Transcript Tenured Teacher Dismissal for Poor Instructional

SMHC Task Force Meeting| August 2009
Agenda
Introduction
Study Overview and Methodology
The Widget Effect in Teacher Evaluation
Reversing the Widget Effect
© The New Teacher Project 2009
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Setting the Stage
“The record of a teacher’s work, which is kept by the
principal and which might be produced to show
incompetence, is a weak instrument for the purpose.
Standards vary greatly from school to school. One
principal’s ‘satisfactory’ might be equivalent to
another’s ‘unsatisfactory.’ School authorities, in
recognition of this, are evolving a new system of rating.”
—The New York Times (Victor H. Bernstein),
“Security of the Teacher in His Job,” May 24, 1936
“Let me be clear: if a teacher is given a chance, or two chances, or
three chances, and still does not improve, there is no excuse for that
person to continue teaching. I reject a system that rewards failure and
protects a person from its consequences. The stakes are too high. We
can afford nothing but the best when it comes to our children’s
teachers and to the schools where they teach.”
—President Barack Obama, speech on education to the U.S. Hispanic
Chamber of Commerce, March 10, 2009
© The New Teacher Project 2009
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The Widget Effect
“When it comes to measuring instructional performance, current
policies and systems overlook significant differences between
teachers. There is little or no differentiation of excellent teaching
from good, good from fair, or fair from poor. This is the Widget
Effect: a tendency to treat all teachers as roughly interchangeable,
even when their teaching is quite variable. Consequently, teachers
are not developed as professionals with individual strengths and
capabilities, and poor performance is rarely identified or
addressed.”
The New Teacher Project, 2009
© The New Teacher Project 2009
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The Widget Effect in Action: When is teacher effectiveness taken into
account?
© The New Teacher Project 2009
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Agenda
Introduction
Study Overview and Methodology
The Widget Effect in Teacher Evaluation
Reversing the Widget Effect
© The New Teacher Project 2009
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Study Scope
In Fall 2008 through Spring 2009, TNTP partnered with 12 school districts in four
states to analyze each district’s evaluation, tenure, remediation and dismissal policies
and practices as well as each state’s teacher performance management policies.
Represented:
• Urban, suburban and
rural districts
• Collective bargaining
and non-collective
bargaining states
• Peer review and
traditional evaluation
approaches
© The New Teacher Project 2009
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Data Collection
Arkansas
Colorado
Illinois
Ohio
TOTAL
4
2
3
3
12
Teachers
Surveyed
2,196
2,428
7,482
3,070
15,176
Principals
Surveyed
117
184
794
186
1,281
Former Teachers
Surveyed
N/A
344
227
227
798
36
23
36
41
136
1,588
5,855
28,147
7,040
42,630
Districts
Studied
Interviews
Conducted*
Teacher Evaluation
Records Collected
*Interviews conducted with some combination of teachers, principals, local teacher union leaders, local principal professional organization
leaders, superintendent, district HR staff, legal counsel, and school board members.
© The New Teacher Project 2009
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Advisory Panels
TNTP’s research benefited from the extensive input
and feedback of Advisory Panels in each of the four
states studied.
Membership
Role
• One panel per state
• Share information and perspective on
state/district context.
• Approximately 80 stakeholders total
• Advisory Panel members include:
o District leaders and HR staff
o Local and state union leadership
o School board members
o State policy makers
o Education advocates
o Foundation representatives
• Three formal meetings, 2-3 hours
long.
© The New Teacher Project 2009
• Suggest issues for additional
exploration and sources of
information.
• Comment on study methodology and
data collection methods and
instruments.
• React to preliminary findings and
recommendations.
• Craft brief responses to the study for
publication in unedited form.
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Agenda
Introduction
Study Overview and Methodology
The Widget Effect in Teacher Evaluation
Reversing the Widget Effect
© The New Teacher Project 2009
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The Widget Effect in Teacher Evaluation: Summary of Findings
Treating teachers as interchangeable parts
All teachers are rated
“good” or “great.”
Although teachers and principals report that poor performance is
common, less than 1 percent of teachers are identified as
“unsatisfactory” on performance evaluations.
Excellence goes
unrecognized.
When excellent ratings are the norm, truly exceptional teachers
cannot be formally identified. Nor can they be compensated,
promoted or retained.
Professional
development is
inadequate.
Almost 3 in 4 teachers did not receive any specific feedback on
improving their performance in their last evaluation.
Novice teachers are
neglected.
Low expectations for beginning teachers translate into benign neglect
in the classroom and a toothless tenure process.
Poor performance
goes unaddressed.
Half of the 12 districts studied have not dismissed a single nonprobationary teacher for poor performance in the past five years. None
dismisses more than a few each year.
© The New Teacher Project 2009
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When multiple ratings are available, teachers tend to be assigned
the highest ratings and are very rarely assigned poor ratings.
© The New Teacher Project 2009
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In districts that use binary “Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory” rating systems,
the “Unsatisfactory” rating is almost never used.
Evaluation Ratings for Tenured Teachers in
Districts with Binary Rating Systems
© The New Teacher Project 2009
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Teachers report not enough is being done to recognize and retain
top performers as measured by their impact on student learning.
59%
of teachers report their district is not doing enough
to identify, recognize, compensate, promote and retain
the most effective teachers as measured by their impact
on student learning.
“All the good quality teachers leave the district after just a few years. They
need more incentive to stay.”
“Some sort of recognition or praise would be nice. Those doing a good or
great job are never told so.”
“If you pay the shining stars the same as the slackers, you will dim the
shining stars and reinforce the sloth of the slackers.”
“I, and others, work hard because we have a conscience, but I don't think
[the district] sees us as any different than the lower performing teachers.
Teachers who work hard receive very little praise or notice.”
