Want to know who the best teachers are? Just ask students.
It's a comment that comes up frequently when people talk about crunching numbers to calculate teacher value. On Tuesday, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board will hear teachers talk about both approaches: Using student survey data and revisiting the controversial "value-added measure" to gauge teacher effectiveness.
Some of the teacher study groups reported enthusiastically on their "talent effectiveness project" work at the Feb. 14 meeting (see the video here; the report starts at about the 1:50 mark). Tuesday's follow-up promises to be even more interesting, as the remaining groups report on using student surveys, trying to make value-added ratings useful and dealing with the subjects and schools that are hardest to find teachers for.
The meeting starts at 6 p.m. Read the agenda here, and go to the video link above to watch it live online.
Update: At a news conference after the last presentation, a teacher involved in studying classroom management invited reporters and the public to sit in on upcoming focus groups for teachers. However, when I asked for specifics, I was told CMS has decided to keep those sessions closed. "There will be community engagement events later in the semester, however, that will be open to the public," says David Pollack, the communications coordinator for the talent effectiveness project.
Monday, February 27, 2012
Students rating CMS teachers
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24 comments:
I think that student evaluations of teachers should only be solicited from students with GPAs 3.75 (of 4.0) and above. I well remember the popular teachers whose classes typically were bull sessions and/or film fests!
Jim, I don't agree. Some teachers are such ineffective teachers it's difficult to achieve a good grade. I heard of one teacher at one of the "best" high schools in Charlotte, basically just puts notes up on the overheard projector and students spend the period copying them. Parents have to get an outside tutor for their kids to pass the class. If your parents can't afford a tutor, you're basically out of luck. Teachers like that should be let go. I'd take a first year teacher over that ANY day.
Base a teacher's pay on a popularity contest among children? Amazingly absurd!
Jim, that would seem like the top 5%-10% of the classes which would be a skewed representation of the student opinion. Plus, to get the best understanding of performance a larger sample size would be needed. You could survey these students over the course of several (4-6) semesters. If you aren't confident in that solution, you could survey all students, pull the overall GPA for that course and find a correlation between a positive/negative report against average course GPA. ALL should take the survey and all we can hope is that it is obejective.
CMS Parent:
Shouldn't a teacher like that be exposed for they fraud they are.
I'd certainly do it if my kid got a teacher like that.
The most popular teachers among students are rarely the best.
It isn't until the students have matured and are in college or graduate school that most are able to distinguish between a good teacher and a fun teacher.
They aren't always the same.
8:18, absolutely.
Education is one of the few businesses where customer satisfaction doesn't seem to matter. Perhaps schools should survey parents as well as students.
re: Pathmaker.
And what do you believe the parental response rate will be at title 1 schols? I'm guessing, but I'd put it at < 10%.
To Pathmaker @9:23
To follow your analogy - it's the only business where many of its customers:
(1) Don't want the product.
(2) Disrupt the sales process.
(3) Are hostile and disrespectful.
Nobody's talking about using the student surveys as the ONLY measure of effectiveness; it's being considered as one among many. I think one of the things they'll talk about is how to ask the right questions so it's not just a popularity contest.
At the end of the semester of my kid's first year in a local private high school, classmates were given a survey on what they considered their teacher's strengths to be, what areas they wish could be better communicated - from both the teacher and the school, and what they would like to see reviewed/included/excluded from the classroom and/or course material. The surveys were distributed anonymously before the midterm exam, and each kid handed in the sealed survey as a condition to be given the exam. The teachers reviewed them individually, added their comments about the subject matter, not the student, and the department head reviewed all surveys with the teachers in a planning meeting. Evaluative info was placed in the teacher's performance file, constructive changes to curriculum and/or teaching style were immediately implemented second semester. Sounds good to me, if CMS needs to quantify this in some way with bubbles and numbers, or whatever...allow for comments, you might be surprised in a good way by what students have to say. For the trouble makers, their inadequate or lack of input would be weeded out. Sounds like a plan to me...
My son will be a freshman next year. I just got him into a private high school in Charlotte. Done with CMS forever! We could not be happier. CMS is an absolute mess.
10:54, What you propose is a good solution IF you believe the following about the school's administration:
1) They understand the curriculum as well as or better than the teachers do.
2) They understand the classroom environment well enough to know what changes can/should be implemented and how to implement them.
3) They have the teacher's effectiveness and the students' learning as their primary goal.
I think you will find in most schools in CMS that at least one of these is not true. At my former school, all of them were not true.
I think that student input in teacher evaluations would be a wonderful thing. However, In gaging students evaluation of a teacher you would have to look at the composite picture, as I'm sure is the goal. If done correctly it could be a great evaluation tool. CMS should also try to incorporate parent opinion as well; the input you have for an evaluation the more likely you are to get a true picture.
To 10:55 AM
I hope that you find happiness in your new school environment. However I fail to see how your comments have anything to do with Rating CMS teachers. If you want to rant about CMS the Buzz would be the best place for you to express those thoughts.
Pathmaker:
You forgot the other industry that many of the malcontents in our schools will soon discover:
Prisons.
Not much customer satisfaction there, either.
Consider school their preparation for lives filled with dissatisfaction.
The first day I ever substitute taught for CMS I had a student ask me what my "credentials" were. The kid was quite leery about taking the class I was about to teach. After explaining I had over 20 years experience teaching the subject area in addition to a M.A. and a teaching license, he reluctantly decided to participate. At the end of the hour and a half period, the kid thanked me and then went directly to the principal to inform him it was OK to hire me. I passed the $90 a day substitute teaching audition! The kid also announced to the entire class that every CMS official who works uptown smokes crack, "before school, during school and after school - and you all know it's true" before taking a pot-shot at one school board member. Only at NWSA. God, I love this school.
"CMS has decided to keep those sessions closed. "There will be community engagement events later in the semester, however, that will be open to the public," says David Pollack, the communications coordinator for the talent effectiveness project."
HOW TYPICAL! Wait until CMS decides what to do then open up for "input" they won't take into account, because they have already decided what they will do.
Business as usual at CMS!
1:23 - It's how CMS ran the teacher groups!
Student survey's would be potentially useful as one of multiple measures of assessment. All the research points to using multiple measures as the best way to assess both students and teachers.
However the real issue here is the lack of trust between CMS and,well, everyone. No one trusts that this would be anything but a tool CMS would use to do whatever it wanted, the same with the 2 million dollar boondoggle value added.
There is no trust.
No trust in the data,no trust in the administration and no trust in how the administratation will conspire to use the data.
No Data!
No Peace!
The current board of education and their new superintendent will make sure this and other efforts towards accountability will fail.
CMS has been talking about student evaluations for years, but it's not happening. Long live the status quo.
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