Gates' Teacher Effectiveness Study: Surprised?

By Renee Moore

1/14/13

I was invited by National Journal.com, Education Experts blog to share my reaction to the final report of the MET study. Here's what editor Fawn Johnson asked: What is most surprising about the Gates’
findings? What are the easiest ways teacher evaluations can be tweaked to more
accurately reflect effectiveness? How important are student perception surveys?
What lies ahead for videotaping teachers’ lessons? Do we need to learn anything
more about measuring student achievement? Is the task laid out by Gates too
daunting for schools to handle?

I deliberately avoided looking at any of the social media
spin on the final report of
the Gates Foundation funded Measurements of Effective Teaching (MET) study
until after I had done my own reading. I
took the same approach to the release
of the first report back in December 2010.

Then, as now, there are several things about this study that
I admire. Like Fawn Johnson (National
Journal.com Education Experts editor), I am impressed with the seriousness
and sincerity of the researchers in tackling the complex issue of teacher
evaluation, especially since there are too many people who want to oversimplify
it. I’m also glad to know the data from
this study (unlike some of the earlier studies involving value-added measures)
is being made available to the wider research community for independent
investigation of results.

Most delightful of all is the MET researchers’ recognition
of the importance of student voice in determining the quality of teachers’
work. If we are at all serious about preparing our youth to be critical
thinkers and contributing citizens, we must start by listening to what only
they can tell us about what is and is not working in our classrooms and schools.

Also, unlike some critics of the study, I reject the
complaints about the MET’s inclusion of classroom observations by multiple evaluators
as an important way to measure teacher effectiveness.  The research team recommended that those observations
should not be over or under represented in the blend of measures used in a
teacher evaluation system. Here I’m
using my parent lens (my husband and I have raised 11 children and shepherded
them all through public school).  There
is essential information about a teacher’s effectiveness that no test data can
reveal: How does that teacher treat my child? I have known teachers who could
boast impressive student test numbers, but disrespected and demeaned their
students in the process.

The purpose of teacher evaluation is to answer two questions
(not one): How good a job is this teacher doing, AND how can this teacher do
better? Candid, objective feedback from outside evaluators and thoughtful
reflection by teachers on our work is essential for continuing professional
growth.

Teachers submitting video of ourselves teaching for evaluation
purposes is not new.  Part of National
Board Certification, a voluntary process for advanced teaching credential,
requires teachers to not only include video examples, but extensive written
analysis by the teacher candidate of his/her work using the video as evidence.

As a National Board Certified Teacher myself, and now as a
member of the Board of Directors of the National
Board of Professional Teaching Standards, I am gratified that the study
confirms what the National Board has known and proven for 25 years: There are
significant differences in the quality of instruction provided by teachers, and
those differences have critical impact on student achievement and on student
learning.  

It was not the purpose of the MET study to distinguish
between student achievement and
student learning, but their
interchangeable use of those terms in the report further confuses the concepts
in the public conversation. In 2011, a task force commissioned by NBPTS (which
included Robert Linn, Rick Hess, Lloyd Bond, and Lee Shulman) released a report
that supplied much-needed clarification:

Student achievement is the
status of subject-matter knowledge, understandings, and skills at one point in
time.

Student learning is growth
in subject-matter knowledge, understandings, and skills over time…It is student
learning—not student achievement—that is most relevant to defining and
assessing accomplished teaching.

Standardized tests are the instruments we use (for now) to
measure student achievement, but there is much, much more that we need to know
about measuring student achievement and student learning. As my higher
education colleagues and many employers will testify, students meeting an
arbitrary state cut score may (or may not) indicate factual recall of certain
immediate learning objectives, but the method falls grievously short as a
measure of what students actually know and can do after the test. How this
scenario will change if, when, and after the “next-generation” assessments
promised under the Common Core Standards are implemented remains to be seen. But
if all we want from teacher evaluation is a way to identify which teachers are
the best bets for raising student test scores, we would be setting a
disgustingly low bar indeed.

Implementing teacher evaluation systems with a balance of
multiple measures as recommended by the MET study will present significant hurdles
to states and school districts, cost being only one of them. However, there are
already some promising starts. Consider what these teachers from
Garfield High School in Seattle, Washington have to say about the challenges of
implementing such a teacher evaluation system. Notably, these teachers have
also decided
not to give the state-required tests to their students this Spring.

Surprise! Effective teacher evaluation not only distinguishes
teachers; it empowers them.

Cross-posted at education.nationaljournal.com

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Comments

Evaluations- False Positives and Negatives? Scent of a Teacher

Submitted by Lorraine Richardson (not verified) on Mon, 2013-01-14 19:13

Evaluating teachers is an extremely complex situation especially in light of the societal challenges that ALL American teachers face daily. It is gratifying to know that the Gate's Study understands that multiple measures are needed.

