Tying Teacher Evaluation to Student Test Scores: The Ongoing Debate

Posted on by drentsminger

Interestingly, fewer states are including student test scores in their teacher evaluation calculations. As of October 2019, 34 states will use student test scores while calculating teacher effectiveness, compared to 43 states in 2015 (read more here).

In addition to reading the aforementioned article, I recently engaged in a conversation with an advocate of using student test scores to calculate teacher effectiveness. I’m always amused when people say that educators need to be held accountable in similar ways to other professions (ie. The business world). These advocates want some means of measuring teacher effectiveness (as do we all), and equate students to “products” that are churned out at the end of the year. Obviously, we know that human beings are not “products” churned out on a factory belt. But, I’m always perplexed by these proponents. What I find most perplexing is that, the grand majority of the time, people touting/proposing/enacting these kinds of proposals:

    Are not teachers
    Have never been teachers
    Have no experience in PUBLIC education
    Have NO certification in education
    Run some kind of educational “philanthropy”
    See improving education as their “crusade”

I’m no statistician, but neither are many advocates for these types of reforms. I don’t understand how any teacher evaluation system could accurately account for all the variables that vastly impact student achievement (over which educators have MINIMAL TO ZERO control), including but not limited to (just to name a few of the big ones):

  • Poverty
  • Hunger
  • Homelessness
  • Family Mobility
  • Single-Parent Households
  • Parents’ Academic History/Ability
  • Diet
  • Physical Activity/Physical Health
  • Mental Health

I’ve heard that professors at prestigious universities have been trying to quantify and control for these almost uncontrollable variables since the release of “A Nation At Risk” in 1983 (with minimal to no success). I’ve read about researchers developing ridiculous formulas to try and control for outside-of-school factors and then incorporating these formulas into teacher evaluation along with student performance. In terms of actually improving student achievement by tying student achievement to teacher evaluation, the data are inconclusive. Of course, I contend that the reason for this is that these types of evaluation systems do nothing to address the underlying symptoms of student academic performance, or lack there of. “Efforts to improve educational outcomes in schools, attempting to drive change through test-based accountability, are unlikely to succeed unless accompanied by policies to address the out-of-school factors that negatively affect large numbers of our nations’ students” (Berliner, 2015).

Don’t misunderstand me….

• Students should ALWAYS be showing growth

• Teacher evaluation should encompass some type of measurable/quantified measure

I’m NOT saying that because of the issues mentioned above, we should not hold educators accountable. I’m NOT saying that we as educators can’t do things in order to ameliorate some of these underlying issues. THAT’S NOT WHAT I’M SAYING AT ALL. In fact, much research exists that posits, yes, these out-of-school factors exist, but here are things we can do in our classrooms to help. I am saying that teacher evaluation systems that include student performance as a measure of teacher effectiveness will always be seriously flawed.

I’m interested to see how this trend continues. Clearly, the government plays a major role in these types of educational reform initiatives. Thus, I would say that, unfortunately, future evaluation changes will be the result of a continuously changing and volatile political climate.

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Illinois Getting Rid of PARCC Tests… Can We Broaden the Curriculum and Focus on Performance-Based Assessments Now?

Posted on by drentsminger

Illinois may be getting rid of PARCC (other states already have). For some, this is no surprise. Secondary educators lambasted PARCC testing and the tests were eventually removed from the high school setting. Others saw PARCC as another cyclical education reform that just so happened to bring about new types of assessments (“computer-based,” oh my!). PARCC replaced state-standardized tests like ISAT, which replaced IGAP and on down the road since the doom and gloom proclamations in 1983’s A Nation at Risk.

Obviously, in our test-based accountability system, PARCC will be replaced with something else. We’ve heard that the new tests may be shorter, allowing for teachers/administrators/districts to receive the results in an expeditious manner. What is more, it’s possible that the new tests will be adaptive in that test will adjust the difficulty of the questions based on student responses (similar to NWEA’s MAP assessments).

However, it’s my view that these changes aren’t enough. Sure, shorter tests will be good for teachers and students. Teachers and parents have decried that students are over assessed for years. Sure, more expeditious feedback is good. That’s always been one of the major drawbacks of these state-standardized tests. Sure, adaptive tests that adjust according to student responses could be a good thing, if this helps us better identify student deficiencies.

Yet, I’m not sure any of these adjustments will address a pressing issue facing all schools, but especially schools serving disadvantaged communities: narrowing of the curriculum. If these tests are tied to any federal funding (like what happened with Obama’s Race to the Top initiative), there will continue to be narrowing of the curriculum. If these test are used to evaluate, rate, and/or compare schools and districts, there will continue to be narrowing of the curriculum. If districts prioritize these tests and the data generated by them, there will continue to be narrowing of the curriculum. Point being, it’s a different means to the same end. We may have new tests on the horizon. But, the accountability movement/reform in education is still alive and well. When state-standardized test scores are used to evaluate schools/districts/teachers, narrowing of the curriculum will continue to occur.

What is more, as past research has shown, these state-standardized tests only assess low-level thinking skills, numb teacher and student creativity, and prepare students to take tests rather than to think critically and solve real-world problems. With more standardized tests, even though they’ve been shortened and allow teachers to receive feedback in a timely manner, I’m guessing we’ll still have tests that assess low-level thinking skills, decrease creativity, and don’t accurately show all that a student really knows.

I’ve always been an advocate of performance-based assessments, which challenge students to use higher-order thinking in order to create a product or complete a process. The essential components of performance-based assessments help to ensure complexity and higher-order thinking: relevant, real-world oriented, open-ended, time-bound, products presented to an authentic audience, embedded formative assessment and feedback.

Performance-based assessments are not new. In fact, they’ve been around in some form or another since the days of John Dewey. However, when accountability reforms increased the pressure facing today’s schools, we moved away from performance-based measures of learning to standardized measures. This pressure also forced the narrowing of the curriculum. Thus, I (and many others) appeal to our legislators and education policy makers to truly consider what’s best for our students, for our teachers, and for our schools. When moving forward with new state-standardized testing, we must consider all that we’ve learned from the pressures associated with these tests.

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