Here is a late comment regarding Class Evaluation forms... What do you think?
I'll stick with my original opinions. The evaluations would be part of an overall evaluation system. And these are standard in the education industry. Just not in Public Schools... Strange the way that works.
Clayton wrote: "An idea that sounds good but is too simplified. Often the highest rated teachers would be the ones that did not push them academically but told a good story. My experience with parents is that they have little idea what is going on in class as long as their kid is doing well. The parents are to busy worrying about traveling soccer and if their kid is getting playing time. Other parents are completely unaware of what there kid is doing in school because they have marital problems or finical problems, etc. Still some teachers are very good with certain groups of students and have high success rate with these students but they may be students who's parents are uninvolved with school I could go on and on with examples, a popularity contest for teachers is an extreme over simplification of who to judge a teacher, in over 20 years of teaching I have never had a parent spend more than 10 minutes in one of my classes yet I have worked with their child everyday for the whole year. I have not had more than 3 parents visit my classroom during class in over 20 years. I have students in school and I listen to what they have to say about the teachers usually positive but not always, teachers make mistakes and some are probably better for some kids than others but the truth is when I listen to my own kids talk about teachers I realize how little they understand about what is going on. What would be the point of a simple teacher evaluation when there are so many variables including how the student feels that day."
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13 comments:
Wow. It could be just typos-- I make them myself-- but it always bothers me when a self-described teacher commits so many errors of spelling and grammar. I don't care what subject you teach, you need to demonstrate some facility with the English language or the students will think it is optional.
I do value his experience in this matter, but mine is quite different. Kids talk about their teachers, and "the grapevine" seems to quickly reach a consensus on which teachers are tough, fair, or just spacey. If an individual kid has trouble with a teacher, of course, that trouble gets reported to the parent, somewhat accurately I believe, but ONLY that parent would then have a negative opinion of the teacher. I would still not let a parent rate a teacher until after at least one parent-teacher conference during the year. My experience with those is that the child's reports are either confirmed or disproven by that brief encounter.
Even with that said, if you don't want to allow kids and parents to participate in the evaluation, let the principal or supervising teacher do it. There is no reason for not doing it at all, which is the current system.
I was more suprised by the stereotyping of Parents and Students as only interested in sports. And that he thinks they are oblivious to the academic aspects of their student's lives, or who the good/bad Teachers are.
I do know some oblivious parents and some hovering parents, however most parents I know are somewhere between these extremes. They keep track of their kid's grades, assignments, class concerns, teacher thoughts, etc. They would be perfectly capable of identifying the really incompetent teachers. (ie disorganized, poor control of class, emotionally distraught, etc)
As I said, we usually know about these teachers well before my kids get to that grade due to the Parent cross talk... "Make sure you photocopy homework before handing it in, he often loses it..." "Her class is incredibly disruptive, try to stay out of it." "She tends to lose it in class sometimes, so you may want to talk to your student." etc, etc, etc.
The comments are communicated verbally to mgmt, but I don't think anyone wants a written record for fear of actually having to do something about it, and not being able to. Very messy...
As always, I have mixed feelings about this, but I think Clayton makes some very fair points.
I think some parents would provide useful, insightful feedback. But some parents don't ensure their kids have done their homework, don't send their kids to school with a healthy breakfast, don't think their (ADD/ADHD/Autistic/Aspergers/etc) child can be expected to stop distrupting class, etc. So the kid gets a low grade from the teacher and the parent retaliates with a lower grade for the teacher.
I can see how a very good teacher could get a very low grade from a very uninvolved parent/child team., and who does that help? I'm still intrigued by the idea of a 360 review, though, where each of the 3 parties (parent, child, teacher) grades the other two.
--Annie
I would support the 360 feedback system. (G2A Improvement Ideas)
I wonder how giving poor Parents low scores would go over with them... And what could be done about their actions or inactivity?
The reality is that they are a customer... Thus only the Teacher, Mgr, Peers and students would be part of the 360.
Ironically, currently only the Student is graded...
So what is the purpose of teacher evaluation: better training/support or termination?
A principal's comment shared on Ravitch's blog:
"He said that we must remember that one has a moral obligation not to terminate someone's livelihood and career without long and hard deliberation; to do so, he said, required taking responsibility for ruining someone's life. We talked about the "reformers" who are almost gleeful in their zeal to fire teachers. He thought that they failed to recognize the moral dimensions of leadership."
later in the blog post:
"One of my fellow panelists was John Jackson of the Schott Foundation for Public Education. He said that he had recently visited some high-performing nations, and at each stop he would ask someone from the ministry of education: "What do you do about bad teachers?" The answer invariably was, "We help them." And he asked, "What if you help them and they are still bad teachers?" And the response was, "We help them more."
What works best: help or punishment?
St. Paul Schools works to improve teacher performance then works with the teacher to help make the transition to something else a little easier.
