Should Teachers Get Grades, Too?
Tennessee has recently taken an important step toward ensuring that its public schools provide a quality education by setting up a system for grading teachers. Missouri should follow suit and go one step further, streamlining teacher termination policies.
Starting this fall, all public school teachers in the state of Tennessee will be receiving yearly grades, which will play a role in decisions for termination as well as tenure attainment. Half of the evaluation will come from principal observations, with the remainder based on student academic performance and other factors. The new system will also require that all teachers, tenured or not, be evaluated each and every year.
Collecting more detailed data on teachers, and therefore school performance, will help to bring much needed competition to the public school system. Given access to this information, concerned parents will be able to make better decisions as to where their children should attend school. With renewed pressure to perform, however, schools and districts will need to be able to remove teachers found to be ineffective.
Here in Missouri, even for schools or districts that choose to implement an evaluation system, the removal of bad teachers is a slow and cumbersome process. Missouri law sets out detailed procedures that must be followed in terminating an under-performing teacher. These include a list of the only acceptable reasons for termination, in addition to a requirement for a thirty-day warning period prior to the hearing. In the event of a successful termination, Missouri teachers can still appeal to the district court, possibly reversing the decision.
Given the power to more easily terminate bad teachers along with an effective evaluation process, principals and superintendents could much more successfully manage their schools and districts. Furthermore, if school administrators had the ability to fire poor teachers, less education spending would be wasted on prolonging the careers of bad teachers held within the schools by the promises of pension plans and tenure agreements.
Public school districts’ primary concern should be providing a quality education to students. In fact, this quotation is found in many district’s policies:
“Because the school district exists for the students, and the main obligation of the Board of Education is to provide an education for the district’s students, and not to provide employment, the Board will, through procedures carried out by the administration, determine which employees can best serve the needs of the students.”
Employing ineffective teachers until they reach retirement age hurts every student the teacher fails to teach. Tennessee has given us a strong example to follow, but to see true success here in Missouri, school administrators should be given the power to more easily remove bad teachers for the sake of both our tax dollars and the students’ education. The legislature cannot possibly foresee every situation and prepare for it accordingly. Control over the system should be decentralized and placed in the hands of those that live and work within it every day.
A teacher teaches, roughly, 180 days per year, five hours per day, 900 hours per year. How many hours is s/he evaluated? 1%? 3%? 5%? While I believe that teachers should be evaluated, especially using test scores, the principal evaluation seems rife with favoritism, cronyism etc.
People don’t want to fire their friends, so the teachers will make friends with the principal. Corporate heads tell the funniest jokes and have the most interesting things to say around the water cooler, in case you didn’t know.
Such subjectivity challenges the definition of ‘bad teacher’. One who makes too many waves, makes problems for higher ups with a focus on discipline could be labeled as ‘bad’ by the principals.
Someone please tell me why tenure is needed at elementary school. I don’t get it. Are teachers afraid to teach unpopular viewpoints on slavery/evolution/war. . . to third graders? Shouldn’t that be covered in the curriculum, anyway.
Comment by Papillon — July 13, 2011 @ 1:40 p.m.
Man, this makes me really desperate to get back into teaching in a low-income community. These new reforms are really making the profession increasingly attractive to young, talented professionals such as myself. I am certain they will improve the quality of teachers in no time. If they’ll just add on a few more observations and performance evaluations and remove a few more benefits, I’ll be back before you can say “Ineffective Teacher!”
Comment by Former Teacher — July 13, 2011 @ 2:56 p.m.
Should teachers be evaluated on performance? That’s a difficult question. What performance is expected from the teacher? That all kids will perform at or above grade level? Is this fair to the teacher whose class is made up of low achieving students…students who either can’t/won’t learn? Should the teacher be graded on test scores of kids who can’t make the benchmark…it may not matter how great that teacher is, the majority of the kids in his/her classroom JUST CAN’T MAKE THE BENCHMARKS.
That’s how AYP works thanks to No Child Left Behind. If the school does well on the standardized testing, don’t get too excited…if ONE subgroup fails, the ENTIRE building fails. So what do teachers and administrators do? They have pep rallies, they teach to the MAP tests in hopes that the failing subgroups perform better the next year so the school will be considered a “passing” school. BTW, did you know 75% of schools in the state of MO are considered “failing” because of AYP rules? Administrators are in an almost impossible situation because of the way the schools are graded.
Do I believe there are teachers that should be removed because they are burned out or just terrible teachers? Yes. Do I believe the process to remove these teachers should be easier and quicker? Yes. Do I believe the Tennessee way of evaluating teachers is flawed? Probably. Time will tell. The other commenter on this thread had a great point:
“People don’t want to fire their friends, so the teachers will make friends with the principal. Corporate heads tell the funniest jokes and have the most interesting things to say around the water cooler, in case you didn’t know.
Such subjectivity challenges the definition of ‘bad teacher’. One who makes too many waves, makes problems for higher ups with a focus on discipline could be labeled as ‘bad’ by the principals.”
I would add to that: if a teacher has a low ability class one year he/she better make friends with the principal. If those kids don’t make the progress mandated by the Federal government needed to be labeled “proficient”, that teacher is on the firing line. If a 5th grade student comes in at a 3rd grade level (through no fault of the 5th grade teacher), and only makes one year of progress, that 5th grade teacher will be considered a failure. Maybe the K-4 grade teachers are the teachers who should be fired for sending a low achieving child to 5th grade before he/she is ready to tackle that curriculum.
Or we could just dumb down the standards so everyone can pass.
Comment by stlgretchen — July 13, 2011 @ 3:59 p.m.
The greater issue is the layers of bureaucracy up to the federal level that hinder the ability to teach in the traditional sense. There could be less emphasis on technical standards and more on school and classroom autonomy. Unfortunately, autonomy has been compromised for funding. The result is impressive academic facilities and a deficit of learning.
Comment by kahki — July 16, 2011 @ 7:49 a.m.
Let’s rearrange the deck chairs!
Evaluating competence is necessarily subjective, while spending public funds demands a fair and objective process. Oil and water. Every government project, unless corrupt, will be inefficient and ineffective.
The only way to educate children is to abolish public education and let parents take direct responsibility. PTA = pass the buck.
Comment by Bill — July 21, 2011 @ 4:20 p.m.