Push-Back on Using Test Scores to Evaluate Teachers

In this forceful New York Times op-ed piece, Deborah Kenny crystallizes the current debate about teacher evaluation by telling why one of her Harlem charter schools didn’t renew the contract of a teacher despite the fact that his students were doing exceptionally well on state tests. “We kept hearing directly from students and parents that he was mean and derided the children who needed the most help,” says Kenny. “The teacher also regularly complained about problems during faculty meetings without offering solutions. Three of our strongest teachers confided to the principal that they were reluctantly considering leaving because his negativity was making everyone miserable.”

What bothers Kenny is that under teacher-evaluation reforms being considered by many states, this teacher would have been highly rated because of his test scores. She’s in favor of teachers being accountable for student learning, but two reform ideas strike her as ineffective and demeaning to teachers and principals:

• Unreliable mathematical calculations of the value-add of individual teachers;
• External evaluators popping into classrooms and rating teachers with checklists.

“This type of system shows a profound lack of understanding of leadership,” says Kenny. “Principals need to create a culture of trust, teamwork, and candid feedback that is essential to running an excellent school. Leadership is about hiring great people and empowering them, and requires a delicate balance of evaluation and encouragement.” 

Those who advocate ranking and rating teachers on student test scores point to the business world, but Kenny says that argument is invalid. “Successful companies do not publicly rate thousands of employees from a central office database,” she says. “They don’t use systems to take the place of human judgment. They trust their managers to nurture and build great teams, then hold the managers accountable for results.” In the same way, she believes, principals should answer for results and be able to make all personnel decisions: “There is no formula for quantifying compassion, creativity, intellectual curiosity, or any number of other traits that make a group of teachers motivate one another and inspire greatness in their students. Principals must be empowered to use everything they know about their faculty – including student achievement data – to determine which teachers they will retain, promote, or, when necessary, let go. This is how every successful enterprise functions.” 

Kenny fears that district and state teacher evaluation based on test scores may make it more difficult for schools to attract smart, talented, passionate teachers and motivate those currently in classrooms. “If we don’t change course in the coming years,” she concludes, “these bureaucratic systems that treat teachers like low-level workers will become self-fulfilling.”

“Want to Ruin Teaching? Give Ratings” by Deborah Kenny in The New York Times, Oct. 15, 2012 (p. A23), http://nyti.ms/T4kVB6 

From the Marshall Memo #457