirements. One of Shelton’s teachers has confided to him that morale “is in the toilet…it [the evaluation system] causes so much distrust.”
Many observers, both within and outside of Tennessee, view the chaos as proof that it is always necessary to “look before you leap,” particularly when it comes to education. Federal officials claim that they did not pressure the state to quickly roll out their program without proper preparations, and that other RTT winners have been given extensions to meet their targets. State officials, after sticking their ground for the past few months, are now quietly discussing “tweaking” the evaluation requirements. However, tweaking may not be enough.
In Tennessee, not only are principals increasingly disconnected from their schools, but teachers are still not being evaluated fairly, particularly in the untested subjects. Teachers without state tests (and thus quantitative results) are evaluated based on the scores of other teachers at their school with test results. So, for example, a first grade teacher is evaluated based on fifth-grade writing scores. For 15 percent of their testing evaluation, teachers without scores can choose which subjects they want to count in their evaluation. This usually leads to a bit of horse-race style gambling: teachers pick subjects in which they think the school’s students will perform well, even if it has nothing to do with their own content area. The situation has even led educators who are in favor of increased teacher accountability, such as Principal Shelton, to become jaded.
Michael Winerip of The New York Times sums it up well: “In the end, it’s all about distrust: not trusting principals to judge teachers, not trusting teachers to educate children.”
To read more, please visit http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/07/education/tennessees-rules-on-teacher-evaluations-bring-frustration.html?_r=2&emc=eta1%20%20
