Should Public Schools Publish Teacher Evaluations?

Teacher evaluations are changing as the sweeping overhaul in education continues. Currently, teacher evaluations are more standard events than analyses that provide valuable feedback. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan in the blog posting "Creating Fair Evaluation Systems for Teachers" posed the questions to teachers: What elements do you believe make a fair evaluation of your professional practice?  Should the outcome of that evaluation be transparent to parents and/or the public? Here are some ideas concerning those questions.

•    An element to make evaluations a fair representation of my professional practice would be for a variety of administrators and perhaps teaching professionals from outside the school environment to evaluate different teachers.
•    Another element would be an acknowledgement and consideration of mitigating factors, especially if outsiders to the specific school environment conducted evaluations. This could be a long list, especially with secondary and middle school class lists.
•    Evaluations should include a formal evaluation, analysis of classroom planning and management-perhaps monthly views, application of standards, grading procedures and communication practices. Student test scores as well as completed projects (writing samples, portfolios) should be part of a teacher's evaluation as well.
•    The outcome of that evaluation should not be transparent to parents and the public. I question what other profession has complete transparency to the public or clients, and other coworkers. I have never been privy to a job evaluation of my doctor, lawyer, chef, hairdresser, or local police officer. Instead businesses publish overall results, just as schools currently do. This creates a large opportunity for chaos, among parents and students.

Tweaking teacher evaluations might improve schools as teachers receive more and better feedback. For instance, administrators who were former math teachers might struggle to evaluate English teachers fairly. The more specific the teacher's work, the more difficult it is to find an evaluator that understands the depths of his work, preparation and maybe even the content covered in class.

Again, finding evaluators and the time for detailed evaluations is costly. Remote areas do not have access to colleges and variety of certified professionals who can evaluate teachers. Teachers' jobs are complex, detailed and large. A 'fair' evaluation must be complex, detailed and large as well. Giving a simple evaluation based on one class period is unfair for a job that deserves so much more.

This is part two in a three part series covering teacher evaluations. My final post will cover possible new evaluation procedures.

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