Is putting a highly effective teacher in every classroom as elusive as eliminating hunger by putting a chicken in every pot? So far the evidence seems to suggest that it is. Many have argued that the problem of low student achievement is related more to students’ social conditions and lack of parental involvement and support, and that teacher effectiveness has little or no influence on student achievement in certain environments. Many educators are quick to cite anecdotal evidence to support that conclusion. Michelle Hebron of Public Sector Consultants argues that, although the focus on teacher effectiveness is admirable, current efforts to address the issue “outpace the profession’s ability to consistently identify top performers.” Ms. Hebron suggests that requiring the education system to “develop and implement strong, fair evaluations to make high stakes decisions, like tenure refusal or dismissals, is setting the stage for failure.”
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According to the 2009 report The Widget Effect an estimated 99% of teachers nationally were rated satisfactory.
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Current evaluation systems for most, if not all, teachers in Michigan and elsewhere have been the result of collective bargaining between school boards and teachers’ unions. As a result, teacher evaluation becomes a “bargaining chip” which boards and their administrators find easier to give up than a more significant wage increase. Everyone watches the dollars; few watch the quality of the education workforce. Few, if any, of the negotiated evaluation systems have used student achievement as a factor and only a tiny minority of teachers is ever rated as unsatisfactory or ineffective.
According to The Widget Effect: Our National Failure to Acknowledge and Act on Differences in Teacher Effectiveness, a report published in 2009 by The New Teacher Project, an estimated 99% of teachers nationally were rated satisfactory. The report cited six “design flaws” in most teacher evaluation systems:
•Infrequent evaluations: Teachers are not evaluated every year, especially experienced teachers.•Unfocused: Teachers’ most important responsibility – helping students learn – rarely factors directly into evaluations.•Undifferentiated: Many districts use only two ratings: “satisfactory” or “unsatisfactory.” This “makes it impossible to distinguish great teaching from good, good from fair, and fair from poor.”•Unhelpful: Teachers in the study “overwhelmingly reported that evaluations don’t give them useful feedback on their performance in the classroom.”•Inconsequential: Only in rare instances – generally when teachers are being disciplined – are evaluations used to make important decisions.
The Widget Effect concludes that “these shortcomings reflect and reinforce a pervasive but deeply flawed belief that all teachers are essentially the same – interchangeable parts rather than individual professionals.”