×

School Districts Should Keep Teacher Evaluations Simple

Almost lost in the avalanche of legislation passed in the closing days of this year’s state legislative session was a bill untying teacher evaluations from state-mandated tests.

Good riddance to bad rubbish. We don’t necessarily disagree with the idea of creating ways to hold poor teachers accountable and remove them from classrooms. There should be a way to remove teachers who can’t teach. It’s up to supervisors to set standards and make sure employees meet them. That’s how things work in the private sector. If you can’t handle a job, you can be fired. There is no better incentive to do a good job every day than the threat of having your job and benefits taken away.

The issue here was one of execution and reliance on nebulous measures that doomed former Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s teacher evaluation system from the start. Cuomo, as was his way, tried to make what should be a simple process far too complex. Eventually, the system fell apart.

And, while everyone is celebrating, let’s not forget that this move was almost preordained by the state Board of Regents and the state Education Department. As the state Education Department and Board of Regents began moving away from the Regents tests as a graduation requirement, what sense did it make to continue using state tests to evaluate teachers? The Board of Regents was telling the public that state-backed tests are essentially useless. Of course the state was going to decouple teacher evaluations from state tests. The same state education commissioner who said we have to listen to students who say Regents tests are too hard is going to listen to teachers who say relying on state tests to evaluate their performance is unfair.

Evaluating teachers should be simple, so let’s not get too worked up about the demise of Cuomo’s teacher evaluation system. Given the problems bigger school districts have finding teachers it’s not as if schools were eager to fire poor-performing teachers anyway. The old system still required almost two years, eight hearings and multiple appals to remove a teacher for poor performance. Let’s be frank – those who can’t hack it in the classroom leave on their own. Some struggle but improve with training. They may never be superstars, but they can meet minimum guidelines to keep their jobs.

Schools now have eight years to negotiate a new teacher evaluation system with local bargaining units and then implement those systems. It shouldn’t take that long. These evaluations should, frankly, be simple.

School administrators are paid well to oversee school buildings. They should be able to evaluate a teacher’s classroom performance without relying on state test scores. There should be no mention of rubrics or matrixes in these agreements. What does the trained eye say? Is the classroom safe and orderly? Is the teacher adequately teaching the material that needs to be covered in each school year? Are struggling students properly identified for more help? Are gifted students being given adequate opportunity to take on more challenging work?

It really should be that simple.

The real issue is the dismissal process for teachers who can’t meet the relatively low bar we have set. Abolishing teacher tenure is a simple solution, but it will never happen in New York. Perhaps teachers with too many consecutive poor evaluations revert back to probationary status.

Whatever form removing bad teachers takes, we can guarantee it won’t be simple.

Starting at $2.99/week.

Subscribe Today