TV Media Perspective: Improving Evaluations as a Road to Success

In a clip from Education Gadfly’s Channel titled D.C. Teachers’ perspectives on Evaluations through Impact, teachers have a chance to speak regarding Impact, a new system of evaluations. The interviewed teachers are in support of Impact as a system of evaluation. Impact involves standardized test scores and five observations over the course of the year. The teachers feel that the addition of observations to the valuations process gives evaluators a better idea of teachers’ quality through taking a look at their methods in the classroom. Under Impact, the teachers have a chance to defend themselves if they do not score well. They can go over their results first with their evaluator and then their principal if they still feel that they have been evaluated unfairly in some way. The teachers who were interviewed seem to think being evaluated is positive both for their careers and for their students.
ABC News spoke with Arne Duncan, Randi Weingarten, and Michelle Rhee in an interview entitled, Crisis in the Classroom. Weingarten believes unions are not the issue so much as we need to work toward solutions. Improving teacher evaluations is an important step toward some solutions. All three interviewed agree that merit pay is important because it creates incentive to raise the standards, which is something our country desperately needs to do. Duncan stated that we have been dumbing down standards, and that is what is letting us fall behind.

Brooking’s Institution Channel interviewed Russ Whitehurst, the Director of Brown Center on Education at Brookings. The Impact evaluation system was the main subject of the interview. Whitehurst stated that having a poor teacher could have an incredibly detrimental affect on a student’s progress over the year. Students who are unfortunate enough to endure this experience over successive years may never catch up. He believes it is important to have teacher evaluations that work and are evaluating at a consistent level throughout each state and throughout the country. Even good systems are not helpful if they are not comparable.

The Politics Hour aired an interview with Michelle Rhee regarding teacher evaluations in which Rhee addressed some of the criticism that has surrounded the new Impact system of evaluation. Rhee believes the Impact system of evaluation is fairer to the teachers, because it includes an objective component. When asked if she agrees with one district’s release of teachers’ evaluation scores to the public, Rhee stated that releasing the results of such evaluations to the public would be a good idea if done in the right way.

On MSNBC, Arne Duncan asserted that we must close the achievement gap. He noted that we would do well to worry less about class size and more about the talent of the teacher. Schools in nations that have surpassed us academically, such as Finland, have sacrificed small class size to ensure that every class has a highly qualified teacher standing in front of it. Finland allows only the best in their class to educate the country’s students. We as a country need more qualified teachers. Duncan believes our current NCLB policy has many faults. He believes we should fix NCLB in a bipartisan way. We need to provide opportunities and higher expectations.

The dominant narrative in TV media is in support of a new system of evaluations that includes both the results of high-stakes testing and classroom observations of teachers. TV media takes a stance in favor of revising the evaluation system without shining a negative light on teachers or unions. Instead, the TV media is working to spread the message that improving the evaluation system is the key to achieving the academic progress our nation strives for and would be beneficial to both the students and the teachers.

What Bloggers Have to Say About Teacher Evaluations

Anyone who has a computer and access to the world wide web has access to the largest pool of information at their fingertips. News can not only be viewed by anyone, anytime, anywhere, but it also creates an opportunity to write and share beliefs and ideas to those willing to take the time to read it. A major outlet for this sharing of news and critique is the blog. The blog allows for written praise, critique, and conversation amongst a wide variation of peers. Although it is not the most unbiased of media - though what isn't these days - blogging creates a unique opportunity for those who do not work in the mainstream media (e.g. various news broadcastings and big-name newspapers) to make themselves and others heard. The heated topic of teacher evaluations, high-stakes standardized testing, and "value-added" measurements (VAM) system of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and Race to the Top (RTTT) has spiked a great amount of responses from the blogging community, most of which, are not positive reviews of the current status quo.

The view on standardized testing and the VAM system

In general, the response to the use of standardized testing scores to measure the value and effectiveness of teachers has been a negative one. The overarching reason for this is the tests have been deemed unreliable, inconsistent, and an inaccurate measure of an individual teachers worth. When boiled down, the main problems of the use of test scores to are these: statistical error rates, year-to-year test score instability, day-to-day score instability, nonrandom student assignments, imprecise measurements, and out-of-school factors.

The research of Peter Schochet and Hanley Chiang shows that the statistical error rate is 35% of one year's test score data used for measuring the effectiveness of teachers and a 25% statistical error rate of three years' data. In other words, one out of four teachers are at risk of being misrepresented by the score data every three years; an "average" teacher performance may mistakenly be judged as "below average."

