How many bad teachers are there?
Not many, according to new – and expensive – evaluations
Pittsburgh officials revealed the first official results of a new teacher evaluation system designed to help weed out ineffective teachers Thursday. The verdict? Nearly all the teachers – 96.9 percent – are good at their jobs.
The results, praised by the local teachers union and school system alike, follow a pattern emerging around the country: new evaluation systems, which replaced supposedly lax systems that allowed failing teachers to skate by and which cost millions to develop, aren’t unearthing large numbers of bad teachers.
At Upper Darby High School, first-year teacher Joe Niagara works with senior Amanda Farina in class while Principal Christopher Dormer (seated, rear) observes and takes notes for Niagara’s evaluation. (Photo courtesy Philadelphia Inquirer)
The new systems typically include multiple, intensive classroom observations and require some demonstration of student growth, whether on standardized tests or – for teachers in subjects without tests – by measures chosen by schools and teachers. They’re also typically much more rigorous than evaluations in the past. Previously, principals often didn’t visit the classrooms of veteran teachers before signing off on their performance. Now, under some new systems, principals may visit even veteran teachers several times a year.
Pittsburgh, using a large donation from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (which has been amongThe Hechinger Report’s many funders), was one of the pioneers in creating the new evaluations and has been held up as a model for its efforts to increase accountability for teachers. Washington, D.C. and states like Tennessee and Florida have also launched new evaluations meant to be tougher on teachers, and a lawsuit out of California, Vergara v. California, could lead to new laws governing the teaching profession in other states soon. In that lawsuit, a group of Los Angeles students argued that bad teachers denied their right to a quality education.
But so far, the new, more rigorous evaluation systems mirror their predecessors in suggesting that bad teachers are rare. As The Hechinger Report reported last summer: “In Tennessee and Michigan, 98 percent of teachers were rated at least effective under their new systems. Almost 94 percent of teachers in Georgia taking part in the state’s pilot program met expectations. Nearly 97 percent of Florida’s teachers were effective or highly effective. Just 0.3 percent were deemed unsatisfactory, the same as the year before the evaluations were implemented.”
In Pittsburgh this was the first year the evaluations were linked to high stakes, and just 1.6 percent – or 28 teachers – were found to be unsatisfactory. The district has been testing the system for several years, though, and many teachers who weren’t performing up to standard had already left; some How many bad teachers are there? | Hechinger Report: