As the spouse of a teacher, I know at least this much about the current education reform debate: Teachers don’t get the respect they deserve.
Fortunately, Tennessee education officials are working to change that, in part by instituting a new teacher evaluation system. Although controversial, the state’s new assessment and feedback program for teachers conveys a critical message: that teaching is a rigorous profession, and it should be treated like one.
That’s not the message you hear from critics. According to them, the new teacher evaluation program is half-baked, unfair and leads to dire consequences.
Complaints include that it involves overwhelming paperwork, requires unnecessary lesson planning, demands administrators spend too much time in classrooms watching teachers, and — most ominously — leaves teachers so fed up that they quit.
What, exactly, is all the fuss about?
Under the old system, school leaders rarely observed teachers working in their classrooms, and teachers were evaluated without taking any measure of their students’ success. As a result, teachers seldom received substantive feedback about the day-to-day practice of their craft. At the same time, administrators too often failed to appreciate why their best teachers were so effective or missed warning signs that struggling teachers needed support.
That wasn’t a formula that was going to improve teachers’ skills or — ultimately — change the disappointing state of Tennessee schools.
The new system was designed to make that change. Now, administrators must watch each teacher in the classroom at least twice per semester and provide timely feedback. And teachers’ evaluations depend, at least in part, on what students learn in the classroom.
These are substantial improvements, but they’re only part of the equation. The critical piece is that the entire evaluation and feedback process is built around a specific, detailed blueprint of expectations and best practices developed by experts here in Tennessee.
This blueprint recognizes that teaching is as much science as art. Drawing on research about what works, it measures the environment a teacher creates in the classroom, the planning that teachers conduct before and after class, and the instruction that takes place during the class period itself. Within each of these elements, it provides specific examples for what separates an excellent teacher from a good one. In effect, the blueprint represents the educational equivalent of Moneyball, promoting research-based techniques over gut reactions.
Critics who describe it as a burdensome checklist, or believe that it’s too detailed to be useful, miss the point.
What Tennessee is trying to do is take the state-of-the-art in teaching and make it the day-to-day reality in our schools.
Make no mistake: This will require administrators to spend much more time supporting teachers at the expense of other responsibilities. It will require teachers to think longer about what they’re doing, and why they’re doing it. And, yes, some teachers might quit as a result.
But these are features of the new program, not flaws.
If we’re serious about racing to the top in education, we must respect our teachers’ abilities, push them even harder, and trust that they can lead the way.
News By:
tennessean.com
Fortunately, Tennessee education officials are working to change that, in part by instituting a new teacher evaluation system. Although controversial, the state’s new assessment and feedback program for teachers conveys a critical message: that teaching is a rigorous profession, and it should be treated like one.
That’s not the message you hear from critics. According to them, the new teacher evaluation program is half-baked, unfair and leads to dire consequences.
Complaints include that it involves overwhelming paperwork, requires unnecessary lesson planning, demands administrators spend too much time in classrooms watching teachers, and — most ominously — leaves teachers so fed up that they quit.
What, exactly, is all the fuss about?
Under the old system, school leaders rarely observed teachers working in their classrooms, and teachers were evaluated without taking any measure of their students’ success. As a result, teachers seldom received substantive feedback about the day-to-day practice of their craft. At the same time, administrators too often failed to appreciate why their best teachers were so effective or missed warning signs that struggling teachers needed support.
That wasn’t a formula that was going to improve teachers’ skills or — ultimately — change the disappointing state of Tennessee schools.
The new system was designed to make that change. Now, administrators must watch each teacher in the classroom at least twice per semester and provide timely feedback. And teachers’ evaluations depend, at least in part, on what students learn in the classroom.
These are substantial improvements, but they’re only part of the equation. The critical piece is that the entire evaluation and feedback process is built around a specific, detailed blueprint of expectations and best practices developed by experts here in Tennessee.
This blueprint recognizes that teaching is as much science as art. Drawing on research about what works, it measures the environment a teacher creates in the classroom, the planning that teachers conduct before and after class, and the instruction that takes place during the class period itself. Within each of these elements, it provides specific examples for what separates an excellent teacher from a good one. In effect, the blueprint represents the educational equivalent of Moneyball, promoting research-based techniques over gut reactions.
Critics who describe it as a burdensome checklist, or believe that it’s too detailed to be useful, miss the point.
What Tennessee is trying to do is take the state-of-the-art in teaching and make it the day-to-day reality in our schools.
Make no mistake: This will require administrators to spend much more time supporting teachers at the expense of other responsibilities. It will require teachers to think longer about what they’re doing, and why they’re doing it. And, yes, some teachers might quit as a result.
But these are features of the new program, not flaws.
If we’re serious about racing to the top in education, we must respect our teachers’ abilities, push them even harder, and trust that they can lead the way.
News By:
tennessean.com
0 comments:
Post a Comment