Jesse Rothstein on Teacher Evaluation and Teacher Tenure
Last week, released via the Washington Post’s Wonkblog, Max Ehrenfreund wrote a piece titled “Teacher tenure has little to do with student achievement, economist says.” For those of you who do not know Jesse Rothstein, he’s an Associate Professor of Economics at University of California – Berkeley, and he is one of the leading researchers/economists conducting research on teacher evaluation and accountability policies writ large, as well as the value-added models (VAMs) being used for such purposes. He’s probably most famous for a study he conducted in 2009 about how the non-random, purposeful sorting of students into classrooms indeed biases (or distorts) value-added estimations, pretty much despite the sophistication of the statistical controls meant to block (or control for) such bias (or distorting effects). You can find this study referenced here.
Anyhow, in this piece author Ehrenfreuend discusses with Rothstein teacher evaluation and teacher tenure. Some of the key take-aways from the interview and for this audience follow, but do read the full piece, linked again here, if so inclined:
Rothstein, on teacher evaluation:
- In terms of evaluating teachers, “[t]here’s no perfect method. I think there are lots of methods that give you some information, and there are lots of problems with any method. I think there’s been a tendency in thinking about methods to prioritize cheap methods over methods that might be more expensive. In particular, there’s been a tendency to prioritize statistical computations based on student test scores, because all you need is one statistician and the test score data. Classroom observation requires having lots of people to sit in the back of lots and lots of classrooms and make judgments.
- Why the interest in value-added? “I think that’s a complicated question. It seems scientific, in a way that other methods don’t. Partly it has to do with the fact that it’s cheap, and it seems like an easy answer.”
- What about the fantabulous study Raj Chetty and his Harvard colleagues (Friedman and Rockoff) conducted about teachers’ value-added (which has been the source of many prior posts herein)? “I don’t think anybody disputes that good teachers are important, that teachers matter. I have some methodological Jesse Rothstein on Teacher Evaluation and Teacher Tenure |: