LAWRENCE — Evaluating teachers based on the test scores of their students poses great risks, a leading testing expert warned Thursday.
James Popham, an emeritus professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, with three decades of experience developing and analyzing tests, says testing experts need to take a public stand as states move toward evaluating teachers based on student test scores.
“Think of the terrible, bad things that can happen when a good teacher is thought to be un-good,” Popham said at a conference on testing and instructional quality at The University of Kansas.
Popham and other speakers expressed concern that many high-stakes, standardized exams may test what students know without testing whether they have a good teacher or not.
“If it’s true that the tests we are currently using aren’t appropriate for evaluating the quality of instruction,” he said, “then we’re going to make mistakes — and those mistakes are going to cost kids the quality of schooling.”
“I plead with you to change the situation,” he told a room full of testing and education experts. “We haven’t been sufficiently vocal about it.”
Kansas and many other states are moving toward new systems of teacher evaluation in which teachers are assessed based in part on student scores on annual mathematics and reading tests.
The new evaluations also include evaluating teachers who don’t teach math and reading based in part on the scores of their students in those subjects, an idea that Popham bluntly described as asinine.
“It’s just absurd,” he said.
Popham said he isn’t opposed to using test scores to evaluate teachers, but that valid tests must be used. There must be evidence the tests being used can evaluate teacher quality, not just student knowledge, he said, and this is a conversation many states and test developers aren’t yet having.
Tests can reflect factors other than what a teacher teaches, he said. Some test questions actually evaluate student IQ, for example, so that a correct answer might reflect whether a student is smart or not, rather than whether his or her teacher is good.
Other factors that tests sometimes reflect include learning that took place at home, not in school, as well as socioeconomic status, Popham said.
Kansas teacher evaluations
Deputy education commissioner Brad Neuenswander said later Thursday that officials at the Kansas State Department of Education share Popham’s concerns.
Kansas is taking an approach to evaluations meant to address that, Neuenswander said, although doing so means the state still hasn’t received full approval of its evaluations from the U.S. Department of Education.
“The reason Kansas has a conditional (No Child Left Behind) waiver is all around that subject,” he said. “I don’t want to say we are pushing back as a state, but we very much agree with where Jim Popham is at.”
It is important to know whether students are learning, Neuenswander said, but Kansas school districts won’t make that determination solely based on once-a-year test scores.
Additionally, Neuenswander said Kansas districts can decide for themselves whether to factor math and reading scores into evaluations for teachers who teach other subjects. The decision could be based on whether the teachers incorporate math and reading into their classes, he said.
“We encourage it,” he said, “but we’re not going to say everyone has to do it.”
Contact Celia Llopis-Jepsen at (785.) 295-1285 or on Twitter @Celia_LJ.
