The issue of teacher evaluations, largely dormant for the past year during which most Hawaii teachers have been on a temporary reprieve, has again come forward for discussion, as dozens of teachers have pleaded with the state Board of Education, the Department of Education and the Senate Education Committee to effectively suspend further evaluations until the end of our current contract in 2017.

Once again, members of the public are responding with the obvious question, “Why don’t teachers want to be evaluated?”

This is a fair question, and one that deserves a fair answer. Here is one teacher’s attempt at an explanation.

Many non-teachers probably envision the Educator Effectiveness System (EES) to be an observation method that takes place while teachers are conducting their work, independently of the work itself — a sort of information collection system that shadows a teacher’s daily business but does not interfere with things as the teacher is busy getting work done.

This is far from the case. In order to earn an “effective” or “highly effective” rating, teachers must spend hours upon hours meeting with evaluators; preparing lessons for observations that are of a certain type and that consist of a variety of activities that, realistically, most teachers rarely include in one single lesson; preparing other types of lessons designed for teachers to make predictions about students, collect data on them; and track their progress over the course of an instructional period … the list goes on and on.

Numerous studies have called into question the validity and worth of each of the several components that comprise the new-generation teacher evaluations, of which EES is the local version. I have no space to devote to summarizing these within the scope of this brief article. Instead, I want to continue my focus on the inordinate amount of time EES drains from a teacher’s work year.

The architects of the system never made plans for compensating teachers by building time into the teacher workday in order to complete the sundry new obligations.

Here, a reference to the international studies on public school education published annually by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) is in order. These reports tell us that, of the 36 participating countries, American high school teachers are the second most overworked teachers in the world after Chile, and we share with that country the dubious distinction of being one of only two countries in which teachers spend over 1,000 hours per year in front of students, compared with the OECD average of 644. This was in 2012, prior to the onset of EES.

It’s common knowledge that many American teachers work well over the conventional 40 hours per week.

I generally put in between 50 and 60 hours of work each week and usually work half a day each on Saturday, Sunday and most holidays, including summer vacation days, in order to get my job done.

No wonder that the 2013-14 school year saw teachers across the country fleeing their profession in droves and at the same time warning young people not to go into teaching.

What is the result? The NEA published an article earlier this month showing that enrollment in teacher training programs is at an all-time low.

This year I’m having a fantastic school year. Without too much exaggeration, I can say that my effectiveness has skyrocketed since being released from the odious EES obligations that hampered my work during the previous two school years. I am confident that I am speaking for a majority of Hawaii teachers when I cry, “Please get EES out of our lives so that we can teach!”