This is really bold for HISD. In fact, I am a little surprised they are willing to do it. It is an idea that just makes too much sense for a government run operation. But Grier is right to push for this, as student test scores are certainly a factor that need to be taken into account when evaluating teacher performance. Student performance is the the output that teacher produce. The job of teachers is to teach students, and the way that their learning is measured is through testing. Of course, the teachers unions are against the idea. No surprise there. [RQUOTER]HISD May Fire Teachers Over Test Scores Grier wants to make it easier to get rid of ineffective educators Teachers in Houston ISD could lose their jobs for failing to improve student test scores under a controversial proposal slated for a school board vote Thursday. HISD Superintendent Terry Grier's plan to tie teachers' job evaluations to their students' progress on standardized tests would put Houston among a small but growing number of school districts pushing to make it easier to oust ineffective teachers. The more aggressive approach coincides with President Barack Obama's call for increased teacher accountability. His administration's $4.35 billion education grant competition, Race to the Top, excludes states that prohibit linking student test data to teachers' evaluations. “I cannot imagine a parent in Houston or anywhere else that would want their child in a teacher's classroom who had a long history of not being able to help a student learn at a significant level,” Grier said. The two largest teacher associations in HISD oppose the plan. Houston Federation of Teachers President Gayle Fallon said she is considering challenging its legality. HISD already uses a statistical analysis of student test scores to decide which teachers get performance bonuses. That same complex formula now would be used to highlight ineffective teachers. The so-called value-added method measures whether a teacher's students scored better or worse than expected on standardized tests. The formula, developed by North Carolina statistician William Sanders, projects how each child should score based on that child's past performance. Teachers whose students significantly exceed expectations are deemed the most effective. ....[/RQUOTER] As noted by the article, this idea is supported by President Obama. So for that I say: Well done, President Obama.
Not sure I agree. Just test the teachers on the subjects they teach at the end of the year....and reward those that have kids doing better. DD
What do you not agree with? Firing the teacher? Are you suggesting to let the incompetent teachers keep on teaching your children? Testing the teachers on the subjects they teach? This is only half of the requirements to be a good teacher. The other half is the ability to teach. You might throw in the willingness and effort one puts in to teach the students also. You might have a PhD on the subject but if you can't teach your students, you are not very useful.
The problem I have is the "Student test scores" bit. I am not a big fan of the Taks test and what it forces teachers to do, they now teach to the test rather than teaching to critically think. I think the Taks test is one of the worst things implemented in the field of education in the last 50 years. DD
If HISD implements this, all I can say is good luck recruiting competent teachers in the future. Even a good teacher wouldn't want to put up with the added stress if they didn't have to.
One problem that I have is that often times, the ability of a student to score well on a test has many factors that are not within the teacher's control. The teacher can create a great learning environment at school, be a great teacher, and know how to deliver the material to the children, but many times the children can't or won't learn it based on other factors. In many parts of HISD (and in other districts) lower income children are often sent to school without proper nutrition, have absentee parents that take no effort to make sure their children learn discipline, come from households with drugs running rampant, have undiagnosed or untreated learning disorders due to zero cooporation from parents, etc. Add on top of this issue that schools now mix classes with all student levels. Lower level students are mixed in with honor students, students with learning disabilities are put into the same classes as students that are gifted, etc. The teacher is then rated on the test scores of all the students combined. Often teachers are "stuck" with the disabled or non peforming students based on tenure or even nepotism (principal just likes one teacher better so gives them the best students.) I would just hope people would take all of these factors into account. Far to often we look at some overall standardized test score across the board, and don't look into the detail of how that was achieved. I would almost say that in some cases a teacher from a inner city school with underpriveledged chilren that attains a 60% pass rate may be a better teacher than a one teaching in Klein or Cy-Fair that attains a 90% pass rate. On the surface, the suburban teacher looks superior, but that teacher had parents that care, parents that provide learning conducive environments to their children, feed them well, make sure they don't deal with drugs, make sure any learning disorders are evaluated and treated, etc.
This kind of testing was implemented because of truly dismal performance by the public school system. Prior to implementing this kind of testing, the teachers were not, generally speaking, teaching their students to think critically. In fact, they were not teaching them very much at all. Students were actually graduating high school without the ability to read or write, in some cases, due to the practice of social promotions. Many of those who could read and write were performing so poorly, on the average, that it had become a national disgrace and a national crisis. The teachers that are "teaching to the test" are doing so because their students have not adequately mastered what is on the test. The better schools, which in most cases are private schools or charter schools, apparently do not have any need to teach to the test, as their program of instruction more than covers the material on these kinds of tests, and their students blow these exams out of the water as a matter of course. If some teachers are teaching to the test, it is because they are working overtime to try and get their students up to speed on this very basic material. If they are teaching to the test, the problem is not with the test, but the lack of adequate progress by the students who are preparing to take the test.
The formula that is being proposed, as discussed in the article in the Original Post, appears to take these factors into account. And the evaluation of teacher performance is not solely to be based on student test scores, but on other factors as well. That is discussed in the article in the OP also.
Those are some great points and I have a mixed opinion about this. While a teacher's job is to teach students you can't compare that to other businesses where they have more control over their supply line. In this case the raw material is the students and teachers don't have much control of what happens with that raw material outside of school.
I believe all this will do is make teachers focus on having their kids pass these standardized tests, rather than actual teach. There is just so much more to learn in school than what the standardized tests have to offer. If a teachers' class continuously fails these tests year after year, then that teacher should be examined more closely, but being fired for poor test grads is absurd.
You seem to have bought into the myth that prior to the implementation of this kind of testing, these teachers were so busy teaching their students "critical thinking skills" that their students just did not have time left over to learn to read and write properly. Talk about absurd. If children cannot learn to properly read, write and do mathematics, then they are not going to be learning higher critical thinking skills either. This appears to be exactly what is being proposed, as discussed in the article in the original post. There is not any discussion of firing teachers solely based on poor scores from their students on standardized tests.
Well said. Test scores should be a factor to look at. They shouldn't be the reason why a teacher gets fired. Furthermore there needs to be steps such as further concentrated professional development with the teacher before firing them. Test scores should be a factor in that as well.
According to analysis done by teach for America, teachers themselves play a bigger role in student achievement than any of the other factors. Here's an interesting article that discusses this idea. http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/201001/good-teaching
because testing has anything to do with smarts The american education system is probably just as ****ed up as our politics are, if not more.
Some good comments here. Some of you had missed the part about grading the teachers based on "improvement of the test scores" and not based on the absolute values though. I read it to mean if the students improve from 60 to 70, then the teachers will have done a better job than if the students improve from 90 to 91.
the problem with that is, there's a large percentage of kids who will do absolutely no work, or put zero effort always, and there is nothing a teacher or anyone can do about them.
The D.C. School district is *the* perfect example of how to clean up a crappy system... <object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=9,0,0,0" width="400" height="264" ><param name="flashvars" value="webhost=fora.tv&clipid=9879&cliptype=clip" /><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always" /><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><param name="movie" value="http://fora.tv/embedded_player" /><embed flashvars="webhost=fora.tv&clipid=9879&cliptype=clip" src="http://fora.tv/embedded_player" width="400" height="264" allowScriptAccess="always" allowFullScreen="true" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer"></embed></object>
