Teacher Evaluation Portal

[nafmeadmin]

Welcome to the Teacher Evaluation forum! The goal of this forum is to provide music educators with a place to discuss helpful principles, models, and critical analyses of policy that can be adapted to state and local contexts. You can find relevant documents at the SMTE portal:

http://smte.us/teacher-evaluation/

[nafmeadmin]

I’m preparing a presentation on Teacher Evaluation and wondering if anyone knows of research exploring a concept I’ve found difficult to put into search engines. Here’s the idea: Most if not all of our state standards for music education were written as guides for student learning. The assessments developed around these have been intended to measure student progress toward those goals. Now, however, many want us to use those assessments to measure teaching. Is this reliable, or do we need to write separate standards for student achievement which will provide better evidence of effective teaching by a particular teacher?

I’ve found plenty of information on other factors that may make student test scores less than reliable indicators of teaching effectiveness, but nothing so far on this. Any leads would be appreciated.

Jim Chlebak
Music Director
Springfield HS (VT)

[nafmeadmin]

Jim,

Thanks for your post. You bring up the biggest question in all of this… the reliability of teacher effectiveness based upon student work (test score or otherwise). Linda Darling-Hammond and others have suggested the same about some of the issues related to using standardized test data as a means to measure teacher effectiveness. You have likely read a bit about this when you see the term “Value-added Models.” My initial reaction is always that assessments and evaluations are only reliable for the purpose that they were intended to measure – if the assessment tool was used to identify growth in student learning, then it should be used only for that purpose. In a perfect world, we should have “effective teacher standards” by which we could measure teacher improvement. Many states have these as do some professional organizations (including the national arts educators association – http://www.arteducators.org/research/NAEA_Art_Ed_Stds.pdf). If you review those standards, you’ll note that the teacher could potentially share evidence of their student learning as a means to support their effectiveness, but it is most likely that they will need to offer personal reflections to explain their achievement of those standards.

So much of this, of course, will depend upon how your particular school district or state chooses to interpret this language. If I were faced with the issue you describe, I would start by explaining what effectiveness would constitute based upon the goals and objectives I have established for the year. Then, using that, I would likely provide a combination of student work (maybe pre-test/post-test surveys or samples of compositions/performances before and after they were taught), personal reflections describing the growth of my students, observations/evaluations of my effectiveness from peers/administrators and perhaps comments and thoughts from students/parents/colleagues about their perceptions of my work. I would conclude by offering reflections on my progress toward meeting my goals and objectives.

I’m not sure how helpful I have been, but I would be happy to continue our dialogue. I will also make a few others aware of your posting and encourage them to share their thoughts here as well!

Doug (dcorzolek@stthomas.edu)

[nafmeadmin]

Doug has offered excellent advice, and the reminder that you will need to adhere to your district’s and/or state’s requirements is an important one. Memphis, TN has designed a peer-reviewed teacher evaluation pilot that offers another option, student and teacher portfolios ; I’ve included a link here – http://smte.us/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/TN-Fine-Arts-Pilot-Update.pdf

I also believe we should avoid including programmatic components in teacher evaluation. Student enrollment numbers, program offerings, festival ratings, and numbers of concerts are not about student achievement or teacher efficacy, rather a district’s support for the program. It is important that music teachers educate their administration about the learning and instruction that takes place in their classrooms.

We are all challenged to conform to changing practices in music teacher evaluation. Hopefully this forum gives people the opportunity to share and ask questions to help in our work.

[nafmeadmin]

Thanks to Doug and to sieberj993 for their rapid and cogent responses! Here’s a comment and two questions in reply.

