education teacher

education teacher

As David Leonhardt points out in his blog today teachers do make a difference in the education of students particularly at the kindergarten level.  I agree with this point but how we identify teacher effectiveness needs to be revisited.  Tenure should be done away with.  Nobody should have a job if they are ineffective.  Only in government can ineffective people keep jobs.  Don’t even get me started on college professors but I digress.  How do we determine what an effective teacher is?  Today currently there is a huge trend toward using “data” so that school boards (local and state) can tout results.  The problem is that most of those results aren’t worth the paper they are written on.

As everyone knows statistics can be manipulated and standards can change over time. Take for example the Maryland State Department of Education’s HSA examinations.  Originally every student was going to be required to pass the test in each of the four core subject areas of math, science, English, and social studies.  Today however as Maryland is touted in Education circles as an example for other state districts to aspire to they have since watered down that test.  It exists merely as a show piece.  Why do I say this you ask?  Here are my reasons.

Originally the test had a written component but it has since been eliminated (must have been too rigorous).
MSDE has never explained to students or teachers how the test is scored.  All anyone knows is that there is a cut score needed to pass each test.
A student doesn’t have to pass each test they just have reach a set combined score.  So it is possible to fail one of the HSA exams and still be passed.
If a student fails to pass the HSA exams after numerous takings and remediation throughout their high school career they can complete bridge plans.  These plans are projects and vary in number depending upon the students score.  It is the teachers responsibility to make sure the bridge plan is completed.

What happened to this rigorous exam all students were going to pass?  This is the kind of nonsense teachers must deal with from their school district.   Statistics and tests for the sake of data are useless.  If we are going to evaluate teachers on test scores only we are setting ourselves up for failure.  How do you compare a high school English teacher that has students that had good teachers, parental and community support with one that has a class that had poor teachers and little family/community involvement?  That is like comparing Dave Trembley to Joe Girardi – it isn’t a fair comparison.  Joe has a 250 million dollar payroll and Dave has a 60 million dollar payroll.  Joe has the defending world champions and Dave has a group of mostly rookies and cast-offs.  Joe has the support of a good organization and Dave has an organization that has been inefficiently run for 14 years.  It’s not a fair comparison.

So how do we evaluate teachers then?  We can’t use blanket standards because every class is different.  We need to measure things that matter.  Data is good in helping to identify areas of weakness and plan going forward but it cannot be the sole means of evaluating progress unless we compare student class performance to their own individual baseline.  Simply comparing scores across classes and ranking teachers that way is doomed to fail.  Teachers will not teach in the very schools that need them most because they will realize that unless they can outperform their counterparts with advanced classes they will be seen as poor educators.  This is all wrong.

As David Leonhardt points out in his blog today teachers do make a difference in the education of students particularly at the kindergarten level.  I agree with this point but how we identify teacher effectiveness needs to be revisited.  Tenure should be done away with.  Nobody should have a job if they are ineffective.  Only in government can ineffective people keep jobs.  Don’t even get me started on college professors but I digress.  How do we determine what an effective teacher is?  Today currently there is a huge trend toward using “data” so that school boards (local and state) can college in punjab tout results.  The problem is that most of those results aren’t worth the paper they are written on.

As everyone knows statistics can be manipulated and standards can change over time. Take for example the Maryland State Department of Education’s HSA examinations.  Originally every student was going to be required to pass the test in each of the four core subject areas of math, science, English, and social studies.  Today however as Maryland is touted in Education circles as an example for other state districts to aspire to they have since watered down that test.  It exists merely as a show mba college punjab india piece.  Why do I say this you ask?  Here are my reasons.

Originally the test had a written component but it has since been eliminated (must have been too rigorous).
MSDE has never explained to students or teachers how the test is scored.  All anyone knows is that there is a cut score needed to pass each test.
A student doesn’t have to pass each test they just have reach a set combined score.  So it is possible to fail one of the HSA exams and still be passed.
If a student fails to pass the HSA exams after numerous takings and remediation throughout college in india their high school career they can complete bridge plans.  These plans are projects and vary in number depending upon the students score.  It is the teachers responsibility to make sure the bridge plan is completed.

What happened to this rigorous exam all students were going to pass?  This is the kind of nonsense teachers must deal with from their school district.   Statistics and tests for the sake of data are useless.  If we are going to evaluate teachers on test scores only we are setting ourselves up for failure.  How do you compare a high school English teacher that has college in punjab students that had good teachers, parental and community support with one that has a class that had poor teachers and little family/community involvement?  That is like comparing Dave Trembley to Joe Girardi – it isn’t a fair comparison.  Joe has a 250 million dollar payroll and Dave has a 60 million dollar payroll.  Joe has the defending world champions and Dave has a group of mostly rookies and cast-offs.  Joe has the support of a good organization and Dave has an organization that has been inefficiently run for 14 years.  It’s not a fair comparison.

So how do we evaluate teachers mba college punjab india then?  We can’t use blanket standards because every class is different.  We need to measure things that matter.  Data is good in helping to identify areas of weakness and plan going forward but it cannot be the sole means of evaluating progress unless we compare student class performance to their own individual baseline.  Simply comparing scores across classes and ranking teachers that way is doomed to fail.  Teachers will not teach in the very schools that need them most because they will realize that unless they can outperform their counterparts with advanced classes they will be seen as poor educators. college in india  This is all