Professional Development

In my last post, I discussed the problems with evaluation systems for teachers. Let's see what we find when we compare the evaluation and professional development process in teaching with my husband's job in the corporate world:

Business: He is evaluated each year.
Education: In the past, teachers in my district were only evaluated every 3-5 years when their license needed to be renewed or their contract was up. (With the new evaluation system next year, it will be every 1-2 years.)

Business: The evaluations involve him and his direct supervisor meeting first to set up specific goals by which to measure his success. Then he works all year with those goals in mind.
Education: We write an individual professional development plan (on our own time) but are encouraged to make the goals very broad so that whatever professional development we end up doing will fit into those goals, not the other way around.

Business: At the end of the year, he spends several hours of his regular work day (usually spanning multiple days) gathering evidence and writing up a self-evaluation to prove that he met his goals. His boss does the same thing because his boss has been intimately involved in what he has done at work throughout the year. Then, they meet to discuss the final evaluation (which factors into his opportunities for raises, bonuses, and promotions).
Education: Once every 5 years, we have to put together a portfolio (on our own time) to show that we've completed enough professional development to renew our teaching licenses. We have a 10-minute meeting with a professional development committee member to show it to them. In addition, we are observed by an administrator once for 30-40 minutes and have a cursory pre-observation conference and a post-observation conference. So far, there are no opportunities for raises, bonuses, or promotions.

Business: He gets to request (and it is usually granted) professional development that will most benefit him and his professional goals. He can request specific training, certification classes, and all-expense-paid conference travel.
Education: The school has no money for teachers to request to go to trainings, conferences, and workshops. The school does provide free professional development offerings for us to be able to renew our licenses. But we do not get to request anything. We just go to whatever is offered within the district. If we want to go to a conference that isn't put on by the district, we would have to pay for it ourselves and take a personal day.

Those comparisons could continue for much longer, but I think you get the idea. Teachers are on their own for meaningful development. If anything, the school and district often get in the way rather than promoting actual development. For example, it seems that every year our district administrators read a few books and decide that they are really important to education, so they base our staff meetings for the year on the idea/model/concept from that book. And so they spend (waste) a bunch of their ($100,000+ salaried) time re-packaging those ideas for us teachers. Then, maybe because they feel bad about the waste of time and resources to do this, they force us to continue doing them all for the next few years while they also add in new ideas. So we've probably got about 10 different "initiatives" going on at any given time based on the whims of someone at Central Office. Of course, if we are actually interested in reading the book, the original source, not the interpretation of someone who doesn't even teach, we have to buy it ourselves.

Don't get me wrong--I think my school and district do a lot of things right. For example, a few years ago, my principal decided to have us all read the controversial book A Repair Kit for Grading: Fifteen Fixes for Broken Grades and meet in inter-departmental groups to discuss the ideas in it. Then each group had a "captain" who met with the principal to bring feedback to him from their discussion groups. He stressed that there was not (that he knew of) going to be any type of mandate about the ideas presented in the group, that he was more interested in our discussions. I felt like my professional abilities were valued with that activity and that my opinions were heard. Some of the teachers adopted some or all of the proposed ideas from the book, but no one was required to. And I truly do have more meaningful opportunities than teachers in other districts. My district has brought in some prominent speakers like Kelly Gallagher and Cris Tovani for us language arts teachers.

But the system in general is broken. When teachers aren't given meaningful information from their evaluations and aren't provided with meaningful professional development opportunities, how can we expect them, and the education system as a whole, to improve?

Oh, yeah...because most teachers want to make an impact on students, even if the politicians and administrators inadvertently stand in their way.

Teacher Evaluation: An Impossible Fantasy?

Nationwide, there is a push for teacher evaluations to be based on student test data. There are any number of analogies that can be drawn to illustrate why this doesn't make sense. For example, are dentists held accountable for patients who don't brush their teeth at home? Or who can't afford a toothbrush? Or who don't even go to the dentist regularly? I generally don't like analogies, but if they get people to think about the issue, then fine.

So even though I don't really agree with the analogy, I do agree that teacher evaluations should not be based largely on student test data. Unless it is a REALLY good test. Maybe the tests that come out to evaluate the Common Core will be really good. But I doubt it. Have we had a really good standardized test ever in the history of education? I don't think so.

The other part of the teacher evaluation is typically an observation by a principal. This also does not fairly evaluate teachers.

My husband works in the "business world" and his supervisor is in charge of four people who do basically the same work but slightly different aspects or accounts or whatever. In schools, you might have one principal per 500 students and 30 teachers, spanning multiple content areas and grade-level curricula. Or more! How is that one person going to effectively evaluate all of those teachers in addition to the myriad other responsibilities they have? Obviously, they can't.

Luckily, teachers are trained to reflect on their practice often. Luckily, most teachers want to evaluate themselves. Luckily, most teachers want to improve each year and be as effective as possible. I mean, we got into this job to help students learn and grow. There are so many negatives and obstacles in this profession that a teacher's sense of fulfillment comes almost exclusively from connecting with students and helping them learn and grow. So that's what we're going to do, no matter what the government mandates.

Of course there are the few teachers who have lost that passion and hate their jobs. Those are the people who should be forced out of the classroom.

The teachers who want to do well but just aren't very good at teaching yet should be given effective feedback and training in order to become better teachers. But if the only feedback a teacher gets is from a once a year or once every three years, 45-minute "observation," then those teachers can't actually get any help from that. And a single composite score or even a few disaggregated scores from a standardized test does not help that teacher improve. In my next post, I will address effective professional development.

