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Colorado bill raises stakes for teachers
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Stacey Vanek-Smith: This week, Colorado is expected to pass a bill that links teachers' jobs to student performance. Marketplace's Eve Troeh has more.
Eve Troeh: The Colorado bill would tie a teacher's evaluation to student scores on standardized tests. If the scores are good three years in a row, the teacher can get job protection. If the scores are too low for two years, the teacher could be fired.
Aaron Pallas: It's an interesting kind of twist that the test scores have low consequences for students, but high consequences for teachers.
Aaron Pallas is a professor at Teachers College of Columbia University. He says the bill plays into a popular element of education reform: weak teachers must be cleaned out of the system.
Mike Miles is superintendant of the Harrison School District in Colorado Springs, Col. He says teachers may not be ready for the new standards.
Mike Miles: Almost everybody gets a proficient or exemplary evaluation. That's not real.
The bill is part of Colorado's bid to qualify for funds from Race to the Top, a federal grant program for schools.
It's expected to clear the legislature this week.
I'm Eve Troeh for Marketplace.
This year I have put in 12 hour work days, done work on the weekend, tutored willing students, called numerous parents for a myriad of reasons, and many of my students are still not proficient. Some students' scores have even dropped. Perhaps because they have to deal with drugs, or parents on drugs, or bullying or pressures from peers to have sex, and finding equivalent fractions is the last thing on their mind.
How is a teacher responsible for students who leave the country for a month or two at a time? How is a teacher responsible for a student who comes in one or two weeks before testing, sometimes because they were kicked out of another school in the nick of time. All this bill is going to do is motivate schools to cheat, to get rid of problem students however they can, and to play a game, not to focus on how well their students are doing.
I refuse to play the game. I will always focus on my students that I know may not make proficiency in a year as well as those that are up to grade level. The student who doesn't do any work and that I need to find a way to motivate. The student who is being abused or neglected at home. I will cross my fingers and hope that a student does well on some test, but my priority is for them to learn in the way that works for them, and that they will be more equipped for what THEY want to do which may not involve skills that allow them to perform well on a test.
We only have the student for at most an hour or two in school.
We're teachers, not miracle workers. We do everything that's in our power, but it is astounding how much is not in our power. Focus on how to help these children as a whole and when that problem is solved, then you can blame all the teachers you want.
This is the first time in my memory that such a brief story managed to include a line that had me screaming at the radio as I drove to work:
"It's an interesting kind of twist that the test scores have low consequences for students, but high consequences for teachers." (Aaron Pallas)
I work at The University of Maine at Fort Kent. My colleagues and I see the consequences of low test scores for students EVERY DAY - they are under prepared for college, struggle to get through if they get in at all, and wind up poorly equipped for the labor market, underemployed, and disadvantaged FOR LIFE. Weak teachers HURT KIDS, in ways that are subtle and pernicious.
We can argue whether the test are well constructed, accurate assessments of learning, but they ARE a measure, and poor performance DOES suggest that a student is not learning as well as we would hope. They are CALLED teachers because their job is to teach - if the learning is not up to par, the teaching is not up to par (or the teacher is not adequately assessing the need for outside help, which is also part of their job). Collegiality, student happiness and discipline, pitching in, and administrative and professional involvement are estimable qualities, but teachers should be evaluated primarily on what ought to be the core of their job: successful teaching.
Actually Harrison School District 2 went in student numbers this school year and the academic gains made are due to training up teachers in their instruction and now paying them for the hard work and gains they are making. This district is taking the right steps in putting kids ahead of adult/teacher issues. No special programs have been eliminated or even reduced significantly.
Mr. Miles is responsible for the worst teaching climate in the state of Colorado and hasn't held a professional license of any kind for almost four years. While incremental gains on standardized testing are laudable, his district is losing vast numbers of students whose parents are not on board with his drive to focus only on standardized testing at the expense of special education, gifted and talented programs, the arts, vocational and other program areas. Mr. Miles is a ghost author of the legislation and is seeking to feather his own nest on the backs of students, staff and parents in his district while receiving $250,000 in compensation.
