Can Teacher Evaluation Power School Improvement?

In this important article in Educational Researcher, Joseph Murphy (Vanderbilt University), Philip Hallinger (Hong Kong Institute of Education), and Ronald Heck (University of Hawaii/Manoa) analyze how teachers have been evaluated over the years and whether new ideas will make things better. “Teacher evaluation for most of the twentieth century had very little influence on much of anything of substance,” they say. “It provided little more than a patina of symbolism, a layer of organizational legitimacy to buffer the core technology of education.” Nor have recent ideas on teacher evaluation introduced in the last 15 years done any better, judging by the fact that they never show up in studies of successful school turnarounds. 

What’s going on here? Murphy, Hallinger, and Heck step back and look at some occupational norms and organizational dynamics that make teacher evaluation so challenging:

• First, they say, “Teachers are influenced by those they perceive as credible sources of knowledge on instructional issues, especially those with content-based knowledge. School leaders rarely fall into this category… Managers, by and large, are not qualified to do this work. They are not ‘head teachers.’ Nor are they ‘managing partners.’”

• Second, there are reasons school leaders might not want to exercise tight control over teachers, especially their work in classrooms. “Principals require the support of teachers to ensure that the school ‘runs’ well and that conflict is corralled inside classrooms, or at least inside the school,” say Murphy, Hallinger, and Heck. “They know that a powerful way to garner that support is to provide teachers with autonomy over their individual classrooms. In addition, teachers have willingly participated in this exchange, trading influence over school-level activities for freedom in those classrooms… In the well-choreographed play called ‘schooling,’ leaders avoid interfering with the work of teachers, especially inside classrooms. It is a production they know is not wise to change in any substantive way.” 

• Third, even if administrators had the expertise to supervise and evaluate well and even if teachers were willing to open their classrooms doors, there’s still the problem of administrators’ hyper-busy jobs. “Recent studies reveal that the average principal spends around 18 percent of his or her time in the area of instruction and curriculum, and around 3 percent of total time on teacher evaluation, numbers largely unchanged after 30 years of concentrated efforts to increase them… This means that the average principal spends about 80 minutes a week on teacher evaluation, about 3 minutes per teacher per week… The resources to do this well cannot be mandated or wished into existence.” And the taxpayers are notoriously reluctant to pay for increases in administrative costs. 

But what about recent insights on effective instruction and the idea of using test scores to evaluate teachers? Murphy, Hallinger, and Heck are skeptical: “Our investigations tell us that we should be cautious in accepting claims about the ability of teacher evaluation to power significant school improvement…” In fact, they say, “there is a robust body of empirical work that informs us that if school improvement is the goal, school leaders would be advised to spend their time and energy in areas other than teacher evaluation.” These include establishing a sense of vision with a strong academic mission and challenging organizational goals and expectations; enhancing students’ opportunity to learn; developing and using data systems to inform and monitor decisions; creating professional learning environments in which all students are cared for, participate, and feel connected; developing a school culture conducive to learning; and making sure all school actions are aligned and cohesive. 

As for teacher supervision and evaluation, the authors suggest that administrators work through “facilitative channels,” namely:

• Providing actionable feedback to teachers;
• Developing communities of practice in which teachers share goals, work, and responsibility for student outcomes; 
• Offering abundant support for teachers’ work;
• Creating systems in which teachers have regular opportunities to develop and refine their skills.

“A cardinal point here,” they conclude, “is the primacy of the facilitative role of leaders, an approach with considerably more empirical linkage to learning outcomes than direct one-on-one teacher evaluation work.”

“Leading Via Teacher Evaluation: The Case of the Missing Clothes?” by Joseph Murphy, Philip Hallinger, and Ronald Heck in Educational Researcher, August/September 2013 (Vol. 42, #6, p. 349-354), http://bit.ly/15N0YpB; the authors can be reached at joseph.f.murphy@Vanderbilt.edu, hallinger@gmail.com, and rheck@hawaii.edu.

From the Marshall Memo #501