By Tom
I’ve been thinking a lot about the difference between problems – which can be solved – and polarities, which can’t. A problem would be like a broken copy machine. You call the repairperson and tell them to fix it. Soon. And when they do, the problem is solved.
A polarity is different. A polarity is a situation for which there are two opposite approaches, or “poles.” Each pole has positive as well as negative aspects. It looks like this: (pay attention to the arrows)
An example of a polarity would be classroom management; One approach, represented by Pole 1, would be fierce accountability and rule enforcement. Pole 2 would be a more relaxed, fun approach. A teacher might start out acting really strict and quickly notice the benefits: a quiet room, a serious atmosphere, etc. This is represented by Box A. Soon, however, our teacher might notice that there are negative aspects to being ultra-strict: nobody’s having fun, nor are they really engaged in the learning. This is Box B. As a result, the teacher relaxes things a bit and the mood lightens. The kids are more engaged and the atmosphere is livelier. Now we’re in Box C. Soon, however, things get out of hand, and the classroom becomes a zoo: Box D. In response, the teacher gets all strict and rigid again and we’re back in Box A.
The best teachers aren’t the ones who find the perfect balance between strict and fun. In a polarity, balance is only an illusion. The best teachers are able to nimbly transfer from one box to another in response to the situation. They dwell mostly in Boxes A and C, reaping the rewards that are found there. As soon as they dip into B or D, they change it up and move on. The best teachers can go from Vince Lombardi to Jimmy Buffett and back again in the course of a single lesson, knowing full well that both approaches are essential to effective classroom management.
This paradigm is also useful to explain Education Reform. Specifically, teacher evaluation, which I see not as a problem – something to be fixed – but as a polarity; a situation for which there are two opposite, yet equally valuable, approaches.
The two poles of teacher evaluation are accountability and flexibility. We need both. But in order to have both, we need to engineer and sustain a system that’s nimble enough to use both. If our system seems too rigid and focused on accountability and data, we need to be able to quickly tweak it, making it more flexible. And vice-versa.
As we speak, Congress is mulling over the reauthorization of ESEA. One thing they’re mulling is teacher evaluation; specifically whether each state should have an evaluation system that uses data from student test scores. The high accountability camp – which includes most Ed-Reform groups, as well as the Obama Administration – sees this as essential to ESEA’s original purpose as a tool in the War on Poverty.
The other camp – which includes the NEA and the AFT, as well as conservative politicians – doesn’t. They would like to leave the specifics of any teacher evaluation system up to individual states. Anyone who sees teacher evaluation as a polarity would have to agree. Personally, I have questions about the validity, reliability and fairness of using student data to evaluate teachers. But even if I didn’t – even if I loved the idea – I would still want a system that had the capacity to make large or small changes as the need arose.
Federal laws do not have that capacity. Take NCLB. (please) That law started out looking sweet. We were identifying low-performing schools left and right and doing something about it. Test scores were rising. We were solidly in Box A. Then we started seeing the negative effects: decent schools being mislabeled, hyper-focus on tested subjects, test-prep at the expense of real teaching; and we knew we needed to recalibrate.
But we can't. We're in Box B with no way of getting to Box C. The Federal Government is many wonderful things, but it is not nimble. It was actually designed to not be nimble. When a system literally needs an Act of Congress to tweak itself, it is not nimble.
Teacher evaluation is something that will never be solved or figured out. There will always be a push and pull between those who favor more accountability and those who want more flexibility. That’s as it should be. A healthy system respects a polarity and has the capacity to change, nimbly harnessing the best of each pole.
A well-run district would have that capacity. A well-led state might. The Federal Government?
Not a chance.
Tracey:
What you’re talking about here is something from “Box C” in the diagram. you have a very flexible, teacher-specific evaluation. The only “problem” is that such a system might not be very useful for comparing teachers. And let’s face it; more often than not, evaluation is code for comparing.
This discussion makes me think of the Evergreen State College, where I went to school for my first two years of college. Evergreen has always stood out from the other state colleges for many reasons I won’t go into, but one of them was their grading process. It’s the one place where you can go and not have a GPA. Professors write an “evaluation” for each student. These evaluations are about a page long, and they are very detailed. They reveal what you did and, perhaps, didn’t do as a student, your growth in understanding the content, contributions to seminar discussions, ideas argued in papers, and anything else the professor found relevant. People from other colleges and universities couldn’t understand how you knew how you were doing as a student. How did these page long evaluations translate into knowing who was at the top of the class and where you stood among your peers? What are you supposed to do? Read ALL of the evaluations to figure this out?
