State test scores verus teacher effectiveness

It seems that education reform has been a topic in the news a lot lately. Today, Dr. Bentley is unveiling his plan to improve schools and also to promote the idea of charter schools in Alabama. Not to mention, No Child Left Behind (NCLB) is always on teachers’ minds and in the news. It seems that much of the news and legislation is about teacher accountability and giving our students the best education possible. On top of everything else, the upcoming Alabama Reading and Math Test (ARMT) is weighing heavily on my mind even in the middle of my spring break!

In February, eSchool News published an article called “Tests Don’t Measure Teachers”. In this article, Mr. Gillen briefly discusses the “teacher value-added” model for teacher accountability and how it affects those students that live in low-income areas. This term refers to a model used to determine teacher effectiveness. The model relies heavily on students’ standardized test scores to establish a teacher’s success in the classroom. Mr. Gillen points out that no matter how hard a teacher works, there are always going to be outside factors that need to be considered. He points out flaws in a New York Times report that says that teachers with high value-added will produce higher state test scores and those that have low value-added need to be fired. Gillen states that “low-socioeconomic status students who produced high test scores earned only $2.70 more a week than comparable students who produced average test scores.” With this, it seems that teachers who teach these lower-income students will never meet the status quo of this teacher value-added model approach. This is due to outside circumstances that are beyond the teacher’s control. Mr. Gillen suggests that teachers, leaders and policy makers pay closer attention to the needs of a student and their family versus their test scores only. He feels that by improving the community first through better housing, healthcare, nutrition, etc, our students will be more likely to produce better scores on these standardized tests.

To look at another point of view concerning the teacher value-added model, I found the article “Should Student Test Scores Be Used to Evaluate Teachers?” through eSchool News as well. The author of this article views this subject in a slightly different light. Although flawed, there are some aspects of this model worth using to help teachers better their teaching methods. This article suggests using standardized testing data as one of many tools to determine a teacher’s effectiveness in the classroom. Through a project called Measures of Effective Teaching (MET), leaders devised an assessment tool that included standardized test scores along with several other measures. Along with test data, the districts looked at supplemental assessments using higher-order thinking understanding, classroom observations, and personal teacher reflections, assessments of teacher’s pedagogical knowledge, student perceptions of the classroom environment and teacher perceptions of the working environment. Using all of these factors, 3,000 teachers’ effectiveness was evaluated.

The results show what any good teacher already knows. It takes more than success on one standardized test to prove someone is a good teacher. The study found that those classrooms that spent a lot of time preparing for the standardized test rarely showed a high value-added on state tests. It showed that positive classroom experiences where higher-order questioning and understanding was involved produced higher learning gains. By using several different sources to measure teacher effectiveness, teachers were able to get targeted feedback to improve their classroom practice.

These articles really opened my mind to how teachers are currently evaluated versus how they should be evaluated. If you’ve taught more than a year, you know there are teachers who work their hardest and those that do not even seem to care or try. Looking at test scores alone will not necessarily eliminate those low value-added teachers. There must be more. It is exciting to know that with studies like the MET project, maybe change is on the horizon when it comes to teacher evaluations. And Mr. Gillen is right in the sense that students’ economic status and home life do play a big part in their success at school. If there is no one to help with homework, encourage success and buy their supplies, they do tend to give up more easily and struggle. But working in a low-economic area, I see students and teachers working their hardest every day and being successful. Year after year, my school continually meets AYP and works hard to get every child to succeed. We do not let our economic status stand in our way and I know that our community, parents and students appreciate that. We know that our students can beat all statistics and any odds they come up against and knowing someone believes in them is what makes our students successful!