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Health & Fitness

Student Test Scores Affect Only 16% of Teachers, But Must Be Used to Evaluate All

The issue of which protocol to use to evaluate educators and what role student test scores should play is integral to successful education reform.   With that issue in mind, I bring to your attention a chart, found on page 47 of the OSPI report entitled “Washington State Teacher and Principal Evaluation Project:  Including Student Growth in Educator Evaluation.”   http://tpep-wa.org/wp-content/uploads/TPEP_Module-Student_Growth.pdf

 

The chart lists four modules of evaluation, identifies the % of teachers assessment, gives examples of each module and then identifies pros and cons for each.  The most notable comparison for me is the disparity between the % of teachers covered by the “Classroom-Based Tools” module (100%) and the State-Based Tools (aka test sores) module (16%). 

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The legislature and a spectrum of corporate education reformers insist we much use the State-Based Tools and have promoted that module in the media for several sessions now.  None of the publicity I’ve read about the use of the State-Based Tools addresses the fact that that module only addresses 16% of teachers.  That had a great deal to do with why the current evaluation law makes use of those student growth scores optional in evaluating teachers.

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Yet now we are faced with a federal mandate to use those scores to evaluate all teachers. 

 

How you apply those scores to the 84% of teachers, whose work is not subject to those measures, confounds the rational mind.  

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