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I don’t think there’s anything silly about proposing value-added assessment for gym teachers, actually. There’s not a lot to get wrong with the inputs, and the kids are frequently assessed for strength, flexibility, and cardiovascular capacity anyway. 

It’s true that there are a lot of neglectful parents and pathetically out of shape kids out there. However, if you argue that it’s unreasonable to expect gym teachers to at least make  a small dent in the larger issue, I would argue that it’s reasonable to ask whether we need gym teachers at all, or to pay them exactly the same as what we pay chemistry and physics teachers. 

“Are doctors who work with private practices measured soley on the basis of how many patients they cure (even they are geriatric doctors)?  Are lawyers who work with law firms measured mostly by how many cases they win (even if  they take clients who may very much appear guilty after looking at the facts)? Or are those professionals trusted in their practice?”

I’m not sure how these analogies became such popular talking points against the arguments in favor of evaluations.  They make little sense.  The push to evaluate teachers is a reaction against tenure and due process protections that do not exist for doctors and lawyers.  Doctors and lawyers may not be assessed by only one measurement.  But they are certainly assessed, and (leaving aside those doctors and lawyers with partnership rights, which would not be the majority of doctors and lawyers) they are fired when their employers decide to terminate them, without an evidentiary hearing or appeals process.  The analogy to attorneys is particularly inapt.  Attorneys can be and are fired for any reason — or even for no reason whatsoever — by their clients.  

So when somebody asks why we don’t use an “evaluation system” for doctors and lawyers, the answer isn’t “because we’re hypocritical and are just beating up on teachers for no reason.”  The answer is “because there is no need for such an evaluation system” in those other professions.  Employers aren’t asking for it, because they already have more ways to fire employees than they know what to do with.

There are good arguments against particular evaluation systems.  There are also some compelling arguments against changing the evaluation system from the status quo (although I think the public battle on that has been waged and lost already).  But drawing analogies to other fields where professionals are already subject to discretionary employment determinations by their employers (not to mention malpractice lawsuits) just doesn’t work. If teachers were in the same position — e.g., if they could be fired at will by principals based on their own judgment — then the analogy would make sense.  

More succinctly:  As many here point out, the point of teacher evaluations is to give the DOE greater ability to fire teachers.   The only reason the DOE wants this power is because it doesn’t have it right now.  If teachers won’t budget on tenure, the the DOE will continue to push on evaluations.  That’s just not going to go away.

My post was about measuring, not evaluations. Feel free to re read.

Good stuff, though Flerp!

That Flerp Person,

Two Points:

     - Your dismissal of the analogy between teachers and doctor’s/lawyers confuses some important distinctions. You say that clients, for all sorts of reasons or no reasons at all, fire their lawyers all the time, thus invalidating the analogy. Partially true, but teachers are employed by schools and school districts (employers), not clients.

Doctors and lawyers also work as employees, and can also can be union members. Witness unions for municipal hospital doctors (The Doctor’s Council, SEIU) and Legal Aid lawyers. In fact, with the shrinking of the traditional private practice and outsourcing and de-professionalization among lawyers, these fields are going to more and more resemble the traditional employer/employee relationship. 

It is perfectly fair for critics of the assessment/evaluation lobby to compare the discrepancy between the treatment of teachers and other professionals. Who would ever think of attacking OB-GYNs for this country’s high rates of infant mortality (www.oecd.org/social/family/database)? Yet it is demanded of teachers that they and the under-funded schools they work in be responsible for the effects of poverty, and for overcoming it.

     - Your description of the underlying dynamics of the teacher evaluation debate is apt. It is fundamentally a question of power, involving the balance of forces between management and labor. The people pushing the new evaluation regime could care less about its pedagogical validity; for them, it’s a politically potent vehicle for exerting more control over labor relations and the composition of the labor force (see young, white, transient).

