Chicago Teachers Union provides analysis of new University of Chicago research on teacher evaluation
Report shows flaws in CPS’s evaluation system
CHICAGO—The Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) today responded to a study released by the University of Chicago Consortium on Chicago School Research (CCCSR) on the first year of the Chicago Public Schools teacher evaluation system. The new report found a number of shortcomings, including a lack of principal training, issues of trust and transparency and the overall use of student test scores in rating teacher ability and performance.
The report, Teacher Evaluation in Practice: Implementing Chicago’s REACH Students, is the first in a series of reports about REACH (Recognizing Educators Advancing Chicago Students), and used surveys and interviews to examine the perceptions and experiences of teachers and school administrators during the first year of REACH implementation.
The report found that while teachers and administrators found the observation process useful for improving instruction, REACH placed considerable demands on administration time and capacity, communication between teachers and administrators was in need of improvement and teachers remained hesitant about the use of student growth on assessments to evaluate their work in the classroom.
The report found that while teachers and administrators found the observation process useful for improving instruction, REACH placed considerable demands on administration time and capacity, communication between teachers and administrators was in need of improvement and teachers remained hesitant about the use of student growth on assessments to evaluate their work in the classroom.
“This is what we’ve been saying all along—the evaluation system is deeply flawed. Teachers don’t like testing being part of their evaluations, not because we think that student outcomes are unimportant, but because these tests do not indicate how teachers are contributing to learning,” said CTU President Karen GJ Lewis. “The test is just a snapshot—classroom observation is still the best way to measure teacher performance.”
CTU analysis of Teacher Evaluation in Practice found that there is much room for growth in the ability of principals to properly evaluate teachers. Principals are supposed to provide feedback, but because they have not been trained in coaching teachers, their impact is limited. This remains a problem for CPS and a condition that has not changed significantly in the two years since the release of a previous CCCSR report, Rethinking Teacher Evaluation in Chicago, found that the vast majority of questions principals asked teachers were of low or medium depth and failed to promote discussions about instruction.
“Even though CPS knew from a previous report the importance of training principals to have meaningful discussions during the post-conferences, they rolled out the new system without providing for this important component,” said CTU Research Consultant, Carol Caref, Ph.D.
Teacher Evaluation in Practice also highlighted the concerns special education teachers have about REACH assessment being “nearly impossible” for their students who are “four and five grade levels behind,” and the belief that holding their students—and subsequently, their own evaluation—to the same standard as general education students and teachers is unfair.
Regarding EPAS assessments (part of the ACT testing system for grades 9-11) which will be used this year as part of teacher evaluation, 51 percent of teachers reported that it was not useful or a little useful for their instruction.
Furthermore, as interviews in the report showed, the results of EPAS assessments are not detailed or timely enough to guide teachers’ instruction. Teachers receive scores, but no analysis.
“We find EPAS to be very unsuitable for measuring student growth; it tests only a small part of math, science and English and disregards other subjects,” Caref said.
Among the greatest concerns about REACH assessment is the lack of trust and transparency between the district and its employees, according to CTU analysis of Teacher Evaluation in Practice. While testing is just one aspect of the overall education landscape in Chicago, events of the past year—mass school closings, thousands of teacher layoffs, budget crises for dozens of school communities—have led many teachers to mistrust the district’s motives across the board.
While, according to the report, teachers have little faith that administrators could “set aside personal biases” or “provide support for self-supported weakness without harshly judging those weaknesses in the evaluation itself,” the CTU finds that these reservations may be indicative of the dynamic between teachers and the district on a whole.
“Take school closings, for example,” Lewis said. “This is not just about REACH assessment and evaluation, but trust and transparency, period.”
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The Chicago Teachers Union represents 30,000 teachers and educational support personnel working in the Chicago Public Schools, and by extension, the more than 400,000 students and families they serve. The CTU is an affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers and the Illinois Federation of Teachers and is the third largest teachers local in the United States and the largest local union in Illinois. For more information please visit CTU’s website at www.ctunet.com.