Maine Dumps Test-Centered Teacher Evaluation
Maine has broken with the status quo of test-centered accountability for teachers.
Beginning with No Child Left Behind, public schools have committed to test-centered accountability, using student results on a single standardized math and reading test to drive assessment of districts, schools and ultimately teachers. For years, the prevailing definition of a good teacher in this country has been one whose students score well on that standardized test.
The problems with this approach are legion. Schools have narrowed their focus and their curriculum to focus on tested subjects. States have developed bizarre assessment systems in which teachers of non-tested subjects might be evaluated based on the test scores of students they never taught. Nor has any convincing evidence ever emerged that raising a student's test scores improves her lot later in life. After a generation, the promised improvement in US education that test-centered accountability was supposed to drive simply hasn't arrived; NAEP scores ("the nation's report card") have not budged significantly in all this time, nor have colleges announced that their freshman classes are now the best they've ever seen. Using standardized test scores to evaluate teachers has not fixed anything, and it has made things worse in many cases by pushing schools to focus on test taking skills instead of a broad and deep education for all students.
Now Maine has taken a step away from this with LD 92 (to see the full affect, look also at the amendments). The bill removes any requirement to base teacher evaluation on test results. Maybe even more importantly, it requires districts to form a committee to regularly review and revise their evaluation process. This may seem like common sense, but teacher evaluation systems are historically taken out of the box and used without any subsequent discussion of how well they are CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: Maine Dumps Test-Centered Teacher Evaluation
