How Should Teacher Effectiveness Be Assessed? Joel Klein

How Should Teacher Effectiveness Be Assessed?

In a report titled "The Widget Effect," the nonprofit New Teacher Project found that in public schools nationwide, teacher effectiveness is not measured, recorded or used to inform decision-making in any meaningful way. The result, according to the study, is a system where teachers are treated as interchangeable parts.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan and Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, have called for an overhaul to our nation's teacher evaluation systems.

How should teacher effectiveness be assessed? What role should student performance and standardized testing have in this equation?

-- Eliza Krigman, NationalJournal.com

Joel Klein, Chancellor for NYC Schools, Co-Founder for Education Equality Project

In education reform, one of the few ideas nearly everyone agrees about is that effective teachers are essential to improving student achievement. In New York City, we are developing a sophisticated system for measuring teacher effectiveness that avoids the debates that have quashed many past attempts. With funding from the Gates Foundation, we have begun a collaboration with the United Federation of Teachers and independent researchers to identify and support good teaching over the course of two years—a study that will be based on our shared belief that teachers teach best when they understand what’s expected of them, know clearly how to reach their goals, and feel assured that no single snapshot measure will determine the course of their careers.

The initiative builds on existing efforts in New York City to improve teacher effectiveness. Last year, we provided “Teacher Data Reports” to principals of schools that provided instruction in grades 4-8 reading and math. The reports show the “added value” teachers brought to their students’ performance. Principals (who could share the reports with individual teachers) are using these measurements to provide targeted mentoring and professional development. In the longer term, teacher data reports and similar instruments should be part of a comprehensive approach to improving the quality of the instruction teachers provide: not as the sole determinant of how a teacher performed but as one means to improve support to teachers, assess performance, and reward effectiveness.

It is not only appropriate, but essential that we use test-based measures like New York City’s school progress reports and teacher data reports to help gauge the effectiveness of our schools and educators. I also believe, however, that we need to improve classroom observation tools and performance measurement of teacher skills to find robust approaches, validated empirically as being related to student achievement, which can be combined with quantitative measures for a rich picture of teacher strengths and development needs. A combination of validated skills measurements, school-wide achievement, and teacher value-added measures could be combined into a fair and balanced approach to assessing teacher effectiveness. I should add that this multi-faceted approach to teacher evaluation is a critical component of the agenda of the Education Equality Project (www.edequality.org), of which I am a Founder.

It amazes me that we continue to rely on subjective teacher performance management systems that proclaim 99% of the adults in our schools to be doing a satisfactory job even as we fail so many of our students. As we look to the future, we must develop a more holistic approach, which includes evidence of student learning as the central focus in our assessment of effective teaching.

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