What to do with an ineffective teacher? St. Paul starts with support, and moves to accountability
Back to the original topic in other's comments: I think it may be worth it to ask parents for teacher evaluation/feedback on things they know first hand, i.e. they could rate a statement like: "my child's teacher communicates important class information in a timely or regular basis" or "My child's teacher explained my child's progress, strenghths and needs clearly in the conference."
Put me down as totally opposed to teachers evaluating parents. The biggest failing of our current system, IMHO, is that we permit teachers to blame parents for their own inability to teach. I am also convinced that parents who do not have a choice but to send their kids to a failing school fall into despair and quit trying. We can't have teachers blaming parents for a situation which poor teaching has caused. Besides, who is the employee here?
Now in the last week I've had two teachers in my own family tell me that many kids are not learning because of worries about food, clothing, shelter, and emotional problems at home. I will accept their assessment that those kids are a higher percentage than I previously thought, but they have also agreed that we cannot know which of them are crippled academically by parenting until we can know that our teachers are not doing the crippling, and that of course requires teacher evaluations. Then it requires that we DO something with that information. Until we can say with reasonable certainty that we are actually offering an education to 100% of the kids, we won't know whether "failing" parents are 1%, as I believe, or 30%, as others have indicated. Either way, it's time that teachers be expected to do their job and to be evaluated to know they are doing it properly.
From Laurie:
So what is the purpose of teacher evaluation: better training/support or termination?
A principal's comment shared on Ravitch's blog:
"He said that we must remember that one has a moral obligation not to terminate someone's livelihood and career without long and hard deliberation; to do so, he said, required taking responsibility for ruining someone's life. We talked about the "reformers" who are almost gleeful in their zeal to fire teachers. He thought that they failed to recognize the moral dimensions of leadership."
later in the blog post:
"One of my fellow panelists was John Jackson of the Schott Foundation for Public Education. He said that he had recently visited some high-performing nations, and at each stop he would ask someone from the ministry of education: "What do you do about bad teachers?" The answer invariably was, "We help them." And he asked, "What if you help them and they are still bad teachers?" And the response was, "We help them more."
What works best: help or punishment?
St. Paul Schools works to improve teacher performance then works with the teacher to help make the transition to something else a little easier.
What to do with an ineffective teacher? St. Paul starts with support, and moves to accountability
Back to the original topic in other's comments: I think it may be worth it to ask parents for teacher evaluation/feedback on things they know first hand, i.e. they could rate a statement like: "my child's teacher communicates important class information in a timely or regular basis" or "My child's teacher explained my child's progress, strenghths and needs clearly in the conference."
From Jerry:
Put me down as totally opposed to teachers evaluating parents. The biggest failing of our current system, IMHO, is that we permit teachers to blame parents for their own inability to teach. I am also convinced that parents who do not have a choice but to send their kids to a failing school fall into despair and quit trying. We can't have teachers blaming parents for a situation which poor teaching has caused. Besides, who is the employee here?
Now in the last week I've had two teachers in my own family tell me that many kids are not learning because of worries about food, clothing, shelter, and emotional problems at home. I will accept their assessment that those kids are a higher percentage than I previously thought, but they have also agreed that we cannot know which of them are crippled academically by parenting until we can know that our teachers are not doing the crippling, and that of course requires teacher evaluations. Then it requires that we DO something with that information. Until we can say with reasonable certainty that we are actually offering an education to 100% of the kids, we won't know whether "failing" parents are 1%, as I believe, or 30%, as others have indicated. Either way, it's time that teachers be expected to do their job and to be evaluated to know they are doing it properly.
Sorry about the typos. I was sitting in the recliner with my iPad trying to type and also stay calm (everybody wants to add more meaningless paperwork to the schools) when I hit return with out finishing on Facebook. Go ahead take a shot, everybody does these days. The truth is I have two children of my own who are very successful in school. We talk every night at dinner about what is going on at school. I hear what my own kids and their friends say but I have a better understanding of what is going on in the classroom and what the teacher has control over than my kids, their friends or the parents. In 20 years I have taught over 3000
students and yet I have only had 3 parents in my
classroom. Yet everybody knows what makes a good
teacher. I had a parent who felt I was giving his daughter
too much work. This parent told me that girls do not need to know science. Another parent told me anything beside basic math is a waste of time. I could go into a lot more detail and provide many examples but I would be writing a book. Maybe, just maybe I might know something about the subject. The last thing a school needs is another layer of paperwork. Schools are swimming in paperwork. A teacher survey would just be more paperwork to go along with the performance pay paperwork, license renewal paperwork, course credit paperwork, inservice paperwork, student data, testing, attendance I could go on and on. I did not mention all the other surveys schools do (many of which have little value and nobody knows what to do with) except record it, publish it and then discuss it even though from a statistical standpoint it has little value. I am sure we could hire some company and use public funds to put
together another survey to evaluate teachers even though we already have systems in place to do that. In my district
and any others I know of teachers are evaluated in many
ways. One way is using experienced proffesionals
(administrators and other teacher) who come into the
classroom on a regular basis to observe, sometimes
formally and sometimes not. The idea that teachers do not get evaluated is completely false. Every district I know of has evaluators and a teacher is evaluated several times a year. Any good administrator is in the classroom and if the administrator has complaints about a teacher they check it out. I know teachers in my own building as well as other buildings in the district who have been fired by administrators. Talk to the teacher union in the district they can provide you with the process for releasing a teacher, it is not complicated and do not tell me that the teacher's union prevents teachers from being fired that is not true! The union does not want bad teachers, bad
teachers create a negative environment for other teachers.
