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Is The Teaching Profession so Black & White?
Teacher Assessments?
UK & USA
UK & USA
| “ I thought I was a good teacher and could not understand what was happening ” |
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Teacher Assessment - 4
Teacher Assessment - 6:
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Although Stephanie Logan, who teaches at Seventy-Fifth Street Elementary School, is classed as a “more effective” maths teacher, she is described as one of LA’s “least effective” English teachers. “I feel like I’m being punished for being responsible and not saying ‘no’ when I was asked to take (difficult) students,” she writes. “I feel hurt and humiliated to be rated like this. Should I have refused to take those students in?”
Her colleague James Melin, classed as a “less effective” maths teacher, puts his point across more forcefully. “Listen,” he writes. “I teach in an area of south Los Angeles that most of your readers wouldn’t want to drive through. I work at a job that most of your readers wouldn’t dare undertake because I am so underpaid for what I do. I work for a district that has seen it fit to lay me off the past three years, only to rehire me at the very last second.
“Nobody who matters give a hoot about your rating…I will be receiving ‘thank you’ notes from many of my students when they are in college or are productive adults in society. At that time, my effectiveness as a teacher can be measured.”
Felch acknowledges that the ratings aren’t 100 per cent accurate. “Our confidence in these figures varies,” he says, “and these are not exact figures, they are estimates. That’s the best you can do with this. The data’s strongest at the two extremes. It’s a big bell curve, in the middle it gets squishy.”
When I ask Felch about the impact on teachers, he is unrepentant. “The kneejerk reaction is that this is evil and wrong, and is going to perpetuate all the inequalities,” he explains. “When you understand the goals of value-added, I would think teachers would be excited. For the first time in their careers, they have an opportunity to succeed even if they teach poor kids. Here’s a system that will level the playing field, and try to take out of the equation all the socio-economic stuff they feel that they are blamed for by society.”
But it is not just teachers who have expressed reservations about the scores. Two years ago, Derek Briggs and Ben Domingue of the National Education Policy Center analysed the Los Angeles Times’ ratings. They concluded that the newspaper’s research “was demonstrably inadequate to support the published rankings”. In its next set of teacher scores, the newspaper altered its methodology.
Speaking at the Education International (the global federation of teacher unions) conference in London in January, Lily Eskelsen, vice-president of the National Education Association, added her voice to the debate.
“I wouldn’t mind the ranking so much if it was just used on the sports page where it belongs,” she quipped, adding: “We’re making decisions around bad data… (The Los Angeles Times reporters) put a small disclaimer on their work saying that yes indeed, they know that what they’re about to tell you is not accurate, and then they use that disclaimer as permission to proceed with giving you bad information.
Her colleague James Melin, classed as a “less effective” maths teacher, puts his point across more forcefully. “Listen,” he writes. “I teach in an area of south Los Angeles that most of your readers wouldn’t want to drive through. I work at a job that most of your readers wouldn’t dare undertake because I am so underpaid for what I do. I work for a district that has seen it fit to lay me off the past three years, only to rehire me at the very last second.
“Nobody who matters give a hoot about your rating…I will be receiving ‘thank you’ notes from many of my students when they are in college or are productive adults in society. At that time, my effectiveness as a teacher can be measured.”
Felch acknowledges that the ratings aren’t 100 per cent accurate. “Our confidence in these figures varies,” he says, “and these are not exact figures, they are estimates. That’s the best you can do with this. The data’s strongest at the two extremes. It’s a big bell curve, in the middle it gets squishy.”
When I ask Felch about the impact on teachers, he is unrepentant. “The kneejerk reaction is that this is evil and wrong, and is going to perpetuate all the inequalities,” he explains. “When you understand the goals of value-added, I would think teachers would be excited. For the first time in their careers, they have an opportunity to succeed even if they teach poor kids. Here’s a system that will level the playing field, and try to take out of the equation all the socio-economic stuff they feel that they are blamed for by society.”
But it is not just teachers who have expressed reservations about the scores. Two years ago, Derek Briggs and Ben Domingue of the National Education Policy Center analysed the Los Angeles Times’ ratings. They concluded that the newspaper’s research “was demonstrably inadequate to support the published rankings”. In its next set of teacher scores, the newspaper altered its methodology.
Speaking at the Education International (the global federation of teacher unions) conference in London in January, Lily Eskelsen, vice-president of the National Education Association, added her voice to the debate.
“I wouldn’t mind the ranking so much if it was just used on the sports page where it belongs,” she quipped, adding: “We’re making decisions around bad data… (The Los Angeles Times reporters) put a small disclaimer on their work saying that yes indeed, they know that what they’re about to tell you is not accurate, and then they use that disclaimer as permission to proceed with giving you bad information.
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