...“Why would anyone work here with so much at stake?” one teacher related to me recently, a teacher who’s ranking went from “Effective” to “Needs Improvement” because her VAM was developed utilizing a small sample size due to a small stability group because she works in a high-poverty school with tremendous student mobility..
The formula for evaluating teachers is complex. Not only is it intricate-it can be unfair to
teachers in some locations and to those teachers that teach ESE students.
Previously in our district, we had an evaluation system that
was a joke, it was horrendous. And I
discussed it frequently because it was so bad; it was almost as bad as a
pass/fail civil service evaluation.
Everybody is great, everybody wins-you know the type... But it was terrible, it did nobody any good,
and needed to be scrapped. Eventually
the district put together a much better system that was much more objective.
Recently the state mandated that student test data become a
component in the teachers’ evaluation—an idea I strongly support if it is done fairly
and correctly. Under this scenario, not
only does the teacher get evaluated based upon the test scores of the students
the individual teacher teaches-but this data also has huge consequences and can
significantly impact a teachers’ overall rating.
In some cases, the addition of the test score
data (or VAM data), can take a “highly
effective” or “effective” teacher all the way down to “needs improvement” or
“unsatisfactory!” (Under state law now, two consecutive teacher evaluations
that are “unsatisfactory” can lead to removal of a teacher from the
profession—so the stakes could not be higher)
So how can this happen?
I was wondering that too so I had a long conversation with the
district’s director of evaluation services so that I could understand how the
process works. Here it is in a