In teacher evaluations, we’re moving from “pass/fail” to a GPA system. And, what we really need is the written, detailed, page-long evaluation. But, when I go back into my personnel file, that’s what I have – 14 of them – most of them two pages long. They explain how I grew each year as a teacher, challenges I faced, how I responded, contributions I made to the school, my interactions with parents, students and colleagues, my classroom environment, management skills, leadership roles, and student learning. It’s true that some tweaking is needed. We should agree on the standards to which we hold teachers. Maybe we need to involve more people in the writing of these evaluations. But, I believe that teachers can’t be accurately evaluated with a final numerical score. How inconvenient. Who’s going to read ALL the evaluations to figure out if a teacher is a good teacher or not?
I believe most teachers want to find a balance between accountability (e.g. data) and flexibility. I want to believe that the data I generate is in some meaningful way a reflection of my teaching ability. When I dig down deep enough I believe I can find it.
When I’ve identified a particular need of a student I can locate the relevant data that illustrates that child’s need. For example, reading miscue analysis. A student continually substitutes visually similar words in their reading. (student reads: The dessert has little rain.) I can provide the student with lessons which help them monitor meaning and use context to improve their reading accuracy. With some targeted lessons I’d expect this student to make fewer visual miscues.
That is the data I rely on. That is the data I use to inform my practice. But I don’t see how an evaluation system could be constructed around such a fine measure. And I’d hate to have my evaluation based on my ability to move the mean score of my class n points higher on the MAP/MSP/or any other broad measure.
Faced with the polarity of narrow vs. broad measures of accountability I’m more comfortable with the status quo. I prefer the broken system I know over a broken system I don’t know.
Mark and Kristin both make great points about the complexity of teacher evaluation. I especially appreciate Kristin’s points about evaluation being a basis for a real career ladder and the need for serious principal evaluation. I would like to see future teacher evaluation be primarily about professional growth. For that to happen we need both quality evaluators who know what they are looking for and how to evaluate what they are seeing as well as a framework for career advancement.
I also agree with Mark that raw data does not effective teaching illustrate. At the same time I’m sick of the effort and energy I put into my teaching and professional development being rated as “satisfactory”.
Ask any great teacher and any great principal…perhaps off the record…what the qualities of superior teaching are and really, when you boil it down, the answer is “I know it when I see it.” It is the atmosphere in the room, the demeanor of the teacher, the interactions between everyone in the room, not just teacher-student interactions. This may certainly be the product of well planned lessons aligned to learning targets and POWER! standards, but great teachers were great teachers before the trends hit and will remain great teachers even after the trends’ names change to the next trend.
Quantifying effective teaching will always be a sticking point for me. I don’t need to see a teachers’ testing data to tell me whether they are effective. Drop me in their room for a couple of hours–heck a few minutes (Malcolm Gladwell’s “Blink,” anyone?)–and I bet you I can identify the master teachers as well as the duds.
And of course, there’s always ratemyteacher.com if you want data. It’s as reliable (un-?) as test data, imo.
You’re right. The federal government isn’t nimble. Nor is it attentive enough to be truly accountable.
I’m for serious evaluations of teachers and principals, and want those evaluations to have serious consequences – nonrenewal of contract for those who can’t do their job and a career ladder for those who do. I’d like to see a career ladder for teachers that doesn’t require they leave the classroom – currently the only way teachers can really make a serious leap in pay.
Again, it comes down to the principal. A principal is nimble enough to be able to move between high-accountability for her teachers and relaxing a bit so teachers have flexibility. But that requires a principal who is a strong leader, has high standards, and a true understanding of instruction. It’s not my experience that every principal has all three things. In a desperate effort to ensure teachers are doing their jobs regardless of whether the principal can ensure teachers are doing their jobs, we have all these distant efforts to evaluate. Test scores. School scores. Graduation rates. Every one of those measurement tools is a result of as many teachers as a child’s had, as well as the child’s parents.
I’d like to get the horse before the cart. I’d like a little more effort put to serious principal evaluations, then expect the principals to evaluate their teachers.