I don’t think any profession is scrutinized the way educators are scrutinized. We have the same level of education as many other professionals, sometimes more, yet we earn less, and are criticized more. We are under fire when students don’t do well on standardized tests, we are under fire when education funding is cut, and we are under fire when more mandates are added to our plates. We are under fire with one of the most rigorous professional evaluation standards of any profession, and that is mandated BY LAW, and made public.
As a principal, I love observing teachers as part of the evaluation process. I love watching the magic happen in classrooms. I love helping teachers view their practice from a different lens, giving them strategies to support their students, and helping them to hone and refine their craft. I love watching expert teachers teach, especially when I learn a new strategy that I can pass along to others, I love collecting walk through data, and sharing classroom success stories , and empowering teachers to be their best every day.
As a principal, I hate doing my evaluation audits to prove that I am doing my job. I hate the anxiety evaluation causes for my teachers. And I hate the way the law dictates the way we determine teacher efficacy. What really gets me is that we have legislators who have never spent a day in a public school classroom making laws about what constitutes student proficiency, and how student proficiency is related to teacher efficacy.
Don’t get me wrong, student growth and teacher efficacy go hand in hand, but teacher efficacy goes so far beyond test scores, yet test scores constitute quarter of the teacher evaluation. I see this from both sides. A quality teacher’s students are going to show growth, but most evaluation systems are not looking for growth, they are looking for proficiency. When they do look at growth, they are looking at the ‘focus 30’, or ‘bottom quartile’, or whatever name is the group students who score the lowest on standardized measures. Generally speaking, these are also the students who also have the most aggravating factors already….trauma in their background, lack of support for education, limited access to literacy in the home, limited access to experiences that help build schema, poverty…things that teachers have LITTLE to NO control over. Yet…..their efficacy rating is based on these students demonstrating proficiency.
Let me be clear when I say this: we are not evaluating teachers to higher student proficiency. Stressing teachers out and making them jump through hoops isn’t making our students smarter, better or brighter! Our evaluation instrumentation that doesn’t take into consideration all of the factors outside the classroom are evaluating teachers on what they are doing inside the classroom, and this isn’t fair.
When we talk about what makes a successful teacher, we need to talk about the supports that are in place with in the school system that help teachers (and students) be their best every day. While teacher evaluation is an important part of this, it is just that, a PART. Successful teachers are supported through relevant and applicable job embedded professional development, opportunities and incentives to apply the learning from PD into their classrooms, support for collaboration and action research with their administrators and colleagues, social and emotional supports for their students, healthy relationships with parents, time for planning and collaboration, effective resource utilization and a healthy school culture.
The truth is teachers are working hard every day, and the job we are being asked to do involves far more than just instruction is reading, writing and arithmetic: educators have become more than just educators, we are nurses, therapists, behavior coaches, food service providers, data trackers, community relations specialists, nurturers…. If a kid needs it we are finding a way to make it happen. And friends…. This doesn’t show up on the teacher evaluation.
