EdSource Today: Do-or-die time for teacher evaluation bill

After lying dormant for a year, a bill to overhaul the state’s teacher evaluation law will resurface Monday, subject to continuing negotiations over its cost and some disagreements over its content.
AB 5’s prospects have improved with the support of the California Teachers Association. CTA expressed reservations a year ago, but the bill’s author, Assemblymember Felipe Fuentes, a Democrat from the San Fernando Valley, agreed last summer to a few key changes, so now the union favors it, CTA lobbyist Patricia Rucker said this week. One amendment would require training administrators to do uniform and knowledgeable evaluations.
The bill, which would require that all districts evaluate every teacher based on a set of attributes and practices outlined in the bill, is similar to an evaluation framework that the union adopted earlier this year, Rucker said. AB 5, she said, “is a clear and good policy document.”

via Do-or-die time for teacher evaluation bill – by John Fensterwald.

Education Next: Teacher Evaluations Found to Improve Midcareer Effectiveness

Teacher Evaluations Found to Improve Midcareer Effectiveness

When teachers in Cincinnati were evaluated rigorously, student performance on math tests improve

CAMBRIDGE, MA –A new study shows that Cincinnati’s rigorous Teacher Evaluation System (TES) has had a direct and lasting effect on midcareer teachers’ performance.  Students taught by a teacher in the years after she had been through the evaluation program scored 0.11 standard deviations higher in math, on average, than the students she taught in the years before her evaluation (as measured by end-of-year 4th through 8th grade state tests).  This difference is equivalent to about 3 – 4 months of additional instruction or a gain of about 4.5 percentile points for the average student.  The Cincinnati evaluation is a yearlong process and a teacher’s students also scored 0.05 standard deviations higher in the year their teacher was being evaluated, a difference of 1.5 – 2 months of additional instruction.

Researchers Eric S. Taylor and John H. Tyler note that to the best of their knowledge, their study is the first to test the hypothesis that practice-based teacher evaluation programs can help to improve teacher performance, in addition to their value in identifying teachers’ strengths or weaknesses.  Well-designed performance evaluation “can be an effective form of teacher professional development,” the authors observe.  Their analysis, “Can Teacher Evaluation Improve Teaching?” will appear in the Fall issue of Education Next and is available at www.educationnext.org.

via Teacher Evaluations Found to Improve Midcareer Effectiveness.

Education Next » Inside Schools: Capturing the Dimensions of Effective Teaching

When the world is in danger and it’s time to summon the superheroes to save the day, my six-year-old son dives into his toy bin. Just like the comic-book authors, he emerges with a diverse team of superheroes, each with a different superpower. (I’ve noticed he never chooses three Supermen or four Spidermen, for instance.) One will have awesome physical strength but lack strategic vision; one will fly or run with superhuman speed but be impulsive and irresponsible; and another will lack strength and speed but make up for it with tactical genius (often combined with some dazzling ability, such as creating a force field or reading minds). The team always prevails, as its combined strengths compensate for the weaknesses of its members.

In the largest study of instructional practice ever undertaken, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) project is searching for tools to save the world from perfunctory teacher evaluations. In our first report (released in December 2010), we described the potential usefulness of student surveys for providing feedback to teachers. For our second report, the Educational Testing Service (ETS) scored 7,500 lesson videos for 1,333 teachers in six school districts using five different classroom-observation instruments. We compared those data against student achievement gains on state tests, gains on supplemental tests, and surveys from more than 44,500 students.

via Capturing the Dimensions of Effective Teaching.

The Educated Guess: API has served its purpose (if it ever did)

By John Fensterwald – Educated Guess

A court decision this week involving Los Angeles Unified has raised again the contentious issue of evaluating teachers using standardized test scores. But a recent report for the think tank Education Sector recommends adopting the same method developed by Los Angeles Unified to replace the Academic Performance Index as a statewide way of measuring schools’ progress.

Called Academic Growth over Time, AGT is a value-added model that compares students’ actual performance on state tests to their predicted performance based on demographic characteristics – family income, language, and ethnicity – as well as past test scores. The intent is to distinguish factors of learning that schools can control from those they can’t.

The use of AGT to evaluate individual teachers has sharply divided teachers in Los Angeles Unified. United Teachers Los Angeles opposes using AGT in any manner, while teachers affiliated with Teach Plus Los Angeles and Students Matter support using it as one of several measures, counting for no more than a third of an evaluation. But less controversial is the district’s use of AGT as a tool to evaluate schools, in part because it involves a larger number of student test scores and doesn’t call for high-stakes decisions affecting individual teachers’ careers. To the contrary, a schoolwide AGT can encourage collaboration and team-teaching

via API has served its purpose (if it ever did) – by John Fensterwald – Educated Guess.

The Educated Guess: Student scores must be factored in evaluations

By John Fensterwald – Educated Guess

In a decision with statewide implications, a Superior Court judge ruled that Los Angeles Unified must include measures of student progress, including scores on state standardized tests, when evaluating teachers and principals.

But Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge James Chalfant will leave it to the district, in negotiations with its teachers union and administrators union, to determine what other measures of student performance might also be included, how much weight to give them in an evaluation, and how exactly test scores and other measures should be used.

Chalfant’s decision would appear to strengthen Superintendent John Deasy’s push to move forward with a complex value-added system of measuring individual students’ progress on state standardized tests, called Academic Growth over Time. Deasy wants to introduce AGT on a test basis in a pilot evaluation program next year. But the unions remain adamantly opposed to AGT; Chalfant said the use of AGT as a measure of student progress is not his call to make; and today, hours before Chalfant is to meet again with parties in the lawsuit over evaluations, Los Angeles Unified school board member Steve Zimmer will propose barring AGT from staff evaluations. The school board will vote on his motion later this month.

via Student scores must be factored in evaluations – by John Fensterwald – Educated Guess.