As a new teacher, I am a little nervous about the evaluation process, especially because I know that it varies so much from school to school. Some systems that I have read about or heard about from my classmates seem like fair ways to evaluate, while others really make me question both the reliability and validity of the measures. One example of a measure that seems particularly unreliable to me is Value-Added Evaluations. Value-Added basically attempts to measure how much growth a teachers gets out of his or her students and how effective the methods of teaching used are. However, over the course of even just two years, a teacher's score can drastically change, even if the teacher has made no noticeable changes to his or her style. To me, this clearly shows that there is an issue of reliability, and as I am sure many of us remember from our college courses, if a measure is not reliable, it absolutely cannot be valid. There is no way we are measuring what we think we are measuring if we cannot even get consistent measurements on something that should stay relatively constant over time. It would be like me stepping on the scale and seeing that I way 150 pounds only to step on the same scale two hours later to see that my weight was 800 pounds. Clearly, the scale is not measuring my weight. The same logic applies to teacher evaluation systems. They must be reliable in order to be valid. Another system of evaluation that I recently learned about is the kind that they use at my mother-in-law's school. They use a combination of state test scores (measuring growth rather than absolute score), observation by both the principal and the curriculum coach, and whether or not the teacher met his or her goals from the beginning of the year. I like this system because it gives the teacher some agency because he or she is the one setting the initial goals. The observations are going to be subjective, but observation is so important to the process of evaluating a teacher that I do not think you can just cut them out. Oh, and of course, the fact that they look at growth rather than just absolute score is critical. If a 3rd grade student comes in reading on a kindergarten level, there is very little chance that he or she will score on grade level on state exams. But if a teacher can get that student to a second grade level, the teacher sure deserves some recognition! All three of the elements that this school uses seem like a fair way to evaluate. I actually would like to see some sort of student evaluation thrown in there, even if that particular evaluation is used more by the teacher than by the school. Maybe the school could use some sort of measure that accounts for the teacher adjusting to students' needs. I know that would be hard to measure, but I think it would be worth the time and effort to come up with a system of measurement that works.
I actually have a meeting with the principal at the school where I will be teaching in the fall next week, and I am going to talk with her about their evaluation process. I'm a little nervous to see what she'll say, and I definitely wish I had thought to ask about this sooner. Things will be fine, I'm sure, but it sure would be nice to know up front how my performance will be evaluated.
