Measuring the marigolds

We’ve heard a great deal about teacher evaluations of late. Teachers are evaluated, or at least they are supposed to be evaluated by their department chairs and school administrators as a matter of course, but like all human endeavors, even this can be a mine field.   An untenured teacher is at risk because of the agendas of those who do the evaluation.  It doesn’t take an educational expert to see that personal pique and other less admirable goals can interfere with an unbiased evaluation. For tenured teachers, there is little that can be effectively done with or for those who are not performing.

Even then, because we all have good and bad days, one or two in-person evaluations a year are poor yardsticks to measure a teacher’s performance.  Student scores on standardized tests have often been offered as another way to measure a teacher’s effectiveness.  The latter hypothesis is based on the idea that all students can achieve mastery within a given time framework.

Several years ago, I was at a meeting at which one of our community leaders made the statement that a good teacher should be able to teach 1500 students in one room without help.  It took me a few deep breaths before I asked this person if she would feel comfortable going to a doctor who diagnosed and treated a group of 1500 people at once.  The “leader” replied that the comparison didn’t work.  Why not?  Said “leader” pointed out that each patient was different.  Just like patients, students are individuals, coming to school each day with individual strengths and weaknesses.  Schools do their best to accommodate these variables, grouping students by developmental stages based on the premise that age mates can learn the same things at the same rate.  In a broad sense that is true.  However, groups of students are but groups of individuals and for any individual, the good teacher must be able to diagnose that student’s strengths and weaknesses and adjust her methods and materials accordingly.   In heterogeneous classrooms, and I ask which classrooms aren’t heterogeneous, it is a monumental task to bring all of the students to the same place at the same time.  And… sometimes it isn’t possible.

I can clearly remember being told that all of my students, no matter whether they studied, did their homework, passed tests or even attended school had to pass.  The explanation was that there weren’t enough texts or teachers to accommodate students who were not achieving if they were held back.  So, what happens to that student as he struggles to learn in the next class without the processes and material that he failed to grasp in the previous class?   I can remember a young man whose parents were separating, whose fear, confusion and pain painted everything he did.  His sadness morphed into acting out and refusal to do work.  School work was inconsequential in his world.    So it is with any

child whose skills, life experiences and psychology prove to be barriers to the lock step curriculum designed for a homogeneous group.

How do you measure a teacher’s performance when the variables are individuals?   Students are not a commodity.  Yes, teachers need to be evaluated but in ways that measure that teacher’s ability to facilitate a supportive environment assuring that each student receives that which enhances his or her strengths and develops skills in areas where he or she is weak.  I’m not sure what instrument can do this but a poorly designed one penalizes not only teachers but their students and the ultimate goal of teacher evaluation is to benefit children.

Testing proves what?  Measuring a teacher on the basis of student performance on a test demonstrates what?   How can any test used for this purpose capture the growth of the individual student?   Each grows at  his or own rate.

I’m reminded of the lyrics of a song from Alice in Wonderland, “Inchworm, inchworm, measuring the marigolds; don’t you ever stop and see how beautiful they are?”