TNTP survey of 7,318 teachers across four sites conducted May 2008 to April 2009
© The New Teacher Project 2009
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Weak evaluation practices and systems mean that many teachers
receive little meaningful feedback.
Percent of teachers who had development areas identified
on their most recent evaluation.
Tenured/nonprobationary
teachers
Probationary
teachers
Most likely
(Denver)
32%
55%
Average
22%
37%
2%
4%
Least likely
(Springdale)
39%
of Denver teachers
who had a
development area
identified on their
most recent
evaluation “do not
know” which
performance
standard they failed
to meet.
Source1: TNTP survey of 15,176 teachers across 12 sites conducted May 2008 to April 2009
Source2: TNTP survey of 1,863 Denver Public School teachers conducted November to December 2008
© The New Teacher Project 2009
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Teachers treat the conferral of tenure as a foregone conclusion based
on the performance messages sent during the probationary period.
Three of every four probationary teachers1 are confident to very confident
that they will receive tenure, or its equivalent.
66%
of probationary teachers2 received a rating greater than “satisfactory”
on their most recent performance evaluation
Source1: TNTP survey of 15,176 teachers across 12 sites conducted May 2008 to April 2009
Source2: TNTP survey of 13,889 teachers across 11 (excluding Cincinnati Public Schools) sites conducted May 2008 to April 2009
© The New Teacher Project 2009
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Teachers and principals agree that poor instruction is pervasive.
“Are there tenured/non-probationary teachers in your school
who deliver poor instruction?”
(Percent responding “Yes”)
Teachers
78%
72%
64%
Principals
58%
75%
63%
40%
46%
Akron
Chicago
Little Rock
Springdale
0%
0.4%
n/a
0%
Percent of All Ratings that Indicated “Unsatisfactory” Performance
Source: TNTP survey of 7,318 teachers across 4 sites conducted February to April 2009
© The New Teacher Project 2009
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Yet dismissal for poor instructional performance virtually never occurs.
Frequency of Teacher Dismissals for Performance (Non-Probationary Teachers)
© The New Teacher Project 2009
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What this Study Does NOT Say
Common misconceptions and oversimplifications
Tenure makes it impossible to
dismiss a teacher.
Even before teachers earn tenure, districts rarely exercise
the right to rate teachers unsatisfactory or to dismiss them.
It appears that the culture of schools plays a significant role
– not just tenure.
Principals are too lazy or
incompetent to evaluate
correctly.
Administrators appear hesitant to assign negative ratings
for many reasons – inadequate training, fear of pushback
from faculty, and uncertainty about district support – that
go well beyond a lack of will or follow-through.
We wouldn’t have ineffective
teachers if they were weeded
out before tenure.
Tenured teachers need regular evaluation, feedback and
development too. Teachers report that some ineffective
teachers were once effective, but may have burned out or
lost focus.
The solution is to make it much
easier to fire bad teachers.
Addressing the Widget Effect means going far beyond
rooting out incompetence. While poor performance cannot
be allowed to endure, the hardest work will be evaluating
each teacher consistently and making all teachers better.
There are no bad teachers, only
bad schools and principals.
Teachers report poor performance in their schools. They
find it frustrating and demoralizing, and they want
something done about it.
© The New Teacher Project 2009
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Agenda
Introduction
Study Overview and Methodology
The Widget Effect in Teacher Evaluation
Reversing the Widget Effect
© The New Teacher Project 2009
20
Our recommendations are a call to action for school districts to
move beyond treating teachers like widgets.
RECOMMENDATIONS
1
ADOPT a comprehensive performance evaluation system
that fairly, accurately and credibly differentiates teachers
based on their effectiveness in promoting student
achievement and provides targeted professional development
to help them improve.
2
TRAIN administrators and other evaluators in the teacher
performance evaluation system and hold them accountable
for using it effectively.
3
INTEGRATE the performance evaluation system with
critical human capital policies and functions such as teacher
assignment, professional development, compensation,
retention and dismissal.
4
ADDRESS consistently ineffective teaching through
dismissal policies that provide lower-stakes options for
ineffective teachers to exit the district and a system of due
process that is fair but efficient.
© The New Teacher Project 2009
“Education reform
will go nowhere until the
states are forced to revamp
corrupt teacher evaluation
systems that rate a vast
majority of teachers as
‘excellent,’ even in schools
where children learn
nothing.”
Editorial (6.10.09)
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The Obama administration and Secretary Duncan have made teacher
evaluation and support top priorities.
“These policies were created over the past century to
protect the rights of teachers but they have produced
an industrial factory model of education that treats all
teachers like interchangeable widgets.
“A recent report from The New Teacher Project found
that almost all teachers are rated the same. Who in
their right mind really believes that? We need to work
together to change this….
“It’s time we all admit that just as our testing system
is deeply flawed – so is our teacher evaluation system
– and the losers are not just the children. When great
teachers are unrecognized and unrewarded – when
struggling teachers are unsupported -- and when
failing teachers are unaddressed – the teaching
profession is damaged.”
- Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, address to the
National Education Association, July 2009
© The New Teacher Project 2009
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Now we face the challenge of translating consensus around the
need for change into meaningful reforms.
School Districts
Teachers Unions
adopt fair, credible, accurate
embrace teacher accountability
evaluation systems
for classroom effectiveness
o Clear performance standards
o Frequent, actionable feedback
o Development targeted toward
individual teacher needs
o Administrators trained and
accountable for fair, accurate
evaluations
o Evaluations focused on
student learning impact
o Teacher effectiveness a
primary factor in decisions
affecting the workforce
o Streamlined, humane
dismissal processes
Increased
professionalization
of teaching
© The New Teacher Project 2009
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For more information, visit:
widgeteffect.org
© The New Teacher Project 2009
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