Objective evaluation

I didn’t start this blog just to yammer on about current events or expose partisan philosophy, but I have to admit being captivated by the Atlanta Public School cheating scandal.

I don’t have kids of my own, but it’s not like I’m a passive observer in this. My organization oversees a school in Kenya, and we’re grasping with the same questions about how to hold our teachers accountable. It’s been interesting to see that there are problems on both sides of the Atlantic with teacher accountability.

From my reading on the subject it seems that teachers are revolting at the idea that there are objective ways to measure their effectiveness. They seem to be saying if you test us, we will teach to the test at a minimum. If we feel the test is unfair, or overly stressful for us, we will cheat.

I think the APS scandal is probably the biggest, but I’ve also heard that teachers throughout Georgia are pressured to have grade books full of A’s and B’s so that kids can qualify for the Hope Scholarship. The idea that Georgia has a widespread grade inflation problem is anecdotally backed up by the large number of college freshmen who need remedial English and Math classes before starting their core classes.

I honestly don’t get what’s wrong with standardized testing. Teachers are given the subject areas to cover before the school year begins. They’re given massive amounts of help teaching to the test throughout the year. It’s fair, everyone is given the same set of parameters and the targets aren’t that challenging.

I think what teachers are trying to say is that not all schools are created equal. There have been a number of studies that show that demographics play a larger role in test scores than teacher quality. A number of researchers believe that test scores are stronger in communities with more biological parents living in the same home, the education and income level of the parents as well as length of residency. Almost all of the 44 schools accused/convicted of cheating were in low income areas of town.

Maybe standardizing tests are a better test of parental involvement, rather than teacher skill, but could it be the tests are accurate? Think about it. The best teachers aren’t going to work at the schools with the worst demographics. It’s easier, and safer, to work in an affluent Atlanta suburb, like east Cobb County, than to work in the inner city. The wealthier suburban school with better demographics get first pick of teachers, and therefore probably have a better staff. It stands to reason that it’s not just the school’s demographics at play here, but the teachers as well.

No one is offering a better solution, as far as I can tell. The answers I get when I question my teacher friends is that there other options, but they’re more expensive, and take longer to implement. They would prefer classroom evaluations play a bigger part, but evaluations are at best subjective at worst prone to favoritism and cronyism.

If schools got to grade themselves how many would report themselves as failing?

When it comes to measuring the effectiveness of our school in Kenya we largely have to rely on our own observations during our mission trip, but the more important metric is their standing in their district. It’s the only objective standard we have to look at, and just like standardized testing in America it might not be perfect, but it’s all we have.