John Affeldt

John Affeldt

The Chicago teachers' strike is the most recent example of how encarmine the ideological contend over instructor evaluation has become in this country. Though not the only result in Chicago, how to evaluate teachers and the part of standardized tests in that process has been at the cadre of the contentiousness in the Windy City. In California, we recently saw our ain version of the teacher evaluation debate turn toxic with the demise of AB v.

Assemblymember Felipe Fuentes' bill sought to significantly reform the Stull Human action, the moribund 41-year-old procedure for evaluating teachers. With 1 day left in the legislative session, Fuentes pulled his bill after dozens of inside interests and some outside advocates created a nearly hysteria over the fear of expanded marriage rights and macerated accomplishment measures.

AB 5 was non perfect, but for the community groups and advocates who supported it, its demise represents the loss of a much-needed reform of the country's teacher evaluation system. In its stead, our public schools are left with the status quo of bulldoze-past evaluations under the Stull Act, where teachers go years without meaningful feedback and rarely, if ever, have their professional person development informed by the evaluation process. In figuring out a way forward, it'due south worth examining the loudest arguments opposing AB 5 and whether and how to address them.

First, it'due south interesting to note that 10 days subsequently AB 5'due south defeat, State Superintendent Tom Torlakson'south Task Forcefulness on Educator Excellence released its Greatness by Design report, proposing the most meaning overhaul of teacher quality in a generation for California. The Task Strength that Torlakson convened was a cross-section of superintendents, principals, teachers, researchers, labor, pupil advocates, and policymakers. Amid its recommendations on teacher evaluation were many of the verbal reforms AB 5 had come so close to enacting, including ensuring districts adopt systems that:

  • apply multiple measures to examine both student learning and teaching practice but without relying on unstable and unreliable state standardized exam scores;
  • must be based on the California Standards for the Teaching Profession;
  • are sophisticated enough to distinguish betwixt excellent teaching and merely satisfactory (versus only the current satisfactory vs. unsatisfactory distinctions);
  • feed into professional person development and support for educators who need assistance; and
  • necessarily grow out of a collective labor/direction vision for improving instructional quality.

Not enough testing?

The two principal arguments opponents asserted confronting AB 5 were that information technology watered downwardly the role of standardized tests in measuring pupil learning and that it dangerously expanded matrimony rights to collectively bargain evaluations. Though some opponents never stopped repeating the testing-dilution straw man, in fact the bill was amended to ensure that information technology did no more or less than the Stull Act or the contempo Doe v. Deasy decision in Los Angeles as regards the apply of standardized tests.  The pecker required that state and local standardized tests be used in measuring student learning but left the precise role of such tests to local discretion.

In fact, for some opponents increasing the use of sick-suited state standardized tests for individual teacher evaluation is a major slice of their calendar. Groups like Michelle Rhee'due south StudentsFirst and Democrats for Education Reform desire to run into students' scores on state standardized tests make upwards as much every bit 50 percent of a teacher's performance rating. A key goal for many so-called "didactics reformers" these days is to require not only the utilise of some type of advisable standardized test for evaluating teachers, merely the significant apply of state standardized accomplishment test scores. When I take had frank conversations with some, it'south clear to me that being able to compare instructor quality judgments beyond a given state is more than important to them than making sure each district actually has in place a meaningful, high-quality evaluation system.

Notwithstanding, as pointed out in the Educator Excellence Task Forcefulness report, leading research organizations like the National Inquiry Council strenuously warn confronting using state standardized test scores to evaluate any unit lower than schoolhouse-level performance. These tests prove entirely too unreliable and variable when measuring individual teacher operation. Most one-half of top performers 1 year score below boilerplate the next, and the same proportion of the lesser performers simultaneously spring to boilerplate or in a higher place. Likewise, teachers of students with disabilities and new English Learners are systematically penalized with low ratings based on state standardized examination scores, no matter the supposedly sophisticated statistical machinations employed to control for such factors. The fact that teachers who are effective with such students can withal be penalized for instruction them creates a huge and troubling disincentive for serving in our neediest classrooms.

Finally, many state tests, similar California's, are non "vertically aligned," which is a psychometrician'due south way of saying they only tell you if a student is skillful or non at a given grade level and are incapable of illustrating a student'southward growth outside that grade span.

As an advocate for kids, I'd really like to make teacher quality comparisons beyond districts too, simply the technology only isn't at that place yet. Our highest priority, instead, has to be on developing proficient systems for districts rather than offset promoting comparable but questionable metrics to satisfy someone's reform agenda.

Too much bargaining?

The most understandable fear of many AB five opponents was that it would have subjected the evaluation process to collective bargaining in new and untold ways. There is more than than a little greyness under California law about what exactly must be bargained in the teacher evaluation process.

Personally, I did not read AB v as expanding the reach of commonage bargaining beyond existing constabulary, which requires evaluation processes be bargained and allows districts to set performance standards, but admittedly the statute was non a model of clarity on the signal. Still, AB 5's collective bargaining language was placed in the neb in the summertime of 2011, and no ane claimed the provision would modify the instruction universe as nosotros know it. Simply when the beak was shut to passing terminal month did the collective bargaining doomsday scenario suddenly surface. When Fuentes agreed to amendments in the final few days that sought to placate district concerns, it was too tardily to unpoison the atmosphere. The safest futurity class would seem to be language clarifying that the existing bargaining balance in the Stull Human action should go along.

On the claim of the commonage bargaining question, I have to inquire, though: Is all the fuss actually well-considered? Long Beach Unified is thought to have a model teacher evaluation programme; information technology has been collectively bargained. I now sit on the Emery Unified school board. District relations with the teachers union accept generally been skillful but take seen tensions rising lately. Even so, I don't meet how information technology makes whatsoever sense for a district to impose an evaluation organisation unilaterally on a workforce that hasn't bought into it. How are the underperforming teachers in any such district going to believe in the judgments that say they demand to amend?

The fact is AB five fell victim, in significant part, to the collision between John Deasy and United Teachers Los Angles over whether and to what extent state standardized exam scores should exist part of LA teacher evaluations. Only the answer for those districts where labor relations are sour can't exist to give one side all the power to impose a system or the other side all the power to resist ane. At that place accept to be some middle ways to facilitate conciliation between distrustful parties. Perhaps this should exist an expanse of focus for the adjacent run at an evaluation neb.

Condition quo forever?

AB 5 had room for improvement. We and our grassroots partners in the Campaign for Quality Education and PICO California would take preferred that information technology had required that the multiple measures of student growth be a "substantial" part of the instructor's evaluation and that appropriate student and parent input be a part of every evaluation. Merely passage of AB five would take enabled us to debate for those refinements on a district-past-district basis as well as in time to come statutory tweaks to utilise statewide.

Having missed the opportunity to accomplish the heavy lift, I fright the pro forma Stull Act evaluations that our state's hundreds of thousands of teachers are currently subject to will continue for the foreseeable future. I pray the education community volition rise to a higher place the fears and even fright mongering of recent weeks. I promise nosotros tin focus next year on passing a bill that again promises to reform our state's teacher evaluation organization in a way that produces truly robust evaluations that support teacher development and a higher standard of instructional practice. Our students deserve nothing less.

 John Affeldt is Managing Attorney at Public Advocates Inc., a nonprofit law business firm and advocacy organization that challenges the systemic causes of poverty and racial discrimination by strengthening community voices in public policy. He is a leading vocalism on educational equity bug and has been recognized by California Lawyer Mag as a California Attorney of the Year, The Recorder as an Attorney of the Year, and a Leading Plaintiff Lawyer in America past Lawdragon Magazine.

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