Will California Use Student Test Scores to Evaluate Teachers?.

Will California Use Student Test Scores to Evaluate Teachers?. Category: News from The Berkeley Daily Planet - Thursday September 03, 2009

“It takes more than the ability to fill in bubbles to be considered an educated person,” says Marty Hittleman from the California Federation of Teachers. He testified at the hearing that the test regimen in schools is not helpful to most students. “We believe that the emphasis on standardized tests is misplaced and destructive. Multiple-choice tests in math and reading do not address the real goals of education. Teaching to the test not only narrows the curriculum but attempts to destroy any love of learning. When tests drive the curriculum, instruction suffers.”

Hittleman acknowledges that the existing ways of evaluating teacher performance, including classroom visits and peer counseling and review, can stand improvement, but he believes that they are working pretty effectively. What needs much more attention, he argued before the committee, is the social context of education: “Any effort to close the achievement gap in our schools that does not address the conditions children grow up in is doomed to failure.… Until this country and this state close the gap in job opportunities at a livable wage, healthcare, and affordable housing, efforts for improvement in the schools will have limited success.”

Secretary of Education Duncan has stated that he wants to preserve only the positive contributions of “No Child Left Behind” to education. But witnesses before Senator Romero’s committee, including Patty Scripter and Debbie Look representing the California PTA, spoke of their concern about a possible continuation of policies that were so harmful to education during the Bush years. Just prior to the hearing, Scripter expressed her view that “Evaluation of teachers and students should be done at the local level and should be based on multiple criteria.” She and Look are skeptical about the use of test scores to get rid of incompetent teachers.

Senator Romero’s hearing has been only a first step in addressing the requirements being imposed on California schools by the Obama administration. Legislators in Sacramento will have to craft a federal grant application that reconciles—if that is possible—these new requirements with the critique being voiced by many California teachers and their allies.