Research supports using the best of several approaches, rather than a single unreliable tool

Contact:
Kari Hudnell, (202) 955-9450 x 318; Khudnell@communicationworks.com

NEW YORK, N.Y. (December 7, 2010)—As New York City awaits a court ruling on whether its school system can legally release to the public the value-added performance ratings for New York City teachers, the education field still awaits proof that those test-score numbers are really the best way to evaluate teachers.

As shown in a new policy brief released today by the National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder, teachers’ effectiveness and quality can and should be evaluated, but sensible and useful evaluation depends on a balanced system where value-added models using student standardized test scores play only a limited role.

According to the NEPC research review prepared by Pennsylvania State University professor of education Patricia Hinchey, supporting and sustaining high-quality teaching depends on combining many sources of valuable information. The brief describes several different teacher evaluation methods and explains that no single method of teacher evaluation is sufficient by itself. Each has weaknesses that can be compensated for when combined with others. These methods include:

• Classroom observations and evaluations by administrators
• Portfolios prepared by teachers that document a range of teaching behaviors and responsibilities; and
• Peer review

“Even after a decade of seeing the damage done by the No Child Left Behind Act, policymakers are still fetishizing student scores on standardized tests, using them as a crutch instead of turning to balanced, sensible solutions to teacher evaluation,” notes Kevin G. Welner, director of NEPC. “This report offers a clear alternative, identifying a wide range of credible research documenting useful criteria for assessing teacher quality and supporting and sustaining high-quality teaching.”

The brief, Getting Teacher Assessment Right: What Policymakers Can Learn from Research, notes that most current discussions about improving teacher quality tend to be imbalanced, focusing disproportionately on student test scores. “While there are important questions about what exactly achievement scores can—and cannot—indicate about individual teachers, there is no question that placing extreme emphasis on test scores alone can have unintended and undesirable consequences that undermine the goal of developing an excellent teaching force,” says Hinchey.

“Remember how ‘the soft bigotry of low expectations’ beautifully encapsulated a serious equity issue, but led to a law that has narrowed the curriculum and forced educators to over-test students and teach to tests?” asks Kevin Welner. “The dangers of misusing value-added data are equally severe. Overreliance on test score data can lead to further narrowing of the curriculum, the misidentification of teachers as high or low performers, and stalling efforts to draw new talent into the profession.”

The brief highlights research findings arguing that effective teacher evaluation should ensure that:

• All participants in an assessment are involved in its design, and have an opportunity to learn and to fully understand the system that is implemented;
• Assessments are informed by a full spectrum of tools, rather than a single measurement, such as test scores; and
• The design of the assessment system is based on high-quality research and supported by adequate resources.

The brief concludes with a recommendation that policymakers carefully think through the purposes and available methods of teacher assessment before embracing one particular solution to the exclusion of others. As Hinchey observes, “Since any teacher assessment system must address multiple goals, it should rely on multiple sources of information.”

Find Hinchey’s report, Getting Teacher Assessment Right: What Policymakers Can Learn from Research on the web at: http://nepc.colorado.edu/publication/getting-teacher-assessment-right.

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The mission of the National Education Policy Center is to produce and disseminate high-quality, peer-reviewed research to inform education policy discussions. We are guided by the belief that the democratic governance of public education is strengthened when policies are based on sound evidence.  For more information on NEPC, please visit http://nepc.colorado.edu/.

This policy brief was made possible in part by the generous support of the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice (greatlakescenter.org).