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Teachers rated on limited info
The methods currently used to evaluate teachers in Ohio vary widely from district to district and have little to do with what students are learning.
A Dayton Daily News examination of state rules and the evaluation policies of Miami Valley school districts across five counties found teachers are typically subject to one or two short “classroom observations” and a written critique of their teaching technique and skills. There is little peer review or mentoring and in most districts student performance is not a consideration.
That’s all about to change.
Provisions in the state budget bill call for “student academic growth” — namely test scores — to make up half of a teacher’s evaluation. The new annual reviews, which many districts don’t currently do every year, will also allow parents and students to weigh in on teachers’ grades.
Many of the rules now being developed are also included in Senate Bill 5, which limits collective bargaining rights.
These changes are happening amid a national push for a better grading system for teachers. Half of Ohio school districts are developing new evaluations under the state’s $400 million Race to the Top grant.
The new system the state is mandating would be used to set pay and allow for firing or laying off under-performing teachers regardless of seniority. Supporters argue the evaluation system being created is essential to improving Ohio schools.
“Obviously, we are falling behind and we have schools that are not producing for students,” said Connie Wehrkamp, spokeswoman for Gov. John Kasich. “We want to be sure students are taught by the best educators and the best educators are rewarded for the work they are doing.” Educators involved in the process — school leaders, union officials and reform advocates — agree with that objective, but they don’t all agree on how to get there.
Critics argue the state’s plan is moving too fast, isn’t consistent, will require more administration and won’t judge all teachers fairly. They say basing pay and employment largely on test scores and other “value-added” measures related to achievement won’t yield consistent results because students are assessed differently year-to-year and subject-to-subject.
“What the budget bill has done is take away decision making from the local entities and force a top-down system on us when we already had volunteered to do this as part of Race to the Top,” said David Romick, president of the Dayton Education Association. “Most districts were already working on this and now there is this rush to legislate.”
Dayton is developing a program that will look not just at test scores, but student growth, teacher attendance, professional development and the implementation of new skills, Romick said. “What we are developing is what districts are doing across the country, using a wide variety of things instead of a snap shot or high stakes measure,” he said. “Is there a need for better teacher evaluations? Absolutely. As president of the teachers union I don’t want unqualified teachers in the classroom. There has to be a better way.”
Lori Ward, Dayton Public Schools superintendent, also expressed concerns with the competing evaluation systems being developed by different groups. Her district is developing a pilot teacher evaluation as part of school improvement grants and Race to the Top, but the new state mandates complicate the process.
“I think everyone is in agreement the evaluation process needs to be changed and has to have student measures,” Ward said. “Our difficulty is there are different time lines. We are going to move ahead and do what we need to do.”
New mandates
The budget bill gives the Ohio Department of Education just six months to develop a new evaluation process with 50 percent of a teacher’s score based on students’ academic growth. It must be approved by the state board of education and is expected to be implemented in time for the 2012-2013 school year.
The state plans to use the current report card achievement tests in reading, writing, math, science and social studies as part of the evaluations, said Patrick Gallaway, education department spokesman. New assessments are being developed for other subjects such as art and music as well as for grade levels and students who don’t take achievement tests.
Each year administrators will use these scores along with observations, input from parents and other reviews to assign teachers ratings of highly effective, effective, needs improvement and unsatisfactory.
The state superintendent will develop criteria for awarding those rankings, but how they play into hiring and firing decisions will be largely left up to individual school districts.
Kathy Raab, a Huber Heights teacher who works with students with learning and cognitive disabilities, worries the evaluation framework is too rigid to be accurate for teachers whose work can’t be measured solely by achievement tests.
“It can’t be one size fits all. It’s not fair to kids,” Raab said. “This is like no other job. People act like children are widgets, but they’re not, they’re human beings. I’m afraid they are going to say: ‘You didn’t pass, so you’re out of here.’ ”
Emmy Partin, director of Ohio policy and research for the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, an education reform advocate that has pushed for a new evaluation process, agrees they are problems with the system proposed under the budget bill.
It lacks uniformity and leaves many interpretations and decisions up to individual school districts, Partin said. There also is no mandate for removing “unsatisfactory” teachers.
“You are going to have a patchwork of different evaluations with different rigor and different consequences,” Partin said. “You could write a shiny new teacher evaluation system for each district that is business as usual, but you have complied with state law.”
To be effective the system should take the time to give districts a clear method for judging and rewarding performance, Partin said. She suggests using more than one year’s worth of achievement data and have specific training and standards for those doing the evaluations.
“There is a lot of potential, but also a lot of pitfalls,” Partin said.
Peer review
Educators say one way to avoid some of those “pitfalls” is to make peer review the heart of the evaluation process. Successful programs from Toledo to Washington, D.C. use highly trained “master educators” to assess teacher performance.
Dayton school officials are examining evaluation systems in both Toledo and Cincinnati to decide how to include peer review and other philosophies for grading teachers, said Ward. “The evaluation process is meant for improvement. I believe the process is fair if it is built upon the improvement of professional staff and if they don’t improve they risk their position,” Ward said. “The best way to evaluate practitioners is with highly effective practitioners.”
Deb Tully, of the Ohio Federation of Teachers, said well trained peer reviews can help administrators and school boards make informed employment decisions. Those reviews can be paired with “value-added” measures like test scores and measures of student growth.
“We don’t have a problem with using ‘value-added’ as a tool for professional development,” Tully said. “In concept it is a good theory. It can also be unreliable.”
Tully also worries mandating evaluations for every teacher could overwhelm administrators. “Think about the almost physical impossibility of that. You’re setting people up to take shortcuts and then there is no way to be effective.”
Gene Lolli, Springboro superintendent, doesn’t believe the new requirements will overwhelm administrators, even after his district was recently sued for trying to fire principal Sarah Lord, who claims in her lawsuit she hadn’t been evaluated during her three-year contract. State law requires that districts evaluate employees the same year it moves to terminate their employment.
Lolli declined to comment about the lawsuit, but said he believed the district’s current evaluation process was effective. He hopes changes in state law will make it even better.
“I think it is a good system and the key is to evaluate properly and honestly. I think sometimes we make the mistake of not being direct,” Lolli said. He added the new system could expose areas where changes are needed. “If we have a group and test scores are low it will allow us to see where we need to change instruction.”
Kasich spokeswoman Wehrkamp says that is the end goal of the process. “We are making sure kids are put first and are getting the best possible education,” she said. “The budget process makes huge strides in making sure student learning is kept at the forefront of education policy decisions.”
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