Pa.+Bill+would+Use+Student+Performance+to+Rate+Teachers

=By Dan Hardy= =//Published in the Philadelphia Inquirer//= =//7/5/11//= = = = = =The Corbett administration wants to change how public school teachers are rated.= =Specifically, it wants standardized test scores to be a large measure of how educators are judged when it comes to whether they keep their jobs, and, eventually, whether they receive tenure or merit pay. = = The change could become a statewide mandate next year. = =Advocates say it only makes sense that student achievement be the main measure of teachers' success.= =Teachers' unions and others question whether test scores are a fair measure of teaching ability because many other factors, including poverty and school funding, influence how students do in school.= =Legislation introduced last month by Senate Education Committee Chairman Jeffrey Piccola (R., Dauphin) and backed by the Corbett administration would require for the first time the use of student performance in teacher rating systems.= =Now, teachers are evaluated by school district administrators who observe them in classrooms. Using a checklist of attributes, the administrators rate teachers satisfactory or unsatisfactory. Two consecutive unsatisfactory ratings can lead to dismissal, a rarity in Pennsylvania.= =According to a state Department of Education survey, 99 percent of teachers received satisfactory ratings in 2009-10.= =The survey shows that out of 11,311 teachers rated for performance in the Philadelphia School District in 2009-10, just 21 - two-tenths of 1 percent - were rated unsatisfactory.= =According to the National Council on Teacher Quality, which favors using classroom performance to rate teachers, 10 states, including Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Louisiana, and Maryland, use "evidence of student learning" as the main criterion in judging teacher performance. New York passed regulations this spring requiring that state test scores count for 40 percent in teacher evaluations.= =This fall, the Pennsylvania Department of Education is scheduled to launch a pilot teacher-evaluation program using test scores and a variety of other methods.= =The districts that would try the new system have not been determined.= =Pennsylvania's acting education secretary, Ronald Tomalis, said in an interview that a new system was a high priority. He favors having student performance count for 50 percent of a teacher's rating, he said.= ="The ultimate goal of any evaluation system is . . . to drive student achievement," Tomalis said. "If the evaluation is not tied to that, we've lost sight of our mission."= =He said an effective evaluation system should use classroom observation and scores on state and local tests, and should factor in how students in the school as a whole are performing.= =It would not just be pass-fail, he said, but would rank teachers according to several levels of proficiency. And it would seek to evaluate how much progress students made with a teacher and whether students knew what they should at their grade level.= =Many teachers are skeptical.= =Christina Puntel, a Spanish teacher at Parkway Northwest High School in Philadelphia, is one.= ="I'm not opposed to having my performance measured by student growth over time, but not just on standardized tests," she said. "Performance as measured by tests is too narrow a standard. Tests are designed so some students will do well and others won't."= =Paul Wright, a history teacher at Radnor High School, said: "The value of judging teachers based on test scores is very limited."= =Wright said he emphasized teaching analytical skills and concepts and could see growth as his students showed in projects how much they had learned.= ="There are limitations to multiple-choice tests," he said. "There's an efficiency to it, but it costs you quality and depth."= = Jim Testerman, the president of the Pennsylvania State Education Association, the state's largest teachers' union, said he agreed in general with using student performance as part of a teacher's evaluation, but not 50 percent. = ="The research doesn't support" giving that much weight to it, he said.= =Testerman compared using test scores to evaluate teachers to judging doctors on mortality rates. Oncologists, for instance, are more likely to have patients die than ear, nose, and throat doctors, and teachers in different situations are bound to have different success rates, he said.= =He favors using more sophisticated and uniform classroom observations, employing local as well as state test scores, and evaluating a body of student work. The PSEA and other education stakeholders, he said, "really have been trying to find their way to good, new, robust evaluation. . . . We don't want to be the people who just say no."= =Piccola's legislation would bypass the usual route for this kind of change - regulatory action through the state Board of Education - and instead require the state Department of Education to come up with a new teacher-evaluation procedure by the beginning of 2012.= =A new evaluation system is "essential," Piccola said. "I think everybody admits we don't have an effective system of evaluating teachers now, and effective teachers are key to student success."= =Tomalis said the current evaluation methods had "little rigor" and were essentially "worthless."= =Testerman said that while the rating system needed to be updated and should incorporate student performance, the current system was still a valuable tool.= =Of Tomalis' criticisms, he said: "I'm concerned that someone who has never conducted one of these evaluations or been the subject of one has drawn those conclusions."=

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