A panel of educators and state lawmakers are taking on a tricky question: how should the state evaluate teachers’ effectiveness when there’s no standardized data to show what their students have learned?
Under a state law passed this year, student improvement must be a part of every teacher’s evaluation. That improvement is usually determined from the results of standardized tests.
But some teachers are assigned to a grade level that isn’t given that kind of exam, like kindergarten. Others teach subjects like music or PE that aren’t covered in those tests.
As the panel brainstormed, all seemed to agree that just developing new exams wouldn’t be the best idea. Jill Levine is principal of Normal Park School in Chattanooga.
“A math teacher’s value-added is cut and dry. I don’t know that that’s really possible for an art or a PE or a music teacher the way that it would be for math.”
Most on the panel seem to lean towards developing a menu of evaluation options and giving districts the choice to determine which method to use. In the case of other faculty like principals and guidance counselors, many suggested school-wide scores and graduation rates should be included.
Kenny Lou Heaton teaches career and technical classes in Carter County. She warned other members of the panel that teachers whose work is evaluated by standardized tests are likely complain if they think others aren’t being held to as strict a set of expectations.
“A lot of them don’t think we pull our load of the cart in vocational and in the libarary and in art and music and PE.”
For that reason, Heaton says school-wide data should be used with care. She also emphasized that whatever evaluation options are created, they should all be able to provide hard data that clearly fulfills the letter of the law.
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