Headlines

Should Test Scores Be Used to Evaluate Teachers?

By Wall Street Journal
06/25/2012 10:55 AM
1 Comment

How much to credit—and blame—teachers for student performance is an issue that continues to confound the education field. To what extent is each student’s progress directly attributable to the teacher’s efforts? What other factors can determine a student’s success? Is there a way to measure each factor separately, including the teacher’s influence?

These are just some of the questions that surround the issue of whether student test scores should be used to evaluate teacher performance.

Some say it’s unfair to base teacher personnel decisions on student test scores. Students have different levels of ability and commitment, and different experiences outside the classroom. No two students get exactly the same amount of parental support.

Others say that student test scores give an incomplete view but provide a starting point, a basic means of comparison. Combined with reports from trained classroom observers and surveys of how students rate their teachers, supporters say, the test scores may be very useful indeed.

, a professor of education and economics at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and the faculty director for the Center for Education Policy Research, argues in favor of using test scores in evaluating teachers. Linda Darling-Hammond, the Charles E. Ducommun professor of education and faculty co-director of the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education, Stanford University, argues against.

To read more, visit the Wall Street Journal.

, , ,

  • steve

    As teaching is a social service profession, it has traditionally given up performance-based forms of incentive in favour of responsibility-based ones, a fixed salary, appraisal systems and the sharing of information in such collegial ways that high standards can be established and maintained profession-wide. They have done this not just because of the multiple, incalculable causal factors involved in teaching psychologically complex human beings, but also because of the invariably different times and gestation periods involved in getting a varying number of diverse students to perform to a specific and socially desirable level.
    If only we could be first to ‘time-and-motion’ the teaching profession, this performance pay model seems to say, we could then outperform teachers in the Baltimore Experiment. Designed to ‘incentivise’ the best, this social experiment not only blew budgets (intelligent teachers quickly met all criteria when eventually published), but also restricted sharing in a profession which crucially relies on it – and then contributed to sharp increases in litigation against Boards charged with apportioning a fixed pie. (In other states it led to test fixing, particularly in jurisdictions where budgets relied on results.)
    Recently and most authoritatively, the Harvard Business Review’s concluded that performance pay should be abandoned because it 1) lacks precision 2) is open to manipulation by both parties 2) distracts employees from more important goals 4) undermines intrinsic motivation and 5) it is not cost-effective as there are cheaper ways to motivate employees. If something is wrong in principle, surely it is always wrong in practice.
    The real questions to be asked, then, in the quest for increased teacher effectiveness, is why an outdated incentive system has been championed at the expense of research re feedback learning and experienced excellent teachers becoming recognised by students. Why not reward them by seconding them on one or two year contracts to create and update teacher resources or to travel locally as professional development experts, thereby raising standards for the whole profession. As well as by offering spirit- and knowledge-renewing sabbaticals every six years and providing alternative careers. And yes, if necessary, also offer exit/other opportunity strategies to those for whom the daily demands of classroom teaching are no longer suitable or sustainable.
    ‘The best time to fire teachers is when you hire them’. Beyond that, the present appraisal system can already identify strengths and weakness and act on them. Where the government has made a step in the right direction (Finland) is in raising entry standards. But why no think-tank to study the main reason top-performing Finns rejected performance pay almost 30 years ago in favour of raising the whole profession – and of giving all teachers the expertise, time and professional esteem to become as effective as humanly possible in an imperfect world.

Latest Activity

Upcoming Events View All >

MEDIA CONTACT

Jill Anderson

News Officer
617-496-1884jill_anderson@gse.harvard.edu