Yesterday Tim told me that Flerpi was always on this blog because he had two children in the system and he was here  because it
 their interest he was looking after. Im confused how are the issues of evaluation related to his children? I think he enjoys  creating issues much more then his children’s interest. As a thought Principals across the state have signed a petition against the new evaluation system being discussed at the state level. Principals in New York City are afraid to sign the petition because they have given up tenure in their last contract. They are afraid and will not sign something that could destroy their careers. The mayor loves the control he has over his principals and would love the same control over teachers.This dynamic is only talking place in the city and will go away when this mayor goes away.

Its important to oppose whats is clearly wrong.Its great to see that there are administrators who know how wrong this is. These are smart people who should lead this state out of the trouble it’s in. 

No, I read the comment before it was wiped. I kind of found it to be coarse and rude. For the record, I think Tim’s are among the most intelligent comments on this site. If he has a blog, I’d be interested in reading it.

I just hope that it would take into account how important it is to consider the worth of measuring when considering an evaluation system. If we can all agree that measuring teaching is hard -and that measuring learning is even more difficult than that- then we can collectively acknowledge that an eval. system that is based on measurements alone in education is just plain wrong. Even the reformers -with their support of a system that is (was?) 60%  based on observations admit this. 

But that the government has codified these observations (along the lines of Danielson’s framework for effective teaching) means that a “good” teacher now comes from a cookie cutter. This is one of the things principals object to. 

And to have measurements as part of an eval system is one thing, but to say that a teacher cannot keep his or her job if those measurements don’t meet a certain expectation (which is what the state has said with it’s ‘weighting the grades’ approach (the thing they NYSUT sued  them over) is problematic.

But to assume -the way APPR does- that 10% of a principal’s staff is bad and must, eventually, be fired (as Carroll Burris has written in the WaPo a few times now (which I think GS somehow consistently missed in their roundups)) undermines a principal’s autonomy in such a way that it actually becomes impossible to build a good, functioning staff for a school.

This means that 10% of the teachers that principals selected are bad? This means that a principal who takes care to build a school community based cooperation must now contend with competitiveness among his or her own teachers? 

These reformers are outsiders! They wouldn’t know the first thing about education and would probably not even pass a college level Ed class if they took one. But they’re embarrassed about years of flat test scores (measurements) and they would like to blame someone other than themselves. 

It is against all of this backdrop that devoted parents (like Tim) listen to the words “evaluation” and “value added” and immediately think that measuring everything we see in the learning process is going to be a good thing. 

But … years from now, when every student can make the bare minimum expectation for push ups, yet none of them can actually excel at anything (because there was no teacher there with the freedom to spot to spot and develop those gifts) will I read on Tim’s blog about how we helped this generation of children, or hurt them? 

I’m just trying to say evaluation is a good thing. A good evaluation? even better. But this?? I don’t think it’s 1)going to be fair to teachers or 2) going to help kids…and the reasons for that have all to do with the measurements. 
Anyway …

Tim, as a physical education teacher of almost 20 years, let me fill you in on how things work in the real world: PE teachers, like classroom teachers, are responsible for teaching skills. Skills, by definition, consist of teachers who provide instruction with feedback while the student develops the skills via practice. With practice and the refinement of skills comes learning. The learning of skills is dependent on many things. However there are 3 things that are crucial to learning: First, is the quality of instruction of the teacher. Second is the willingness of the student to be engaged and practice. Last, is the natural ability/talent of the student. The same learning process takes place in the classroom. My job as a PE teacher is to teach proper skills and form and hopefully convince students that living an active lifestyle is worthwhile and enjoyable. For example, I can teach a student the proper form of how to do a push up. Even a morbidly obese student should be able to describe either orally or in writing the proper way to do a push up. (Or even point to a video that shows the proper form) However, you seem to think that my job is to put a gun to the head of all of my students and force them to do as many pushups as possible in a test. Well, I have news for you, that does not/nor will happen. The same is true for classroom teachers. They teach students how to construct sentences and paragraphs. A classroom teacher should not be punished if that student does practice these skills or chooses to demonstrate those skills on the particular day of a state mandated test. Lastly, all NYC students in grades K-12 take a yearly physical fitness assessment called Fitnessgram. The designers of the Fitnesgram assessment explicitly state that the assessment is NOT to be used for teacher evaluation. The test is used to assess /communicate the health and development of students, not to boast how many pushups they can do. PE teachers do not grade students based on how many push ups they can do. In the same vein, PE teachers should not be evaluated on how many push ups their students can do Just imagine if your child came home from school and said, “Dad, Mr. Smith, my favorite PE teacher told me that he is not coming back next year because our class did not do enough push ups”.

