Wall Street Journal...
Nearly Half of States Link Teacher Evaluations to Tests
By Stephanie Banchero  
October  28, 2011 

Nearly two-thirds of states have overhauled policies in the last two years to tighten oversight of teachers, using techniques including tying teacher evaluations to student test scores, linking their pay to performance or making it tougher to earn tenure, according to a report issued Wednesday. 

At least 23 states and the District of Columbia now evaluate public-school teachers in part by student standardized tests, while 14 allow districts to use this data to dismiss ineffective teachers, according to the report from the National Council on Teacher Quality, an advocacy group. 

Eleven of these states use the test-score evaluations to decide if teachers get tenure, the report said. 

Two years ago, just 16 states used some measure of student performance in evaluating their teachers, which may have included standardized test results, the report said. None mandated that performance-based teacher evaluations be used in tenure decisions, the report added. 

“We’ve seen a major policy shift away from [teacher] evaluations that tell us little about whether kids in a particular teacher’s classroom are learning, to evaluations designed to actually identify our most outstanding teachers and those who consistently underperform,” said Sandi Jacobs, vice president of the council, which advocates judging teachers based on performance. 

The report offers one of the first comprehensive looks at recent changes in policies governing teacher evaluations. The study was funded by the Gates Foundation and the Joyce Foundation. 

For decades, teachers were judged only sporadically, based mainly on brief classroom visits by principals. Pay was awarded by seniority and advanced degrees, and tenure was virtually automatic. Student performance rarely was taken into account. 

That has shifted as evidence mounts that teacher quality plays a pivotal role in student achievement and people across the political spectrum have pushed for new approaches. 

Last year, President Obama’s $4.35 billion Race to the Top initiative awarded grants to states that adopted policy changes such as linking teacher evaluations to student test scores. This year, Republican governors in Idaho, Indiana, Nevada and Michigan ushered in overhauls to teacher rating, compensation, bargaining rights and tenure. 

Critics, including some teachers unions, say many of the changes are aimed at firing teachers and usurping union power. They say the new evaluations use flawed standardized tests that measure a narrow window of student learning. 

“The purpose of teacher evaluations is to improve the teaching and learning process, and if your system is done correctly, it will get rid of ineffective teachers,” said Adriane Dorrington, senior policy analyst with the National Education Association, the nation’s largest teachers union. “But many states started with the idea of how to get rid of ineffective teachers.” 

The report highlights a litany of policy shifts since 2009: 

In Florida, tenure was eliminated. In Colorado, teachers now must get three positive ratings to earn tenure and can lose it after two bad ones. Several states, including Indiana and Michigan, did away with “last in, first out” union rules that resulted in districts laying off effective new teachers instead of ineffective tenured ones. Indiana and Tennessee passed merit-pay laws that base teacher pay primarily on classroom performance. 

The report said, however, that continued implementation of the new policies could be derailed. In New York, where lawmakers passed legislation linking student test scores to teacher ratings, the state’s largest teachers union and the state Board of Regents are fighting in court over how much weight state exams should be given in the ratings. 

In Indiana, teachers unions fought legislation that, among other things, trimmed teacher’s bargaining rights, tied evaluations to student test scores and linked pay to performance. 

Race to the Top winners Delaware and Georgia received waivers from the U.S. Department of Education to delay rolling out parts of their evaluation systems. Delaware officials are working with teachers to craft new assessments that measure student growth in all subjects, including auto shop and foreign languages, for use in the new evaluations. 

“Of course, there is fear of the unknown,” said Sharon Densler, who works in the Capital School District in Dover, Del., training science teachers, and sits on a state committee that is devising new teacher assessments. “But knowing that teachers helped create the system is going to give it a whole lot more validity.” 

Read this article at the Wall Street Journal