Walker: Fire all the Teachers! But Student Test Scores Wrong Way to Go.

To hear governor candidate Scott Walker talk about it, teacher evaluations based on student tests is tough love, and another way to finally weed out freeloading union teachers. But why base anything on research when strict disciplinary remedies illicit stronger, more predictable voter reactions and outrage. From Upfront with Mike Gousha (Goo-shay):



The facts say otherwise, and once again reinforce the shoot from the hip style of the Republican Party and why were in this deep recessionary hole. From the Economic Policy Institute:

American public schools generally do a poor job of systematically developing and evaluating teachers. Many policy makers have recently come to believe that this failure can be remedied by calculating the improvement in students’ scores on standardized tests in mathematics and reading, and then relying heavily on these calculations to evaluate, reward, and remove the teachers of these tested students.

… there is not strong evidence to indicate either that the departing teachers would actually be the weakest teachers, or that the departing teachers would be replaced by more effective ones. There is also little or no evidence for the claim that teachers will be more motivated to improve student learning if teachers are evaluated or monetarily rewarded for student test score gains.

A review of the technical evidence leads us to conclude that … such scores should be only a part of an overall comprehensive evaluation. Some states are now considering plans that would give as much as 50% of the weight in teacher evaluation and compensation … Based on the evidence, we consider this unwise. Student test scores are not reliable indicators of teacher effectiveness, even with the addition of value-added modeling (VAM), a new Economic Policy Institute report by leading testing experts finds.

The distinguished authors of EPI’s report, Problems with the Use of Student Test Scores to Evaluate Teachers, make clear that the accuracy and reliability of analyses of student test scores, even in their most sophisticated form, is highly problematic VAM results show that they are often unstable across time, classes and tests; thus, test scores, even with the addition of VAM, are not accurate indicators of teacher effectiveness.

Student test scores, even with VAM, cannot fully account for the wide range of factors that influence student learning, particularly the backgrounds of students, school supports and the effects of summer learning loss. As a result, teachers who teach students with the greatest educational needs appear to be less effective than they are.

Furthermore, VAM does not take into account nonrandom sorting of teachers to students across schools and students to teachers within schools. Furthermore, creating a system in which teachers are, in effect, competing with each other can reduce the incentive to collaborate within schools—and studies have shown that better schools are marked by teaching staffs that work together.

Finally, judging teachers based on test scores that do not genuinely assess students’ progress can demoralize teachers, encouraging them to leave the teaching field.

Demoralizing teachers, by demonizing their unions or poorly funding mandates on educators, is really the point here. Oddly, teachers in private schools doing a similar job or more poorly are never mentioned. Voucher school advocates have never suggested similar tests for private school teachers, complaining instead that such meddling would interfere with the free market and inhibit innovation.