First, every discussion of teacher evaluation is really about evaluating the teacher in publically funded, not-for-profit schools. Teachers employed by private corporations, are exempt from this discussion because apparently the mystical hand of the Free Market takes care of their evaluation.
Given this definition, the teacher in public education in the U.S.A. is the focus of this essay.
By reading press accounts and studying laws implemented in states such as Georgia, that are supposed to insure teacher quality, it appears that student scores on annual, standardized tests are the most important element used for evaluating teacher quality.
This is like using traffic court statistics to evaluate the quality of auto assembly line workers’ ability to build autos.
Education is a system made up of a wide variety components:
- people within the system who learn, teach, administer
- physical campuses of brick and mortar facilities; information systems that provide materials used in educating and in accounting for resource allocation
- groups of involved people who have varying degrees of expectations of what education should accomplish.
There are more nuanced components but this set is a good launching point for what I want to discuss.
But this essay is focused on evaluating teachers.
The determination of goodness of fit or appropriateness of any product, process or system begins with the clear definition of what the outcomes should be and look like, specifically what observable items and activities are of value. It is not by accident that value is at the heart of evaluation. If what is valued is not known and clearly stated, what is the point of assessment? Yes, I separate evaluation from assessment: one describes the quality(ies) valued, the other seeks to collect data on the degree of the presence or absence of those qualities.
What is valued in teaching and in the individual carrying out the act of instruction?
There can be many valuable components that make up the characteristics of a quality teacher. The information processing and transferal component of the act of teaching will define what is to be taught, its modularity, its relationships to other information and skills, its importance and most importantly its relevance to the particular element of the curriculum being covered. The old saying “what do you have to know to teach a dog? More than the dog” contains more than a little truth. Without question an instructor must possess a deep understanding of the material, its relationships to other material and its importance both by itself and in relation to other material and skills. This implies that the deep understanding of the topic, to the level of evaluation as described Bloom’s Taxonomy, is necessary. It isn’t enough to present the material and expect that the test at the end of the section in the book will be sufficient for the desired student assimilation of information and skills. This leads to a second attribute of quality teaching – enthusiasm!
If a teacher’s words, body language, and actions indicate that a particular topic is not important and not worth knowing, the message is received quickly and clearly by students. On the other hand, if the reasons for knowing a particular concept or fact or skill as well as its importance are presented as the foundation for learning the topic, then students are willing to buy into the learning process by paying attention and investing the mental effort to learn the information or skill.
It is difficult for any student to receive the teaching message if the environment interferes with communication and concentration. The control of the learning environment by a teacher comes down to managing student actions and interactions in the classroom, so as to support and enhance the potential for learning. Sometimes this means a silent classroom with individual students doing solitary activities, other times this means various sized groups of students working together and sometimes it means the entire class raising their voices. At the individual student level, it means recognizing problems and taking graduated, appropriate steps to assist the student to refocus on their job – learning. It means giving the individual student opportunities to demonstrate what they know and can do. It means allowing students to try, fail and try again, just like in real life.
Not only is knowledge in almost any particular field increasing, knowledge about learning and information transfer is also increasing. This means that the teachers must constantly learn new and different material. Any teacher who stopped their learning when they got their teaching certificate is like a medical doctor who ignores new information in medicine and pharmacology.
The act of teach is a social activity. Not only is there a micro society in the classroom, there is one made up of the professional educators in the school as well as throughout the nation. There is also the community which hosts the school system. Teachers have to stay connected with and communicate with all of these groups, not the least being the family who cares for the student when not in the classroom.
The bottom line with any assessment and evaluation of teaching is that:
- The assessment must be observable and repeatable
- The assessment must be of something that the teacher does
- The assessment must be of things for which the teacher is responsible and has the power to effect
- Good teacher evaluation is a quality control process and reveals elements that are done successfully as well as those which need improving or revising
- The assessment and evaluation must be done frequently and at appropriate times
Using student scores on high stakes test to evaluate teaching is a useless activity if the intent is the improvement of the practice of the individual teacher. Schools are not assembly line style manufacturing. Students are not duplicate products stamped out by learning machines.
Teachers teach, student learn, no teacher has ever “learned” their students.
If we are intent on evaluation teachers, then we need to focus on the teacher’s teachings. If we want to know what student know and can do, then that is a different matter entirely.
J.J. Hayden III PhD
Retired college Instructional Technology professor.