Remember just because your kid or their friends did not like a teacher does not mean that other kids did not have a good experience with that teacher. When a teacher does lose their job it is not advertised in the paper so you would
never hear about it.
Blogger is frustrating me right now... It sends me the email but seems to neglecting the posting part for some comments. Very strange... Here is a comment from Clayton.
Sorry about the typos. I was sitting in the recliner with my iPad trying to type and also stay calm (everybody wants to add more meaningless paperwork to the schools) when I hit return with out finishing on Facebook. Go ahead take a shot, everybody does these days. The truth is I have two children of my own who are very successful in school. We talk every night at dinner about what is going on at school. I hear what my own kids and their friends say but I have a better understanding of what is going on in the classroom and what the teacher has control over than my kids, their friends or the parents. In 20 years I have taught over 3000
students and yet I have only had 3 parents in my
classroom. Yet everybody knows what makes a good
teacher. I had a parent who felt I was giving his daughter
too much work. This parent told me that girls do not need to know science. Another parent told me anything beside basic math is a waste of time. I could go into a lot more detail and provide many examples but I would be writing a book. Maybe, just maybe I might know something about the subject. The last thing a school needs is another layer of paperwork. Schools are swimming in paperwork. A teacher survey would just be more paperwork to go along with the performance pay paperwork, license renewal paperwork, course credit paperwork, inservice paperwork, student data, testing, attendance I could go on and on. I did not mention all the other surveys schools do (many of which have little value and nobody knows what to do with) except record it, publish it and then discuss it even though from a statistical standpoint it has little value. I am sure we could hire some company and use public funds to put
together another survey to evaluate teachers even though we already have systems in place to do that. In my district
and any others I know of teachers are evaluated in many
ways. One way is using experienced proffesionals
(administrators and other teacher) who come into the
classroom on a regular basis to observe, sometimes
formally and sometimes not. The idea that teachers do not get evaluated is completely false. Every district I know of has evaluators and a teacher is evaluated several times a year. Any good administrator is in the classroom and if the administrator has complaints about a teacher they check it out. I know teachers in my own building as well as other buildings in the district who have been fired by administrators. Talk to the teacher union in the district they can provide you with the process for releasing a teacher, it is not complicated and do not tell me that the teacher's union prevents teachers from being fired that is not true! The union does not want bad teachers, bad
teachers create a negative environment for other teachers.
Remember just because your kid or their friends did not like a teacher does not mean that other kids did not have a good experience with that teacher. When a teacher does lose their job it is not advertised in the paper so you would
never hear about it.
Technically the class evaluation could be almost free in our district and would require almost no time from the Teacher. The RAS parent portal system could certainly collect the data from everyone with internet access.
Now Clayton, are you saying that every other training class and customer service organization that begs and pays for that incredibly valuable feedback is WRONG?
Most stores I visit want to know how they are doing? They tell me to go online, fill out a survey and get registered for a prize all the time. And almost all the classes I have taken since I left the Public Schools have had an end of class survey.
Whereas you make the argument that your customer's opinions really do not matter because the Teachers and Administrators KNOW better... And you wonder why the Conservatives want change?
That argument has caused many large and successful companies to fail. "We know our business better than the customers, we will do what we know is right!" Then they wonder why the customers are gone after awhile.
Now the rough number I use is 3% to 5% based on my 11 yrs of interacting with Teachers in the school setting. Now setting aside your Teacher's hat and putting on your Parent's hat, you truly can not find 1 in ~25 Teachers that should be immediately fired for the good of the students? If not, you must be in a great school.
By the way, they don't need to publish the dismissals in the paper. We Parents keep track of who is still there that should not be. And they do publish the failed attempts to fire Teachers. (ie court cases)
My kids have a combined total of 22years of public schooling and I cannot think of a single teacher whom I think should be fired, or even whose class I would try to avoid for them. Maybe I am oblivious as a parent or the administration is doing a good job hiring and training teachers.
I have also know hundreds of teachers in the many schools in which I've worked and off the top of my head I can think of only one teacher I would fire, based on the fact I would transfer schools before I would put my kids in her class.
I actually had to read it again to completely understand it. Your viewpoint on the topic is very outright and convincing.Evaluation Forms
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