Setting The Record Straight On Teacher Evaluations: Scoring and the Role of Standardized Exams
(This is the first of two posts on the new teacher evaluations, focusing on the overall scoring of the evaluations and the role of standardized exams. The second post will take up the question of appeals.)
The 2010 law that established a new framework for the evaluation of New York educators was a complex piece of legislation, and last week’s agreement to clarify and refine that law with additional legislation added another layer to that complexity. The complexity is unavoidable. It is important to have evaluations based on multiple measures of teacher effectiveness, just as it is important to evaluate students based on multiple measures of their learning: more measures and more forms of evidence produce more robust, more accurate and fairer evaluations. Further, multiple measures allowed New York to avoid placing inordinate weight on standardized exams and value-added algorithms, as other states have done to very negative consequences. And it was essential that the bulk of the evaluations be established locally through collective bargaining, with the law only