Tim Sass, an economics professor at Florida State University is cited for noting that the students teachers have year-to-year have varying test scores that illustrates a great inconsistency in what the data says. Teachers who have been ranked in the top one year may suddenly drop to the bottom and vic versa. It isn't their performance in teaching that is inconsistent, it is the students and their abilities.

A similar effect is seen on a daily basis; a student may be prepared for a test but the events and their physical and mental wellness may fluctuate and cause them to have an "off" day on test day. This too creates an inconsistency in test scores.

The testing is not one-size-fit-all and because of this teachers of special needs, low income, and English learning students suffer. The VAM system assumes the students should be progressing at the same rate and does not take into account those who historically have trouble with standardized testing.

This assumption can be applicable to the learning progress of individual students. Students do not learn in a simple upward motion; mistakes are a part of learning and are important in learning how to do something right. This fluctuating learning curve can affect the score of a single test.

Coinciding factors to the day-to-day score instability are the out-of-school factors. These factors include but are not limited to poverty, food availability, health, and stress. How well a child feels and how well a child is supported in their school work at home has a great effect on how well they perform while in school.

These six main issues with the reliability of the test scores and the correlation with the effectiveness of the teachers are brought up in many of the arguments against this way of evaluating teachers. Those who defend the VAM system and high-stakes standardized testing say that it would serve best if it was not the only measure in teacher evaluations. Those who criticize it say that the VAM and high-stakes system is broken and has been known to be this way for some time. Those who should be evaluated are those who create the tests used for evaluation. Money is needed to fix the whole of the system, but throwing money at the issue of , though it serves to quiet those who would protest, is not the answer.

Thoughts on the New York and Los Angles Times

The reporters from the New York Times have been praised by those in the blogging community for their reports on the inaccuracy of the VAM system. One such reporter, Sam Dillon, who regularly writes on the topic of education policy wrote that "federal Department of Education’s own research arm warned in a study that value-added estimates ‘are subject to considerable degree of random error" and quoted Edward Haertel's, a professor at Standford, criticism of the VAM system saying it was "unstable." He also reported on the National Academies expert's letter to the Education Secretary Arne Duncan and his concerns that "too much emphasis on measures of growth in student achievement that have not yet been adequately studied for the purposes of evaluating teachers and principals."

On the other hand, there was much criticism on the actions of the New York Times and the L.A. Times when they filed lawsuits to allow the VAM data on around 18,000 teachers combined. The L.A. Times succeeded in releasing the information on its website and the information of over 6,000 teachers' ratings was visible to the public. The New York case is still pending on appeal.

Conclusion

According to the blogging community, the "value-added" measurement system is an inaccurate, inconsistent, and unreliable means to evaluate a teacher's effectiveness in the classroom. The way in which teachers are being evaluated is unfair not only to them but also to their students. In order to prepare for these tests, teachers must stop teaching and start training their students to be able to get the right answers on the tests. Training students to fill in the bubbles is not education. Education, according to Richard Smith in his writing "What is Education?," is the tool students use to reach for their potential and dreams. Education gives students the wisdom and knowhow to become function members of society and prosper. Many have shared their views and are right in criticizing the system set up and this is their conclusion: The system set up by NCLB and RTTT to evaluate teachers benefits neither teachers nor students; the system instead cheats teachers out of their jobs and students of good teachers.

An Ideological Imperative: Why High-stakes Testing Must be Adjoined to Teacher Evaluation

"Accountability." The context: schools. The crisis: failure to educate students causing them to not achieve at the academic levels they should with a gap in achievement to prove it. But who's getting called for the penalty of shortchanging students? The current movement in education has shifted on holding the powerful and institutions accountable for school failure to now making teachers responsible; in the event of default, redress in review form could mean being fired despite the number of years a teacher has been in the classroom.

The end goal of accountability, or so we are told, is the salvation of schools in the interest of transforming learning for children, particularly Black, Latino and economically disadvantaged children in urban areas. Critics of the sweeping overhaul taking shape in public education that restricts teacher collaborative bargaining rights, eliminates tenure and changes how educators are evaluated and paid might argue differently; perhaps, they [critics armed with Tozer, Violas & Senese's analytical framework] would suggest, what is currently going on with and in educational policy is not at all about being accountable to and for the children. If test scores and evaluation changes that "award good teachers and get rid of less effective ones" are not about better preparing children academically then what exactly is going on? Is there just cause for caution and skepticism on the part of educational policy critics?

