Guest Post: Why Reformers Misunderstand Their Own Research
By John ThompsonAccording to the latest Gates Foundation study, "Gathering Feedback for Teaching," student surveys are more reliable than outside observers in evaluating teachers. I agree with the researchers that such a finding should be no surprise. Even though I trust my students' judgments more than those of principals, or even trained outside evaluators, however, I would think twice about incorporating those surveys into high-stakes evaluations. Do we want to institutionalize a conflict of interest on educators, tempting some to lower their standards in the hope that their students would reciprocate when evaluating them? Do we want to take the risk that popularity issues will undercut collaboration among teachers?
The New Teacher Project (TNTP) makes a big issue of the Gates finding that value-added results are the better predictor of future value-added results. Well duh! Since they are mostly