Clinton says ‘no evidence’ that teachers can be judged by student test scores
Hillary Rodham Clinton told a group of teachers that she is against the idea of tieing teacher evaluation and pay to test outcomes. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Hillary Rodham Clinton said she is opposed to using student test scores as a way to judge a teacher’s performance, dismissing a key feature of education policies promoted by the Obama administration.
Clinton, who is seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, made the remarks during a closed-door meeting with 25 teachers and paraprofessionals that was organized by the American Federation of Teachers on Nov. 9 in New Hampshire.
Liz Lynch, a teacher from North Bergen, N.J., told Clinton that she was in favor of teachers being held accountable but that in recent years, overtesting has consumed her school.
“Students have been made to take paper and pencil tests in PE and music just so they can be evaluated,” Lynch said, according to a transcript released by AFT on Monday. “Teachers spend an inordinate amount of time giving benchmark tests to prepare for more tests. And all the testing is crowding out time my students and I used to spend on cooperative learning, critical thinking and project-based learning.”
“What can we do to move away from all this testing and return the joy of learning and teaching to the classroom?” Lynch asked Clinton. “And how would you ensure that federal money for education is not tied to test results?”
According to the transcript, Clinton responded, “I believe in diagnostic testing that teachers can use to try to figure out how to help individuals and classes deal with their learning challenges. I do believe that there can be and should be a set of tests that everybody agrees on.”
“And I have for a very long time also been against the idea that you tie teacher evaluation and even teacher pay to test outcomes,” she said. “There’s no evidence. There’s no evidence. Now, there is some evidence that it can help with school performance. If everybody is on the same team, and they’re all working together, that’s a different issue, but that’s not the way it’s been presented…”
In the last few years, nearly every state has implemented systems to evaluate teachers based in part on student test scores, largely because the Obama administration made it a condition for states to receive either a grant under Race to the Top or a waiver from the federal No Child Left Behind law.
But the practice has come under growing scrutiny. Last week, the American Educational Research Association became the latest organization to caution against using value-added models — complex algorithms that try to measure a teacher’s impact on student test scores — to judge the performance of teachers. It joined the National Research Council, the American Statistical Association and the Rand Corporation, which have all said that schools Clinton says ‘no evidence’ that teachers can be judged by student test scores - The Washington Post: