Do Supervisory Observation Reports Improve Effectiveness As a Teacher?
Do Supervisory Observation Reports Improve Effectiveness As a Teacher?
Don’t all answer at once!
During the Question Period at last week’s Delegate Assembly a member asked a question criticizing the use/misuse of the Danielson Frameworks. Mulgrew agreed and suggested more the misuse, although suggesting there might be more meaningful methods of assessing/improving teacher performance.
For decades teacher assessment was an S (Satisfactory) or a U (Unsatisfactory) at the end of the school year. Supervisory observations varied widely from school to school, from district to district. The supervisor watched a lesson, usually held a post observation conference and wrote a report, a summary of the lesson, praiseworthy comments, recommendations for improvements, concluding with “… the lesson is satisfactory,” or, in rare instances “unsatisfactory.” Teachers could write a rebuttal and attach to the report.
Out of tens of thousands of teachers a few hundred received an unsatisfactory rating and many were due to excessive absence not unsatisfactory teaching performance.
Along came VAM, value-added measurement, an algorithm, a dense mathematical formula comparing teachers based on standardized test scores. School districts across the nation began to adopt VAM as a scientific method of assessing teachers no longer left to supervisory judgment that could vary from person to person.
The 2009 report, The Widget Effect, resonated across the education landscape.
If teachers are so important, why do we treat them like widgets?
Effective teachers are the key to student success, yet our school systems treat all teachers as interchangeable parts, not professionals. Excellence goes unrecognized and poor performance goes unaddressed. This indifference to performance disrespects teachers and gambles with students’ lives
The Brookings Institute at Brown University assessed the pros and cons, Evaluating Teachers: The Important Role of Value Added, read here.
New York State adopted a value-added system, I wrote numerous times skewering the ill-designed and ill-implemented system, read below VAM versus Supervisory Evaluation: Abandoning Evaluation to Numbers is Ruinous, Teachers Must Upgrade Skills and Supervisors Must Learn to Lead
After years of intense criticism and highly successful behind the scenes “conversations” we now are rated under the Matrix, HEDI (Highly Effective, Effective, Developing and Ineffective), a combination of Danielson-based observations and MOSLs, Measures of Student Learning, the number of unsatisfactory ratings, in the thousands under Bloomberg is significantly fewer under the current system. (BTW, the union staffer who successfully negotiated with Albany and Tweed, is one of the oft-criticized union staffers retired and is now a published novelist, there a life after teaching).
While we no longer live under a punitive system the supervisory observations, in most instances are rote and have no impact on actual instruction.
Ironically, Talking About Teaching, also by Danielson discusses the conflict between being the rating officer and the teacher trainer. How do you build trust and hold honest conversations when the power is entirely in the hands of the supervisor?
Should schools be able to select their own supervisory models?
Would schools select peer review models?
As teachers we should be lifelong learners, we can’t change output without changing input, we can always learn from each other, highly effective schools are highly collaborative schools, collaborating on the school leadership team, collaborating within the staff.
Supervisors may be fearful; does collaboration mean giving up “power,” for teachers does collaboration mean ignoring the contract, remember school-based options allow for flexibility and PROSE encourages school communities to seek alternative pathways to creating effective schools. Today the Chancellor announced a major reorganization, see Chalkbeat for details, every crisis is an opportunity, the state budget is a week or so away, hopefully Fixing Tier Six and moving away from mayoral control, the big items, rethinking teacher assessment and converting to a system that actually improves instruction might be the lasting and meaning change.