NYTimes on teacher evaluation

Not sure why the paper ran this story, but I responded anyway.


To the Editor;

Jenny Anderson makes several comments that demonstrate the misperceptions and misunderstandings of the education reform movement ("Curious grade for teachers," March 30, 2013).  Some of the more unfortunate examples and the mistaken premises upon which they rest, include:

"The changes, already under way in some cities and states, are intended to provide meaningful feedback and, critically, to weed out weak performers" and, later, "Education reformers insist they help to identify and remove ineffective teachers, while offering more feedback for teachers to improve their practice." The premise is that these two goals are commensurate rather than in tension with and antagonistic upon the other.

"Principals, who are often responsible for the personal-observation part of the grade, generally are not detached managerial types and can be loath to give teachers low marks." The premise is that education relies too much upon the subjective, intersubjective understanding of human relations and not enough on the hard, empirical stuff of objective data.

"But because Leon County set the test-score bar so low, when their marks came out, all but one were highly effective, and the other was categorized as effective" and, later, "Grover J. Whitehurst, director of the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution, said variations in teacher quality had been proven to affect student academic growth. If an evaluation system is not finding a wider distribution of effectiveness, “it is flawed,” he said." The premise is that student test scores are a direct cause, not just correlated to, teacher effectiveness.

"“We are seeing improvements in practice,” he said, noting that 400 teachers had been fired as a result of the new system, and several hundred had left voluntarily after weak ratings." The premise is that the teachers left because they were ineffective and not due to the pressure to produce meaningless statistics rather than critically thinking and empathic people, to treat students like numbers rather than humans capable of autonomy and dignity, or to abide by a philosophy that treats education as a commodity and political tool rather than a process of living and engaging with the world.

Anderson did offer one insight that captured the reason for these mistakes, "In Florida’s first go-round with the new evaluations, for example, some teachers had to be rated based on students in their school, but not in their classrooms, because there was not enough data for their own students."  In other words, teachers recognize the harm that 'managerial' types of evaluations does to the act of education.  It is telling that she includes this insight as a parenthetical rather than a strong, objective claim in itself.  Until the media uncover the premises that ground this debate' on education reform from each side, only the public will be massively misinformed.  Our students, and the future of society, are at stake.