Wednesday, February 5, 1997
EDUCATION:
Instructor’s performance should be judged on competencyBy
Rowland Nethaway
New York Times
Teachers should be held accountable. But that is easier said
than done.
People agree that good teachers should be rewarded and bad
teachers should be brought up to speed or removed. People do not
agree, however, on how to measure teacher performance.
Since educators can’t agree how to measure student performance,
it’s not that surprising that they can’t agree how to measure
teacher performance.
Texas teachers know that some measure of student achievement
will be tied to their evaluations. It’s the law. But Texas teachers
do not want to be evaluated based on the standardized basic skills
test used by the state to measure minimal student achievement.
Instead, they want to be measured based on their own measurements
of student achievement that come from homework assignments, student
portfolios and in-class tests.
You can’t blame them for trying, but taxpayers want a more
objective measurement of teacher accountability than taking
teachers’ word for it that they are doing a good job Â
especially since the reports keep piling up that American math
students place dead last compared to other nations, that high
school diplomas are handed out to functional illiterates and that
colleges are going broke funding remedial courses for
poorly-educated incoming freshmen.
Texas teacher unions predict that students will be harmed if the
results of Texas Assessment of Academic Skills tests given to
students are used in part to evaluate teachers, which demonstrates
that students are not always forgotten during the interminable
debates over educational process.
State Education Commissioner Mike Moses, who proposed this
affront to teachers, responded: "Academic performance is the only
credible benchmark by which to judge an education system as a
whole."
But purity of logic and clarity of expression become immediately
opaque and difficult inside the maw of America’s educational
process. This phenomenon has contributed greatly to the public’s
understanding of irony.
"The public deserves the assurance of accountability through a
set of standards applicable to all teachers," said Moses. Texas
teacher unions responded by calling Moses’ proposal "half-baked"
and "fatally flawed."
The teachers’ argument, as I understand it, is based on their
dislike for TAAS tests because school officials improperly pressure
teachers to set aside classroom time to teach the test, which is a
flaw in the process, not the test.
Teachers also oppose the idea that their evaluations will be
based partly on schoolwide student performance rather than
individual student performance. Teamwork throughout the school is
the reason Moses selected campus performance over individual
student achievement in each teacher’s classroom.
Teamwork is great, but the same campus might have teachers who
are outstanding and others who are wretched. They don’t deserve the
same performance grade. Even though campus TAAS performance is only
one part in a long teacher evaluation process, lawmakers did not
call for campus accountability. They called for teacher
accountability.
There’s also the not-so-small matter of evaluating teachers
based on schoolwide student performance when schools vary so
widely. Superior teachers in impoverished, inner-city, high-crime
schools may not be able to bring up student test performance to the
level reached by students taught by inferior teachers in affluent
schools where most parents are college-educated professionals.
Teachers should be tested to measure their competency to teach.
Students should be tested often to measure their level of academic
achievement. And teachers should be held accountable. But that is
easier said than done.