Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!haven!mimsy!brillig.umd.edu!trish
From: trish@brillig.umd.edu (Tricia Jones)
Newsgroups: comp.edu
Subject: Re: teacher competence
Message-ID: <15755@mimsy.UUCP>
Date: 1 Feb 89 20:42:01 GMT
References: <1461@trantor.harris-atd.com> <5908@medusa.cs.purdue.edu> <1470@trantor.harris-atd.com>
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Reply-To: trish@brillig.umd.edu.UUCP (Tricia Jones)
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In article ferguson@x102c (ferguson ct 71078) writes:
>Chuck Ferguson             Harris Government Information Systems Division
>(407) 984-6010             MS: W1/7732  PO Box 98000  Melbourne, FL 32902
>Internet:                  ferguson@cobra@trantor.harris-atd.com
>
>some suggestions for improving teacher appraisals:
>
>  o  appraisal by students -- this option could yield questionable
>     results since some students will dislike their teachers and score
>     them badly.  the appraisal could be an opportunity for some
>     malcontents to "even the score" with the teacher.  high school
>     students can be very immature.  

The `best' (that is, the one who knew the material and did not give out "easy
A's ") history teacher at the high school I attended fell prey to this very
thing--one group of students decided they hated her, and as a result of their
bad evaluations, we future generations were stuck with football coaches who
never intended to be history teachers.  I'm sure it has happened in numerous
other locations, also.

>
>  o  appraisal by other teachers -- i suspect many teachers know which
>     of their peers are doing the job and which are just along for the ride.

I think this should be a very important part of the process, as long as
the personality biases can be factored out somehow.

>  o  appraisal by student improvement -- teacher appraisal would be
>     determined by the cumulative percent improvement of their
>     students on some standardized achievement test. ... the objective is
>     to measure how much the students learned vs. how much they
>     know.

  Someone else mentioned that this would lead to teachers teaching the
test.  Back to my high school experience---my 10th grade honors geometry
teacher spent most of the year teaching us very interesting mathematics,
but no plane geometry.  Then, for about a month around the time of the
basic skills tests, we got geometry.  It was amazing how much of our
homework problems showed up on that test...  I think we even did better
than the class on the other side of town, whose teacher had taught them
geometry all year long.  Of course, to this day I can't bisect an angle,
or do any other geometric proof.  And I had to self-teach myself how to
write a formal proof in more advanced math classes.
  The history teachers also taught the tests (even the one non-football
coach).  In other words, I would be afraid to tie teacher competence to
their students' performance on standardized tests, unless perhaps there
was some way to make the tests without the teacher's knowing what the
questions/specific topics covered were.
>
>  o  increased classroom monitoring -- a basic problem with the
>     existing appraisal system is that the principal only attends
>     class one day a year and that day is known by the teacher in advance.  
>
I took (half of) an education class as an undergrad (in Texas).  The following
information comes from one of our class discussions : A lot of the teachers
get exceedingly uptight about these evaluations.  It is very possible that
this leads to worse performance.  I think that some kind of silent monitor
(closed-circuit TV, whatever) would also lead to nervousness.  And who is
going to watch all the monitors?  
The evaluation sheet that the principal use is very long, with many minute
details --- a lot of the principals don't even know how to evaluate someone
in the areas given.  It's a farce, even if a one-shot evaluation COULD give
a good overall picture.  If anyone is going to do classroom monitoring, it
should be specialists in field, not administrators.

I guess I didn't add many constructive ideas to the discussion.  It should
be fairly easy to determine which teachers do not know the material, and are
thus candidates for `remediation'.  However, I'm not sure I understand why
some people make great teachers and others are lousy, given the same background
knowledge of the material.  I don't think it is entirely linked to personality
traits, either. If there were some foolproof way to target these people early
in their career, and help them improve, a lot of the problem would go away.

---------
Tricia Jones
University of Maryland