Matt Shafer Powell - WUOT-FM -
Knoxville, TN - Students are returning to the classroom throughout Tennessee. And this is a pivotal time. With a half billion dollars in Race-to-the-Top funds, Tennessee’s system of education will definitely change in the coming years—in fact, it’s already changing. One of the most contentious changes will come in the area of teacher effectiveness. How do we evaluate teachers to make sure students are learning? From WUOT in Knoxville, Matt Shafer Powell examines how a seemingly simple subject can actually be very complicated…
Here’s the million dollar question—what makes a good teacher? Gavin Luter of the United Way has what would seem to be a simple answer…
“The teachers who care are good teachers,” says Luter.
So, what’s the problem then? Can’t you just keep the teachers who care and get rid of the ones who don’t? Luter is heading up a United Way initiative to get all of us talking about teacher effectiveness. And he’ll be the first to tell you—it’s not that simple. At all. For starters, our ability to evaluate whether or not a teacher cares is totally subjective…
“I mean, yeah, there seems to be a little bit of consensus around who are the good teachers and who are the bad teachers, but if you were to have a teacher let go because somebody comes in and says “Well, you can tell you don’t care about the kids”, all kinds of lawsuits would ensue, people would go crazy.”
So you have to add objective criteria--- starting with achievement test scores. And as soon as you mention that, you realize how many different people are involved in the issue—
“There are so many competing interests that have a stake in this and they all have different angles.”
Everybody from the teachers and students to the parents to administrators and politicians and economists—the list goes on…
“I mean, goodness. Everybody’s got a stake because everybody either has a kid in school, knows a teacher, went through the public education or even private education system. Everybody’s got a stake in this.”
We can start with the obvious stakeholders—the teachers themselves. Test scores will definitely play a much bigger role in the way Tennessee evaluates teachers--- it was one of the conditions required in order to get Race-to-the-Top money. But Tennessee Education Association President Gera Summerford says test scores don’t always tell the whole story…
“Class size, how we’re able to manage our time, instructional support, student attendance, all these things do affect student performance and therefore will be reflected in the teacher effectiveness data,” says Summerford.
As a result, Summerford says a lot of teachers are nervous right now…
“A lot of the practitioners—the teachers in the classrooms—are anxious about the new evaluation model the state is developing and how that will affect them—certainly there is an element of anxiety there.”
The parents and students have a pretty strong voice in this debate too. Or at least they should. So says Karen Davis, President-Elect of the Tennessee State P-T-A…
“After all, if our children don’t get the education that they have the right to get and the education that they deserve, we’re only hurting them,” says Davis.
Davis has been traveling the state, speaking to local P-T-A groups about the changes on the horizon…
“And there, we’ll have other teachers and other principles be able to review their style, what they’re doing and whether they’re actually making sense to the children …”
Davis says she sympathizes with teachers nervous about test scores—particularly since new standards mean test scores in Tennessee will probably fall over the next couple years. But she says the ability to pinpoint problem areas in the classroom is critical…
“Wouldn’t we want to know that as soon as we possibly could rather than wait ‘til we have a whole generation go through and realize, Oh wait, in seventh grade, they all had Mrs. Jones and she didn’t teach that really well and we don’t know what to do, these children never understood this particular piece.”
Sometime next year, the state will have determined exactly what the new teacher evaluation process will look like. Gavin Luter of the United Way says you’ll hear a lot of opinions and see a lot of anxiety in the coming months…
“We’re all trying to get consensus around something that’s really a complex issue--- but simple at the heart of it. We know what a good teacher is. We know what a bad teacher is. We know that in the middle. But now we need to get those on paper and be able to show it and back it up,” says Luter.
At this point—he says—we no longer have a choice. In Knoxville, I’m Matt Shafer Powell.
Click here to visit the WUOT-FM website to listen to the series.
