The Displaced Plainsman notes a suggestion from Harrisburg principal Kevin Lein that Governor Daugaard direct a portion the funding for his proposed education reforms to hire and train retired teachers to conduct teacher evaluations.
The idea of having master teachers conduct evaluations is not without precendent. The Measures of Effective Teaching project notes that the Washington, D.C., school district hired and trained 45 "Master Educators" to go from school to school throughout the year and conduct multiple observations of teachers. Multiple observations by impartial outside observers are essential, says the report, to ensure reliability of observations. That reliability is all the more necessary if evaluations are to inform high-stakes decisions "such as determining tenure or intervening with a struggling teacher" or, as Daugaard self-contradictorily and counter-productively proposes, granting competitive bonuses to the top 20% of teachers in each district.
Governor Daugaard just get done griping about all the job bloat in K-12 education. But to really make the merit bonus plan work, school districts and/or the state will have to hire more educators to conduct reliable observations.
For the umpteenth time on the Daugaard merit bonus plan, oops.
Governor Daugaard says he is willing to add $10 million to the K-12 budget for merit bonuses to push teachers to become more effective. He may have to add more than that to hire and train all of the independent observers he'll need to ensure that the bonus-determining evaluations are impartial and reliable.
Crazy. And administrator admitting he can't evaluate teachers. He needs another job.
Yes, Daugaard correctly identified the problem of higher costs without performance. So what does he do, add costs. Common Core Standards are not the solution to the performance problem. Those standards are coming from the same place the current public system was built from...the central planners.
I have to say Daugaard's statement that this is a free-market use of merit is off base. Troy is right, the administrators should determine the merit, not tests based on international standards controlled by the state. The truth is that Daugaard's plan is more of the same indoctrination that we now suffer. His plan is not a change, but instead a continuation of existing policies.
Maybe he's not "admitting he can't evaluate teachers." Maybe he's saying that if there's a statewide program, the state should have uniform standards for implementing it--which would mean having state officials doing at least a portion of the evaluations. You know, like standardized testing.
I don't know. I can't read his mind, but I think it's kind of unfair to go knee-jerk ad hominem on him, especially when the governor still hasn't explained how this program is going to work or how he's going to pay for it (we're "broke," remember, which is why we're slashing education).
Chris is on the right track. Lein isn't saying he can't evaluate teachers. The research cited above is saying that if you are going to tie evaluations (not just the Danielson model Daugaard wants us all to adopt, but any of five major eval instruments) to high-stakes decisions like bonuses, you have to involve outside evaluators to ensure reliability.
"you have to involve outside evaluators to ensure reliability"
I am not buying that. It is the parents who are primarily responsible for their children's education, so let them decide. What they need is a choice, which they don't have if they can't afford to go outside the public school monopoly. That is how you reduce cost per student and increase effectiveness at the same time.
I guess I see things rather simply.
I want students to learn, teachers to teach, administrators to run the schools (including evaluate teachers), and school boards to set the broad policies. The idea the state can or even should write a one-size fits all standard for bonus is only a formula for failure.
And, any manager who wants someone else to do his job (of which evaluating direct reports is one of their prime responsibilities) should be fired. Period. If I was a member of his school board, at minimum, his contract would not be renewed.
Troy, I agree wholeheartedly that the state's one-size-fits-all bonus strategy is doomed to fail, for many reasons. We have better things to do for kids than expending our energies trying to figure out which teachers are in the 19th percentile and which are in the 21st percentile. The principals and school boards already have all the power they need to hire good teachers and fire bad ones.
But if we want to pretend that we are creating objective, reliable evaluations, then we have to at least check if not replace the work of local administrators with outside evaluators. That's the same logic we use when we impose standardized tests prepared and scored by outside agencies/companies. Instead of hiring all that extra staff, we could just spend more in raising every teacher's salary and providing them with more training and classroom resources.
"The idea the state can or even should write a one-size fits all standard for bonus is only a formula for failure."
You did pass this along to the Governor and your friends in Pierre...right?
One in five teachers will get a bonus per district. Teachers are not hired in multiples of 5. How will they deal with that problem?
"I want students to learn, teachers to teach, administrators to run the schools (including evaluate teachers), and school boards to set the broad policies. The idea the state can or even should write a one-size fits all standard for bonus is only a formula for failure."
I totally agree
Cross-pollination.
Mr. Jones said: And, any manager who wants someone else to do his job (of which evaluating direct reports is one of their prime responsibilities) should be fired. Period. If I was a member of his school board, at minimum, his contract would not be renewed.
No, that's not seeing things "simply"; it's being simplistic. There's a difference between an incompetend boob saying "I'm unable and/or unwilling to do my job," and a thoughtful person saying, "If we're going to implement this particular system, it needs to be set up in a certain manner."
At the risk of repeating my earlier post: "Maybe he’s saying that if there’s a statewide program, the state should have uniform standards for implementing it–which would mean having state officials doing at least a portion of the evaluations."
Your response to that was to ignore the administrative flaws in the program and just repeat your earlier No-Nonsenseâ„¢ statement that he should be fired.
To use a different analogy: Imagine new workplace safety standards are proposed. A manager at one site says, "You know, the only fair way to make sure that these standards are being met is to have an outside person evaluate each site independently. That way everybody is graded against the same standard, and nobody cheats when they grade their own site." Your response: "Guy can't do his job. I'd fire him."
I know it sounds like a tough-minded management position, but it's actually just nonsense. If a manager fired his employees when they had the brains to point out flaws in a new system, he'd be left with nothing but yes-men and dunces working for him.
how bout this: give bonus's to the top scoring districts??? i find it hard to beleive that you can fairly discern between the best teachers in one school. from what i see in my kids(2 classes of each grade) seems like one or the other class has the majority of the better students. lets not forget special needs children. each district should have roughly the same number of good, average, and challenged students. by putting each district on 1 team, the district should pull their own together, in a group effort. divide the bonus's up between the teachers/admin in the district for the top xxx performing district. comments?
I like the nod toward teamwork, Doug... but I wonder: could we apply your same logic to the K-12 system statewide? Won't we see changing groups of good/average/challenged students from district to district, making comparisons difficult? Couldn't we view the entire K-12 system as a statewide team? And will we get more performance from offering rewards to the best or making resources available to everyone?