Sometimes you nod in agreement with a writer until you reach a “Ya, but” point. Then your nod turns into a shake of the head.
I read “Do Evaluations Penalize Teachers of Needy Students?” by Stephen Sawchuk (Education Week, August 2014). I fully agreed with his take on the unfairness of teacher evaluation procedures that apply the same student achievement criteria to teachers of academically-efficient children and teachers of academically-inefficient children. Poverty, special needs and lack of English language literacy are real impediments that can significantly diminish a child’s achievement on academic assessments. Teachers in dense, urban schools often have higher numbers of academically-inefficient children. In addition, the more successful teachers of challenged children in urban districts frequently are assigned proportionately more academically-challenged children than their peers because of their past success. As Sawchuk makes the case, an unfair playing field is created when the academic achievements of these children are compared with the academic achievements of more affluent, instructionally-ready children in schools without as many distractions and these achievements are used to evaluate the professional effectiveness of teachers. I found myself nodding in agreement with his argument and his points.
http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/teacherbeat/2014/08/do_ratings_penalize_teachers.html?intc=es
But, his writing stopped short and my nodding moved from vertical agreement to a sideways “It ain’t so”. Unfair playing fields what they are, we still must teach with the purpose of moving the learning achievement needle from “this is what they knew, could do, and how they processed information before I taught them to this is what they know, can do, how they process information after I taught them.” All kids can learn and must be taught for the purpose of learning regardless of their circumstances.
As a first year junior high school teacher in Flint, MI, in 1970, I was overjoyed to be a teacher. The fact that the 36+ students in each of my six classes a day were populated with more poverty, racial diversity, and learning challenged children than classrooms in the junior highs in the more affluent part of the city was inconsequential to my daily teaching and my students’ daily learning. My job was to cause these children to learn their seventh and eighth grade English and world studies curriculum even though on any given day there would be a different combination of children and the non-educational problems that arrived with those present often took us far away from the curriculum. If in golf you play the ball where it lies, in education you teach the children with the background and baggage they bring with them to their place and time for learning. Every child in every classroom brings a unique background and perhaps baggage; it is part and parcel to teaching children. When children have more problems and more baggage, learning is harder to achieve. True enough, so get over it and teach them.
That said, I could return to Sawchuk, as his interest, once he described an inequitable state of affairs, was to address educational policy. I could now begin to nod again in agreement. Teacher effectiveness and school effectiveness policies and procedures need to understand that every learning needle begins at a different place on the given achievement scales. Certain things may always be true and educational policy can and should address these truisms. There is an approved curriculum to be learned and there is a place and time for teaching and learning. There is a public demand for learning efficiency and educational accountability. And, there is a mounting politic that wants to blame someone when learning is not efficient or the local achievement meter does not compare well the achievement meters in other districts, states and nations. Policies that assure what legislation and the courts have decreed, an equal access to a quality education, understand that some children live and are schooled in places that have not and do not provide equity and quality in the local schools. Policies that work to assure equity and quality provide for fairness. However, when policies and procedures are blind to the human story of the teachers and children being taught, they cease to be fair educational policies and become policing policies. And, that is where I find my greatest agreement with the Sawchuk argument. Teacher effectiveness evaluation policies that do not understand the conditions for teaching and learning are not educational improvement policies, but are only political policing policies. The blind enforcement of these political policing policies is unfair to teachers of children in disparate teaching and learning conditions. Why would we choose to be unfair when we know the difference between fair and unfair?
So, I agree with Mr. Sawchuk. Teacher effectiveness and school effectiveness evaluation policies that do not take into account the human stories of those being evaluated are not fair policies and need to be changed. And, then I disagree with his end point. Unfair policies need to be changed but they are not cause for a pity party. Pull up your socks and teach all children regardless of the inequity of their living and learning conditions and move their learning achievement needle. At the end of a day of school, children are not moved by the fact that teacher effectiveness evaluation policies are unfair; they are moved by the fact that you cared enough about them and their learning to give them your best teaching. That is what moves their learning needle.