Comment
I found that a RAND Corp report, “Incorporating Student Performance Measures into Teacher Evaluation Systems,” (Steel, Hamilton, Stecher, 2010) is one source that contains just the discussion I was looking for:
from p. 6 [24 in the PDF] — “Assessments that have evidence of validity for one purpose should not be used for another purpose until there is additional validity evidence related to the latter purpose (AERA, APA, & NCME, 1999; Perie et al., 2007).”
from p. 9 [27] — “However, even most commercial tests typically have not been validated for use in evaluations of teachers’ effectiveness.”
from p. 24 [42] — “Nevertheless, as noted earlier, measurement experts often express concerns about attaching high stakes to such diagnostic assessments as the DIBELS and Gates-MacGinitie because the assessments are designed to inform rather than evaluate instruction (see, for example, AERA, APA, & NCME, 1999).

Again, please let me know if you come across more on this specific issue (no matter the viewpoint or conclusion!)

Question for Doug
What do you think about the feasibility of an online portfolio library where artifacts of student performance would be available to all stakeholders, continually updated (so providing multiple measures) and with access controlled to protect privacy yet allow for teacher effectiveness to be evaluated over time?

Question for siebertj993
Might “student enrollment numbers, program offerings, festival ratings, and numbers of concerts” be considered attributes of teacher efficacy if the school/district has only one music teacher as is often the case here in VT?

Jim (jchlebak@ssdvt.org)

[nafmeadmin]

Jim,

Thanks for your comments. Outside of the Rand report, I’m not sure that you’ll find any further evidence. Frankly, this whole thing is so “raw” that many states, districts and thinkers are still trying to grasp what all of this might mean. I think the only other commentary might stem from comments related to the Value-added Models. There are a few things related to that on the smte.us/teacher-evaluation portal.

In terms of portfolios, we are using those at my school for that exact purpose. Right now, they allow teachers and students alike to discuss growth by reviewing and reflecting on the contents. When the “call” comes and I’m asked to provide evidence of my effectiveness, I will likely offer both the portfolio and the reflections as means to portray the growth that has occurred.

Doug

[nafmeadmin]

Jim,

Because your post appeared focused on student learning and assessment, I shared my opinions for measuring student learning, not participation in music programs.

I agree that these are important considerations for any music teacher’s work. There should be opportunity to include program elements in a comprehensive teacher evaluation model. I would consider them to be part of teacher professionalism, responsibilities, outreach to families and community, etc. (In the Charlotte Danielson “Framework for Teaching” model, these attributes are found in Domain 4, Professional Responsibilities.) It’s just that individual districts have so much to do with program decision-making via financial support, scheduling, concert calendar, access to students, and class size limits; not many teachers (alone) can control these conditions. And in considering festival ratings as part of teacher evaluation, it is difficult to adjudicate each student’s performance within the group setting. Still, the carrying out of these duties reflects strongly on a school’s music teachers.

In my home state of New York, our state education department is requiring 40% of each teacher’s evaluation to be tied to individual student achievement and/or growth scores. If we were to use program elements in teachers’ evaluations in my district, it would be part of the remaining supervisory process. I encourage you to find a way to reflect your obvious professional work ethic in this process.

Johanna

[nafmeadmin]

Jim,

Because your post appeared focused on student learning and assessment, I shared my opinions for measuring student learning, not participation in music programs.

I agree that these are important considerations for any music teacher\’s work. There should be opportunity to include program elements in a comprehensive teacher evaluation model. I would consider them to be part of teacher professionalism, responsibilities, outreach to families and community, etc. (In the Charlotte Danielson \”Framework for Teaching\” model, these attributes are found in Domain 4, Professional Responsibilities.) It\’s just that individual districts have so much to do with program decision-making via financial support, scheduling, concert calendar, access to students, and class size limits; not many teachers (alone) can control these conditions. And in considering festival ratings as part of teacher evaluation, it is difficult to adjudicate each student\’s performance within the group setting. Still, the carrying out of these duties reflects strongly on a school\’s music teachers.

In my home state of New York, our state education department is requiring 40% of each teacher\’s evaluation to be tied to individual student achievement and/or growth scores. If we were to use program elements in teachers\’ evaluations in my district, it would be part of the remaining supervisory process. I encourage you to find a way to reflect your obvious professional work ethic in this process.

Johanna

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