1:15
It’s time for your monthly teacher reality check where we translate education policy jargon into what it actually means for those of us in the classroom. I’m Leah Cleary, and today we’re talking about teacher evaluations.
1:30
And here’s something that might blow your mind, whether you’re evaluated as effective or not, might have less to do with your actual teaching and more to do with your state’s politics and union strength. So let’s start with the basics right now. As you’re listening to this in August, teachers across the country are dealing with brand new evaluation systems, but only in some states.
1:57
If you’re teaching in Michigan, congratulations, your evaluation criteria just changed dramatically this year. Student test scores used to make up 40% of your evaluation now only 20%. Your union fought for that change, which means you had a voice in what shows up on your evaluation. But if you’re teaching in Alabama or Texas, you’re stuck with whatever policy makers decide. Why? Because Alabama and Texas are among the five states that prohibit collective bargaining for teachers. No union power means no teacher voice in evaluation policy.
2:36
So here’s the reality check. The criteria used to judge whether you’re a good teacher might depend more on which state you happen to teach in than on your actual effectiveness in the classroom. How’s that for professional standards?
2:50
Now I need to be honest with you. I’m a bit of a numbers nerd myself. In spite of not being great at math, I like looking at data, I like analyzing patterns, and I absolutely use that information to see what’s working and what isn’t working in my classroom. But here’s what the research actually tells us about using student test scores to evaluate teachers. Teachers control somewhere between 1% and 14% of what shows up on those test scores. Let me say that again, 1% to 14%. The other 86% to 99%, that’s out of school factors, family issues, health, access to resources, socio-economic status. So if teachers only control a tiny fraction of what shows up on test scores. Why are we pretending like test scores tell us anything meaningful about teaching quality?
3:47
Here’s where it gets really interesting. Research shows that in the states where districts are required to negotiate evaluation policies with unions, only 17% agreed to weight student achievement at 30% or more, but in states where districts choose to negotiate, 46% went with heavy test score weighting translation. When teachers have a seat at the table, they successfully negotiate away from test score heavy evaluations when they don’t have that power.
4:21
Policy makers can implement whatever they want. Most of the time, policy makers are just passing what they think is going to get them re elected, what they think their constituents want. And this goes back to everybody thinking they understand education because they went to school and sat in a classroom, but they’re seeing only one very small sliver of the picture, and most policies get passed based on that small sliver.
4:50
By the way, I’m listing out statistics and not giving you any sources, but you can go to my show notes and see the sources. I apologize for that. My husband pointed out that I have a bad habit of doing that. Just know that if I ever do that in this show, there’s always sources linked. You can go to leahcleary.com/podcast and see the show notes.
5:14
Now there’s a brilliant TED talk called “The Myth of Common Sense” by Duncan Watts, a guy who started as a physicist and became a sociologist. He makes this incredible point. We say it’s not rocket science when we want to say something should be easy. But here’s the thing, rocket science actually isn’t that hard for people who are good at rocket science. We figured out rockets right? What’s infinitely harder? Dealing with humans. And education, education is all about dealing with humans.
5:47
I have the utmost respect for the natural sciences. I’m grateful for them, but we have to remember that while we can borrow some strategies from natural sciences, we cannot approach education in the exact same way. A lot of teaching is responsive. What we’re responding to is human need, not what works in this situation, because it will work every time. That is not the way people work. Teaching is an art, not a science. It’s something that’s going to change every year, because we have different students every year. We get a group of kids every year. We’re going to get it wrong sometimes. Sometimes we’re going to try things that don’t work for a particular group when they work beautifully for a different group down the hall. That’s not failure. That’s the reality of working with human beings.
6:40
The researchers who are reporting these best practices, I am grateful for them, because I learn a lot from them, and I take what they’ve done and I adapt it. But you have to keep in mind that these people aren’t doing the actual day to day work of teaching. They’re researchers, not practitioners. Teachers are practitioners. We deal with the messiness, the unpredictability, the beautiful chaos of actual classrooms filled with actual kids. We can’t control all the variables like researchers try to. We work with what we’ve got and what we’ve got is gloriously, frustratingly human.
7:21
But here’s what really gets me. What are we teaching kids about ownership when we act like their test scores are entirely their teacher’s responsibility? That’s dangerous. We’re teaching them a bigger lesson about life, that they have no agency, that they have no control over outcomes. We want them to put two and two together. Study effectively for the test. Get an A. Don’t study effectively for the test and then blame the teacher? That’s not the lesson we want to teach. When we make test scores the primary measure of teacher effectiveness, we’re robbing students of ownership of their learning. We’re telling them they’re passive recipients rather than active participants in their education.
8:05
Meanwhile, back in the real world, districts are scrambling to figure out new evaluation systems. Michigan districts are rushing to adopt three category rubrics to meet the new requirements. Teachers are getting mixed messages about what their evaluations actually measure now. And here’s the kicker, more emphasis on observations means more administrators in classrooms. But are they properly trained? Are they using reliable rubrics? Are they actually helping teachers improve, or are they just checking boxes?
8:39
Here’s our reality check. We’re taking one of the most complex, nuanced, relationship-based professions in the world and trying to reduce it to a formula. We’re pretending that we can measure the art of teaching the same way we measure the science of rocket propulsion. But if dealing with humans is harder than rocket science, maybe we should stop pretending that teacher evaluation can be reduced to a simple formula.
9:05
That’s your teacher reality check for this month. What’s your experience with evaluation changes in your state? Are you seeing more support for teachers or more bureaucratic hoops to jump through? Remember, if teachers ruled the world, we’d probably spend less time measuring teaching and more time supporting it. I’m Leah Cleary. Keep fighting the good fight, and I will see you next month.
