ESEA Renewal Could Gain Momentum, p. 1
Progress has been stalled on a reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), pending since 2007. The current version of the law is the No Child Left Behind Act, enacted in 2002. President Obama is pushing for a more flexible version of NCLB, touting the $4 billion Race to the Top competition and recent efforts to develop common academic standards as approaches that could be incorporated into a reauthorization. He would like to push back the goal to bring all students to proficiency on state tests to 2014, replacing this with new standards focused on getting students ready for college or for the work force. He also wants to spend $100 million to recruit new science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) teachers.
There is bipartisan agreement in a number of areas that could be included in a reauthorization. There is a desire to modify the NCLB yardstick known as “adequate yearly progress,” which is seen as punitive and inflexible. There is agreement that the federal government should address the needs of lowest-performing schools and promote teacher evaluation and improvement. The focus should be broadened to other subjects besides reading and math. And leaders in both parties want to give more control to states and districts over the strategies that are used to improve student achievement.
There have been some disagreements, however. Republicans want to hold down spending, often do not like federal standards of any sort, and some question whether there should even be a Department of Education. Democrats have clashed over whether test scores should be a factor in teacher evaluations and pay. One prominent House Democrat suggested that teachers need to know how their practices affect student learning, but he acknowledged that teacher organizations will have to be involved in teacher evaluations.
[My thoughts: Some of Obama’s comments about and goals for education, as outlined in hi s State of the Union address, are certainly laudable: “When a child walks into a classroom, it should be a place of high expectations and high performance.” Instead of another race or competition for limited available funding, however, I would rather see funding sufficient to foster innovation and improvement in all schools that are underperforming. Wouldn’t it be great if we funded education fully, and required the military to hold bake sales and fundraisers to raise the money for new weapons systems?]
Wanted: Ways to Measure Most Teachers, p. 1
A big issue in teacher evaluations is what measure or measures to use to estimate how much of an impact an individual teacher has made on student learning. Almost a dozen states last year took steps to require teacher evaluations to include consideration of students’ academic growth. One controversial approach measures a teacher’s “value added,” a measure that looks at the difference between students’ test scores on standardized tests at the beginning of the course and again at the end of the course. These standardized tests are typically available on in the areas of math and reading, however, and only in grades 4-8. According to one estimate, about 70% of teachers teach in nontested grades or subjects. One problem with using such standardized tests to guide or evaluate teachers is that they represent a snapshot in time, a picture of where students are at, but they do not tell the teacher what needs to be done next or how to improve teaching strategies. They measure the endpoint and not the beginning point in student learning.
In some areas throughout the country, teachers’ unions, administrators, and content-area specialists are working together to develop measures of teaching effectiveness in areas other than math or reading. They are looking at alternative measures such as projects, portfolios (scored using guidelines), and classroom-based assessments. In one North Carolina district, schools help teachers set rigorous achievement goals for their students and select or craft assessments to measure goal-attainment. Performance pay in the district is based on these outcomes. Studies have shown a correlation between rigorous learning objectives and higher performance by students. Individually-set student learning objectives are difficult to compare with other schools, however, unlike district-wide or state-wide measures. Several states now require multiple measures of a teacher’s contribution to student learning. Other issues with teacher evaluations include finding ways to assess teachers of students with disabilities, and making sure that some teachers are not penalized because of the demographic makeup of their classes.
[My thoughts: Some subjects are more amenable to standardized testing than others (math, for example), and these subjects are probably better-suited to more standardized criteria for teacher evaluation. Other subjects have more variation in their curricula and do not have standardized tests, making comparative measurement of teacher effectiveness more difficult. And then there are the larger questions, such as how to measure a teacher’s contribution to the development of students’ critical reasoning abilities. I’d like to see a formula for that!]
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