First of all, there should be a rubric of some kind that defines a teacher's job. (Wow! I can't imagine that one. Has anyone ever properly defined what a teacher is responsible for? Will this rubric include basically all aspects of parenting in addition to academics?) Teachers needs to know everything that is expected of them. How can we require teachers to assess students this way and then not assess teachers the same way?

So, assuming this job description and rubric exists,
How do we effectively evaluate teachers? With multiple sources of data:

1. Classroom observations with pre- and post- conferences: Not just a single isolated observation but a sustained relationship throughout the year so that the evaluator knows what really goes on both during class and during planning and assessment. 
2. Standardized assessments for students: The tests must have proven validity and reliability. They must be narrow enough in scope to measure what is really supposed to be taught in that specific class, not just content but also skills demonstrations. And they should be aligned throughout the grade levels. 
3. Student surveys: The students know what goes on in the classroom. Ask them.
4. Parent surveys: The parents are our customers. They should be satisfied.
5. Self-evaluation: This should not just be piled on top of all the other responsibilities teachers have. This should be something that the teacher is given additional compensation for and should happen at the end of the school year when their other responsibilities are over. Teachers should be able to evaluate themselves according to that hypothetical perfect rubric and set legitimate goals.
6. Past student surveys: We all know that a teacher's influence goes well beyond one year with their students. If you really want to know how good a teacher is, ask the students who had him/her in the past about how the teacher influenced them.

And how do we afford that? I don't know. But until someone figures it out, teachers won't be adequately evaluated.

A Peek Inside My Classroom

I'm very fortunate to have small classes. And in my experience, it makes all the difference.

Not to get too political here, but in the last presidential election, Mitt Romney was harshly criticized for claiming class size doesn't matter. And while that assertion is supported by some research, it's not exactly what he said. He said class size doesn't matter as much as teacher quality. And that's an important distinction.

If you give a bad teacher a small class, it won't make a difference. But if you give a good teacher a small class, it can have amazing results.

My district has committed to Scholastic's READ 180 program and they support it well. My freshman class is limited to 15-ish students. (This year it was 17, but 12-14 is really ideal.) And I have them for two class periods. During that time, they basically have four 20-minute activities. There is a whole group lesson, a small group lesson, an individualized computer lesson, and independent silent reading.

(I don't follow the READ 180 program perfectly. My students are more advanced than what the program was designed for. My district uses READ 180 in the middle school, also, so by the time they get to me, they are only a couple of years behind. I created a hybrid of our district's English 9 curriculum and the READ 180 program.)

Absolutely the most successful part of class is the small group time. I can go so much more in-depth with students and really figure out their strengths and struggles when I'm only working with 4-6 of them at a time. I get a full 20 minutes every single day with each small group of students! Until you get the opportunity, you can't fathom how valuable that is!

Instead of teaching a few lessons and then having a test over something, here's what teaching looks like in my class. I teach a lesson during whole-group time. Then, I get to help students practice the skill or concept in a small group setting. I can get real-time information about how well they understand it, rather than having to wait until a quiz or test. And I can give immediate feedback to students so they can revise their thinking and try again right away. And by the time we get to the test, I know they are all ready for it. I could never do that with 30 students in a class!

And it's certainly not for nothing. My students average at least two years worth of growth on standardized reading tests each year. And they are able to truly master things, instead of just retaining them for one unit and cramming for the exam.

So for a good teacher who knows how to maximize the opportunity to have small class sizes, it can make all the difference!

One-to-One Computer Initiatives

Born in 1983, I'm kind of in-between Gen X and Gen Y (or the Millennials). Even though most of my colleagues are Gen X and my students are Gen Y, I identify more with Gen Y. I've had a computer for as long as I can remember and have been emailing since elementary school. I do remember actual encyclopedia books existing but I don't think I ever used one. We had a trusty Encarta CD by the time I was doing any kind of research for school.

So, yeah, I consider myself a digital native. And my first reaction is always to be excited about new technology and innovative approaches. But then my pragmatic side takes over as I think about actual applications of it and whether it will yield any better results than the former approach.

I'm very skeptical of online classes and think they only work for a narrow few situations (more on that in a future post). But on the other hand, I can't imagine teaching without a digital projector and some access to computers in my classroom. Currently, my school has public Wi-Fi for students, and students are encouraged to BYOD, but they don't all have one. Most of what they have are smartphones, with screens too small to do many things and too small for me to easily monitor what they are doing. Ideally, every student would have access to a computer (not a tablet) at all times.

And that brings me to a discussion of one-to-one technology initiatives in schools. I was reading "Districts Place High Priority on One-to-One Computing" from Education Week extolling the benefits of One-to-One and glossing over the myriad logistical problems: initial start-up cost, infrastructure costs to power and charge them all, costs to repair and replace damaged items, etc.

The article cites the Natick public school system in Massachusetts. They spent $1.8 million on Macbooks for all of the high school students. There isn't much hard data on the success of the program yet, just a vague comment about more students being on the honor roll and anecdotal evidence from teacher comments.

In fact, a quick Google search turned up no hard evidence. Maybe there is some out there? Leave it in the comments if you know of any.

The Auburn school system in Maine also tried a one-to-one program with kindergarten and the students that were given tablets outscored those without on all aspects of the district's literacy tests.

Awesome. Except no one pointed out the obvious reason for the success (probably because no one who was interviewed actually teaches students): the devices were cool. They were a motivational tool more than a real learning tool. Engagement went up because of the novelty.

So it seems like I'm arguing against these programs. But actually, I would LOVE for all of my students to have a laptop. As a Millennial, I find it more natural to learn that way. I feel like I am often adapting my lessons to fit the lack of computers. So for me, it would work out well. But even more than the hardware and infrastructure costs for these programs, the biggest problem is training teachers to think like Millennials and take full advantage of the resources.