Behind the disguise of educational rhetoric like "teacher accountability,"  the skeptic would aver, is the face of corporate enterprise and labor. The source of the outcomes-based accountability reform framework that ties student test score data to teacher evaluation, the critical analyst would say, is located in neo-liberal ideology [Tozer et al.'s framework at work]. Not sure what neo-liberalism is? Just think of it this way, privitization. Yes, another word we are regularly hearing in circulation where debates and conversations around educational policy are being had. But what is privitization exactly? Glad you asked. Privitization of the public sphere is when the space of the public gets taken over by the private. In addition to the public becoming private, neo-liberal ideology necessitates extreme cutbacks in expenditures for social services - education and social security are but a couple of examples, corporate deregulation by government, organized labor gets assaulted, so forth and so on. These demands, and others like them, are what is called the politics of neo-liberalism. Now do you get neo-liberal ideology, even if only a little bit? Are you starting to formulate the possible connections between student test score data, teacher evaluation and corporations? Good.

To continue, the raison detre of the market into education is being driven by neo-liberal politics. The framework of neo-liberal ideology provides an understanding of how the use of test score data as criterion to evaluate teachers is linked to the underlying principles - organizational goals, objectives and outcomes - of business and, emphatically I might add, are NOT about, or even remotely in, the interest of the children. Although when queried, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan's rhetorical spin frames it more as school districts' way of "thinking very differently about teacher evaluation and making it meaningful." Despite Duncan's twist on teacher evaluation reform, it appears the critics may perhaps be judicious in their caution and skepticism afterall. Requiring that educators be judged - given tenure and raises or fired - based largely on student test scores, works to the benefit of the market, businesses and the wealthy who control them; policies like the Impact Evaluation System. in NY create schools that, given the above context, boil down to being no more than labor recruitment facilities.

We know from empirical research that high-stakes testing has a measurable impact and broad reach. And make no mistake about what is meant by measurable impact and broach reach. Research now shows that the effect and reach of standards-based testing is quite deleterious. That is because when the only thing of import for a school, a district or a teacher is how well students perform on a test - because purse strings are bound to the outcomes - curriculum narrows quickly. The pressure to perform, and perform well I might add, intensifies; tests easily take the center of teaching and learning.

When tests take center stage in education and the curriculum narrows it breeds a stratified system - stratified access to knowledge, to jobs and careers, to income and life outcomes. It is becoming clear for you, is it not, how new evaluation policies, which are required by our current Mr. POTUS' Race to the Top program, force teachers to fall in-line with the neo-liberal formulation of education policy that serves corporate and elite interests and undermines the opportunity of subgroups of students, namely low-income, Black and Latino students, to develop critical habits of mind and abilities to be productive members of a democratic nation? [See: Arends et al., Ch. 9: Schools and society [excerpt]." Exploring teaching. Boston: McGraw Hill, 1998. 289-291.]

Those critical of the neo-liberal system of accountability, which is making master bubble fillers of students, see the test as being about work and labor preparedness. Through testing, students are trained, not educated, to fill positions consistent with their status [what is the purpose of education again? Tozer et al. discuss the difference of training and education while Arends et al. consider school's purpose and aims]. Charlene Tan's conception of indoctrination is worth thinking about as we think about what exactly it is students are trained to do [Additionally, we not only should start to think about Taylor and social efficiency as an education framework but also this pattern of schooling should bring to mind Jefferson's belief that education has a sorting function; Spring also discusses the relationship between sorting and testing].

Both, Obama and Duncan, speak passionately about a concern for students not being able to compete in the global economy, but have they for a moment considered how many of these same students, under their administration's policies, will not be prepared to "compete" in the national economy? When student test score data meets teacher evaluation, Black, Latino and economically disadvantaged students pay with their futures. High-stakes testing alone, but definitely taken together with teacher evaluation, darkens these students' prospects at social mobiity and political equity [Tozer et al has done it again with their analytic framework; this time it's the political economy  that speaks].

This critical analysis is not stopping states from riding the wave of teacher "accountability" measured by student performance data. Many states have had to take drastic cuts due to the economic crisis; for those states RTTT dollars and the consequent adoption of neo-liberal politics matter more than ensuring that disproportionate numbers of disadvantaged students are educated to become critical thinkers capable of changing the societal injustices they now face as students. And so the cycle will repeat with yet another generation.

