More on Releasing Teacher Test-Score Data

From the Marshall Memo #426

In this Education Gadfly article, Kathleen Porter-Magee has this to say about the release of teachers’ value-added data in New York City: “Before we go further down the teacher evaluation path, now is a good time for education reformers to pause and ask themselves whether this kind of top-down effort is really what will lead our schools to excellence. The question is not whether student achievement data should be used as one of several measures of teacher effectiveness, but rather how those data should be used and who is ultimately in the driver’s seat.” 

Porter-Magee’s argument is that (a) no profession has a perfect measure of effectiveness, (b) teachers should definitely be accountable for the progress students make under their watch, but (c) principals should be the ones making decisions about teachers’ effectiveness, not a statistic calculated outside the school. 

“By creating a system that, by labeling teachers for them, essentially tells principals which teachers should be kept and which should go, we are absolving principals of responsibility for evaluating their own teachers,” says Porter-Magee. “And we’re allowing them to escape responsibility for the role they play in ensuring school-level student achievement and growth. 

“The accountability formula should be pretty simple: hold principals accountable for the results of their schools. Give them the tools (including access to teacher-level achievement data), resources, and autonomy they need to make staffing decisions and to set the school culture. In other words, we need to stop trying to… principal-proof our schools.” 

“You Can’t Principal-Proof a School” by Kathleen Porter-Magee in The Education Gadfly, Mar. 1, 2012 (Vol. 12, #9), http://bit.ly/xPRRED