The call to improve student achievement has driven public dialogue across the nation to focus on teacher evaluation. Done correctly, teacher evaluation can be a good thing.
Evaluation has two purposes: examining teacher effectiveness in instructing students, and providing professional growth for teachers.
In the context of Hawaii’s struggle between the Department of Education and the teachers’ union for a contract that includes changes to its teacher evaluation system, there is intent to use multiple measures to evaluate teachers, including standardized testing, specifically the Hawaii State Assessment (HSA).
Unfortunately, we already know the limitations of widespread standardized testing: excessive emphasis placed only on scores, too much time away from actual learning in order to help students understand how to take the test, and anxiety for students as they prepare for tests. These limitations should be examined for their impact on teacher evaluation.
As Hawaii moves toward implementation of Common Core State Standards, schools look to reform instruction by adding depth to students’ thinking. This requires students to move beyond simple facts to higher levels of thinking that require analysis, synthesis and evaluation of data. This approach to standards-based instruction can have a positive impact on student achievement. Yet we don’t have tests that sufficiently measure these advanced areas of learning.
Furthermore, tests cannot examine important aspects of learning that teachers impart: creativity, passion, distinctive learning strategies, curiosity and persistence, to name a few. Teachers can observe these dispositions for learning every day, but no standardized test can measure the growth of these characteristics.
Does that mean we will ignore such dispositions, especially when our most effective teachers are skillful in helping children identify their interests, strengths, and what they need to pursue their goals?
What the public may not realize is that not all students in elementary schools take the HSA. In the case of my school, which serves preschool to sixth-grade students, only children in grades three through six take the test. That means that approximately one-fourth of a school’s teaching staff might be evaluated using student test data, while the remainder may not be scrutinized in such a manner.
In secondary schools, students in assigned grades take the HSA, but since instruction is departmentalized, many teachers’ students (social studies, physi- cal education, guidance, health, world languages, career and technical education, art, music, band, dance, and drama) do not take tests that measure the content for which those teachers are responsible.
There are also librarians, registrars, and student activities coordinators who may not have assigned students who take the HSA. In all schools there is also the question of test scores of children in special education classes, youngsters who are learning English, and students with poor attendance. What consideration will be given for students whose low scores are affected by factors that result in their performing below grade level in much of their work?
One must also wonder about high schoolers who see the test as an ordeal. No graduation requirement is tied to the test, so what if they decide not to take it? How will their teachers be evaluated?
Until we answer these questions, our use of tests to evaluate teachers will be ineffective.