To-date the promotion of corporate culture in education prevails. The dominant narrative of major media outlets, television and print, continues to mask the "hidden-agenda," much like how the "hidden-curriculum" operates in schools, behind linking educator compensation, promotion and firing to student test scores. Sadly enough, although the practice of standards-based testing is very undemocratic in that it does not promote the critical consciousness of Freire or the active learning of Dewey, the media remains fettered to its position of encouraging the public to embrace market-driven educational practices. [See: "The Service of Democratic Education" by Darling-Hammond to understand what democratic education is; also see: Arends et al., Ch. 9: Schools and society [excerpt]." Exploring teaching. Boston: McGraw Hill, 1998. 289-291.] 

In case you did not know, they too - major media, is in the pocket of corporations and Foundations as well. What a coincidence, hmph... [Remember Miner's piece, "The Ultimate Superpower: Supersized dollars drive Waiting for Superman agenda" and the discourse on who owns Viacom? Should we not think that outlets like CNN, MSNBC, FOX etc exist primarily through corporate and elite individual's support?]

Conclusion

The discourse on teacher evaluation amongst major media outlets of print and television shows a clear advocacy of incorporating high-stakes testing into new teacher evaluation measures. The framework of the media suggests that test scores promise more objectivity, and - what is more - easy access to knowledge about schools and teachers for parents and thus, greater accountability to the broader public is assumed. However, the dominant narrative that is uniformly presented by and large by major media outlets is not without bias. A clear push favors the market and the interests of proponents of business. This corporate drive is cleverly masked by media's ability to communicate a neo-liberal agenda in a way that appeals to the interests of the public. Media tactics have been successful because the framework it employs names the problem and provides clear solutions through making teachers accountable for improving school failures, the "crisis-of-the-day" in education.

Major forms of media get away with promoting a private-market agenda and targeting parents and lay-people because they are experts at couching their agenda in more palatable rhetoric such as "this broadcast is intended to address the needs of children and inform and enlighten the public about the current debates regarding education reform." While exploiting society's "commitment to equality of opportunity," the media is serving the needs of corporations by dictating public want, values and standards about prevailing issues in education.

The major outlets of news media suggest that new teacher evaluation methods are the solution to raising academic standards and are portrayed as what will help students, and teachers alike, grow intellectually and professionally. Television frames the need for educational reform by accenting the need and urgency for reform as an economic imperative. The spin of newspapers is much the same while a bit different.

On the topic of teacher evaluation and outcomes-based accountability, the medium of the newspaper has allowed more space to express controversy and apparent inconsistencies of this component of educational reform. Still, the espoused problem-solving strategy is narrated as a matter of accountability to be met by educators. All-in-all the dominant narrative of televison and print is the same though in news print, the degree to which evaluation of teacher effectiveness based on student test score data should be used enters the debate. It is mainly only in mass media sources that the voices of educators find space to enter into strong disagreement with using high-stakes testing scores in teacher evaluations.

Still critical voices to the debate on linking teacher evaluation to student test performance are missing. Ideology production is a process in which the media plays a key role. And so, the dominate narrative as an ideological product has no room for counter-hegemonic discourses; thus, voices on the margins like students, parents, community members and leaders, advocates and activists dare not get centered or better yet, heard via major news sources.

Research that particularly refutes the dominant narrative in media, the value-added component of measurement, is vastly ignored by newspaper and television. Additionally, major media outlets, in presenting the new teacher evaluation system that has gotten much of its steam from the Obama administration's Race to the Top program, are also not forthcoming about whose interests are really met by the new system of "accountability". The public, as already mentioned, is led to believe, by the media of course, that measuring teacher effectiveness by associating it with student test score data will ensure "objectivity" although, as we have learned, educational reform measures may in fact be the product of the subjective plan of corporations and billionaire backed Foundations. What all of this will mean for society remains to be seen. There is sure to be future research and analysis on the outcomes. In the meantime, as future educational policy researachers and educators we hope that our contributions to education can mitigate any negative backlash caused by such media propogation and strengthen any positive gains education reform may engender for the most disadvantaged subgroups of society.

NOTE: Please review the comments for additional analysis and opinion on the overall topic of teacher evaluation, student test performance and media.