Evaluating Teachers After Two Years In the Classroom

This report from teh Hamilton Project suggests that evaluating teachers after a couple of years in the classroom and denying tenure to poor performing ones may be more effective than insisting only on paper qualifications. Here is the abstract to the study:

Traditionally, policymakers have attempted to improve the quality of the teaching force by raising minimum credentials for entering teachers. Recent research, however, suggests that such paper qualifications have little predictive power in identifying effective teachers. We propose federal support to help states measure the effectiveness of individual teachers—based on their impact on student achievement, subjective evaluations by principals and peers, and parental evaluations. States would be given considerable discretion to develop their own measures, as long as student achievement
impacts (using so-called “value-added” measures) are a key component. The federal government
would pay for bonuses to highly rated teachers willing to teach in high-poverty schools. In
return for federal support, schools would not be able to offer tenure to new teachers who receive poor evaluations during their first two years on the job without obtaining district approval and informing parents in the schools. States would open further the door to teaching for those who lack traditional certification but can demonstrate success on the job. This approach would facilitate entry into teaching by those pursuing other careers. The new measures of teacher performance would also provide key data for teachers and schools to use in their efforts to improve their performance.

The report authors then make five recommendations with regard to evaluating and retaining teachers:

1. Reduce the barriers to entry into teaching for those without traditional teacher certification.
2. Make it harder to promote the least effective teachers to tenured positions.
3. Provide bonuses to highly effective teachers willing to teach in schools with a high proportion of low-income students.
4. Evaluate individual teachers using various measures of teacher performance on the job.
5. Provide federal grants to help states that link student performance with the effectiveness of individual teachers over time.

The most important of these are recommendations one, two and four. Sure pay for teachers working with high poverty students and linking merit pay to student performance are good ideas and ones I support, the truth is that these are not really all that earth-shattering.

But if, as research indicates, teacher effectiveness is not as tied to paper qualifications as we might think, lowering the barriers to get otherwise qualified and motivated individuals into the classroom is a profound change from the way most professions operate. Take for instance, the legal and medical fields, where to beging to practice you have several years of education followed by a number of years of apprenticeship and a strict licensing test. The idea of this professional education is to provide minimal levels of competency and a familiarity with the basic tenents of the profession. The best argument that can be made at this stage for "traditional" teacher education programs is that most have a structured set up of apprenticeships, but little else to offer in terms of the basic principals of teaching.

However, letting otherwise motivated individuals into the classroom on a provisional basis for a couple of years to allow them to grow into the profession--with appropriate guidence and mentorship, may find additional teaching gems that go unnotices because of the barriers to teaching.

The second recommendation is almost anathema to the teacher's unions, some who have come to expect survival to be the only test of whether tenure is warranted. Denying tenure or terminating the employment of poorly performing teachers is the best way to achieve two things. First, you are weeding out teachers early on who show either no aptitude or show no effort in their teaching. This minimizes both the short term and long term damage of poor teacher quality. Second, it generates competition and possibly increased pay for those who continue in the profession; it rewards competency is a manner currently lacking in public educaiton.

Finally, the fourth recommendation, while vague, is important. Merely surviving the classroom setting should not be the only criteria for pay. We want teachers to want to stay, of course, but we also want teachers who can actually teach and don't mind be assessed on their performance. The report authors suggest a type of 360 degree review with student performance in class and presumably on tests, reviews by supervisors and peers and parental evaluations all playing a role in teacher evaluations. Having more people invovled in the evaluative process reduces the subjectivity of principal only reviews and the arbitrariness of test score only evaluations.

While accountability for results in teaching children must be a primary factor, I don't think anyone who seriously supports the concept of merit pay would suggest that it be the only determinatng factor in merit pay or teacher retention decisions.

These are solid concepts on teh whole and a worthy, and rational, basis for discussion.