The pool of at-risk children in America is expanding from urban, inner cities to suburban, outlying areas. And the challenges of working with and evaluating teachers in an American landscape that is filling with sporadic safety, patchy security, and erratic stability are fraught with ambiguity. I can tell you first hand how with stealth these actors can insinuate themselves into the spirits of some of our smartest educational workforce because for over 15 years I served as an improvement teacher/instructional coach in Metropolitan Detroit.

Students Feel and Sense What Outside Observers Cannot.

One day as I was making my rounds of the schools, classrooms, and teachers I served, a 10th grader approached me to inquire if I were that lady from the district office who made the lessons for the teachers to prepare them for “the test”. I replied that I was. He then pointed to a classroom that he had just exited, blurted out that the teacher in there didn’t believe in herself, so she couldn’t believe in the students. They weren’t going to pass that “damn test”. Disgusted, he wandered off. Suddenly, I felt weak, wilted. What did he mean? I was fairly acquainted with the teacher; she seemed smart and dedicated.

Coaching Observation
Steeped with concern, I entered her classroom and inquired with a smile in my voice as to how the lessons were working. She assured me that all was well and invited me to observe. Keeping a poker face and taking no notes in order to not raise her level of concern, I watched as she delivered a lesson I had designed. In time, I began to hear and see what the young student shared with me. There was a slight tentativeness in her voice and an uncertainty in her smiling face that informed, “I’m not so certain that you are capable of learning this material, and I am not so certain I am capable of teaching it so that you can.” It was subtle, almost invisible, and I’m not certain whether or not I would have recognized it had the student not shared his concern.

That day was the start an eye-opening journey of discovery: intellectual firepower, content expertise, certification, and credentials are not always enough to ensure that students master lessons that are carefully crafted. Just as a songwriter might craft a great song, it doesn’t mean he can deliver it to a paying audience.

On my coaching journey, I would discover scholarly, white teachers who were uncertain of their ability to impact poor, white students who some deemed “poor, white trash”. I would coach certified, African-American teachers who were uncertain if they could elevate the skills of so many poor African-American students from so many troubled homes, and credentialed, Hispanic teachers who lacked faith in their ability to influence the future of Hispanic students. All of them lacked self-efficacy, a belief that their actions and efforts could or would make a difference. I am so happy that part of my job description did not include assessing this phenomenon.

Scent of a Teacher: The Placebo Effect
During this period, I read about single-blind studies that indicate when doctors dispense a placebo to patients, stating that taking it in the prescribed manner would make them better, some patients actually had a perceived or actual improvement in their medical condition, a phenomenon commonly known as the placebo effect.
However, some double-blind studies suggested that when doctors don’t know that they are dispensing a placebo even more patients have a perceived or actual improvement in their medical condition. Efficacy dictates that success begins with believing that success is possible.

Some sort of placebo effect was going on in the inner city schools and classrooms I was tasked with improving/supporting. Unconsciously, overwhelmed and overworked teachers were sending signals through tone of voice, facial expression, body language that perhaps their students were incapable of learning the content, and the students who needed the most support picked up on this negative energy force or “scent” like the young male student who approached me about his teacher’s lack of faith.

As CEO of the classroom community, the teacher like a doctor builds confidence in subtle, artful ways. In order to persuade students that the content is worth learning and can be learned, the teacher must be perceived by students as more than intelligent - just like a doctor trying to convince patients they can get well. Credentials and certification help provide credence that the teacher, like the doctor, is an expert in his field; however, highly effective teachers like doctors know that there is something more - an inner confidence that beams: I own my inner assets; I’ve got this. Whatever you throw at me I can handle because I am wise, brave, and strong.
Self-efficacy inspires students to BELIEVE: To believe in and feel they can learn from the teacher. How can it be fairly evaluated? What does the tool look like?

Not Just Urban Schools Anymore

In the wake of the Sandy Hook School Tragedy, “Superstorm Sandy,” the “fiscal cliff,” and other bubbles, I wonder about the invisible impact of perpetual disasters on American teachers’ psyche as they face a firestorm of never ending demands on their emotions, intellect, and spirits from their students. When teachers see only a sea of poverty seated before them in their classrooms on a daily basis, see students who have experienced or witnessed recurring tragedies, how long will it be before suburban teachers – like too many urban teachers - feel helpless, powerless, and subconsciously BELIEVE that they are incapable of delivering a more complex problem-solving, problem-seeking curriculum (Common Core) to an increasingly at-risk population?
As we move forward with re-imagining the teaching profession in America, we must keep in mind that that the safety, security, stability of more of our children are dissolving like spun sugar, and with them a potential meltdown of the self-efficacy of more of our teachers.

What kind of dis-empowering “scent” will a wider swath of American teachers perspire daily that a wider swath of American students will pick up on? Should we hold teachers accountable? Can we?

Want Ad: Needed American teachers who BELIEVE at-risk students can succeed.

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