As the state continues to review
accountability measures for teachers and schools, new
data out last week confirms that greater, not reduced, objectivity in
measurements shows the way forward to genuine improvement in Louisiana’s delivery
of elementary and secondary education.
COMPASS
scores came out for schools and teachers, allowing for comparisons of
changes from last year in evaluations of these and to other data indicating
student progress, as measured by performance on standardized tests. These data,
comparing teachers to students, showed that teacher performance rose at a
faster rate than did student achievement (and administrators’ performances even
more in many cases), and in comparing teachers to schools, that higher
performing schools on the basis of student scores that used more objective data
in assessments of teachers tended to grade theirs more harshly.
The explanation was that, because
of transitioning to new curricula statewide, districts were given latitude to
increase the input of subjective measures. Higher-rated teachers were more
prevalent at schools that used more subjective measuring, even as student performance
at these schools tended to be lower. This lead state superintendent John White
to call for schools to increase standards and rigor in teacher evaluation,
noting the inverse relationship between teacher scoring and student growth.
Naturally, such remarks were seen
by some of those who want to deny this reality as raining on parades. Louisiana
Federation of Teachers President Steve Monaghan said the suggestion that
effectiveness ratings got boosted out of laxness in rigor shocked
him and to him denigrated the achievement of those who, by this year’s
metric, had improved – demonstrating again the attitude that for decades led
Louisiana to perform education abysmally that only now by confronting it are
things becoming better.
Understand that teacher unions
never have had improving quality of education as a primary goal, because it
interferes with their actual primary goal of transferring as much taxpayer
money as possible to as many teachers as possible with their members doing the
least amount of effort. Accountability measures interfere with that because it
turns individual teachers’ minds towards their own individual performance, not
the collective’s, and it encourages replacing poor performers with structures
that discourage union participation, such as educating through charter schools.
But this also reflects the
embracing of mediocrity that infiltrated public schooling in the 1960s and lasted
through the 20th century, where it became as important to boost students’
self-esteems as whether they learned. Levelling to bring up the bottom
performers even when their actual learning did not merit it had the effect of
placing less emphasis on higher achievement, discouraging its pursuit and in
the process providing a soft bigotry of low expectations regarding the bottom
achievers. It also had the impact of making teaching less demanding and thereby
easier, and thus cheapened the value of rewards to both students and teachers.
So White absolutely was correct
to call out this. Good intentions achieve nothing; it’s results that count, particularly
when a child’s entire future is at risk. Subjectivity and human nature as they
are, out of empathy evaluators most often are going to go easier on their subjects
when given the chance. There’s no insult to acknowledge that the risk of this
needs to be minimized in order to get the desired results.
Which is what needs to be kept in
mind as the state continues to investigate its teacher evaluation methods, as a
special panel currently is doing with an aim to report back to the Legislature
for next session. As
previously noted, improvement of the current evaluative method of
half-subjective, half-objective (even if this year more subjective methods were
allowed greater prominence for the objective half) should take the direction of
increasing the objective proportion, even if not necessarily by increasing the
value added component. These data only provide more confirmation of the
necessity of such an approach, contrary to the wishes of unions, their
ideologue allies, and fellow travelers, if Louisiana education is going to
continue pulling itself out of a mighty hole.
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