Education reform: Can poor test scores get a teacher fired? / The Christian Science Monitor - CSMonitor.com

Education reform: Can poor test scores get a teacher fired? / The Christian Science Monitor - CSMonitor.com

Education reform: Can poor test scores get a teacher fired?

In Houston, a controversial education reform measure allows teachers to be fired based on their students' test scores. Some parents back the policy, but teachers unions have reservations.

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At Houston’s Garden Oaks Elementary School earlier this month, teacher Edson Muraira watched third-graders take a ‘benchmark’ test in preparation for the yearly Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills test. Education reform measures may allow schools to let teachers go based on their students' test scores.

Johnny Hanson/Special to the Christian Science Monitor

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Imagine if a computer could identify the weakest-link teachers – the ones who should be told it's time to get out of the classroom.

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It's not quite so simple, but a new policy in Houston allows teachers to be fired based on data that some experts say isolates a teacher's effect on his or her students' test-score gains.

Reform advocates say school districts should improve teacher quality in part by using such "value added" data. Dozens of districts, including Houston's, have already incorporated the concept into "pay for performance" systems. Education leaders in New York City and the District of Columbia are moving toward linking it to tenure or dismissals. But none has gone ahead as boldly as the Texas district.

"The worst teachers in a school really drag down achievement," says Eric Hanu shek, a senior fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution in California. "The biggest tension is: How much do you rely upon objective statistical information from test scores, and how much do you rely on other measures of teacher performance?"