Kudos to Diane Ravitch and Ernest Logan they are right to ask principals and administrators to add their names to this just cause. The big problem being that while the Bloomberg administration has failed at many of its reforms it has been quite successful in destroying the institutional memory of the old Board of Education. That fact coupled with the many neophyte principals the leadership academy has produced make this an uphill battle. Many of the new city principals are too afraid or have drank the cool aid and will not join this worthwhile petition.

Tim. Thank you for your response. I do think there is a fair way to test the result of my measurement/ability as a PE teacher: It is called objective administrative observation and the implementation of meaningful feedback/discourse from experienced supervisors. I have to be observed just like all classroom teachers. I have no problem when my principal, vice principal, or any other school leader comes to my gym to watch me teach. I am more than willing to allow my supervisors observe my teaching craft and give me meaningful advice. I also provide quality lesson plans, student written work, and 100% compliance on my Fitnessgram assessment results. However, the use VAM for PE teachers, (or any other teacher) is treading on very impractical and unethical evaluation techniques. 

If I may summarize your positions:  

1. When discussing teacher evaluation systems, it’s useful to look at how other “professionals,” such as doctors and attorneys, are evaluated.

2. Doctors and attorneys are not evaluated by “hard-line metrics,” as if they were salespeople.

3. Because they, like doctors and attorneys, are professionals, teachers also should not be evaluated by “ hard-line metrics,” as if they were salespeople.

My question is simply, how should you be evaluated?  You say that because teachers are professionals like doctors and lawyers, they shouldn’t be measured by “hard-line metrics.”  But presumably you also don’t think teachers should be evaluated like doctors and lawyers are evaluated (i.e. according to their employers’ discretionary determinations about their performance).  It appears that you find it useful to look at other professions for purposes of identifying how “professionals” should *not* be evaluated, but not for identifying how they *should* be evaluated.

To Hirst,
The general topic here is the APPR; the new evaluation process for teachers. Through that process, teachers are dimissed after two poor performances (doesn’t that sound like othe professions?). I think they still have a licsense to teach, so they’d be welcome to go to a different state or disctrict within the state or to a charter or other private school. They just can’t teach in the NYCDOE. When you factor that in the many (many) qualified teachers lined up to take their place, this does create a market for teachers (just like doctors and lawyers).

And of course, by market you’re talking about a much smaller market than you seemed to imply with that comment, right? We’re talking about a specifically educated, highly trained labor pool -a post graduate degree required for all three fully licensed professions. But you knew that when you made that comment, didn’t you?

Look, if you weren’t aware of the general topic then it was actually you who hadn’t thought it through.
 
And if you were, then you’re comment is probably guilty of cardstacking (giving too much weight to one set of facts while completely ignoring another set of facts that would otehrwise not support your claim). 

You know cardstacking is a tactic of car salesmen, right? Just checking.

Now, does APPR offend my ego as a professional? Yes. You bet. Absolutely. But before you go dismissing the assertion let me encourage you to read the other reason I asserted: We are just coming up with a new (post war!) evaluation system. Doesn’t it only make sense to reach out and look to see what other professions (not occupations) are doing with regard to their eval systems?

To Flerp,
I hate to admit it, but you have made an outstanding point. You have surmised correctly, and I am at the moment, unable to articulate what I would like to see with regard to an eval system. I have a bullet list in my head, but I won’t insult your awesome point with it until I can articulate it in a more rounded way. Very good form.