Assess Teacher Effectiveness

This paper will analyze the strengths and weaknesses of the Teacher Keys Effectiveness System (TKES) from the perspective of a future school leader. As a future leader the main point is to understand the purpose of TKES, which is to increase achievement for all students, identify areas of strength and growth for teachers and individualize professional growth based on specific results or needs.

A main issue why you cannot judge a teacher based off their students test scores is because some factors are out of their control. In any classroom across the world there are some students who are smarter than others. (Popham 13) Some can be excellent at math, while others can exceed in science. (Popham 13) A teacher can give over a lesson in a clear and succinct way but there will always be students who do not do well. (Popham 13) Recent thinking among leading educators suggest that there are various forms of intelligence, and a child who is born with less classroom skills may possess other abilities that will not be shown by a test. (Popham 13) For a student as such, a teacher is limited in finding a successful approach to help them gain a high test score.

Standardized testing has been around since the mid 1800’s. Even though testing has been around for a long time it is still debated whether or not it should precisely “score” students. Students have been subjected to standardized tests frequently through their years in school due to laws which have been passed by Congress. Decisions about the evaluation of schools and students are recurrently made by government authority and are often not in the best interest of teachers, students, or their classroom environments.

Standardized tests are categorizing teachers based upon how their students are performing on a standardized test. The way that teachers are trying to teach is controlled by standardized tests in order to provide the student with as much help as possible to guide the student to succeed as well as the teacher. As a result, the teachers are put upon a great amount of pressure in order to meet the needs to guide students for a standardized test so that both the teacher and students is able to be successful. For those teachers who wish to teach differently, it is more of a struggle for them to receive an exemplary label due to the fact that standardized tests judge them unfairly. Standardized tests are measuring many people in an unfair manner all over the United States. “In the United States, standardized testing is one of the primary methods used to measure the performance of educational institutions (and often teachers) and to make decisions about the distribution of funding” (Issitt). Many schools and teachers are being judged primarily as to how well their students perform on a standardized test. As a result, this can negatively impact many teachers who are able to teach really well

Some say that testing is a good way to hold teachers accountable for the failure or success of their students. They believe that test scores show if the educator is teaching effectively or not, but the two are not always directly correlated. Often a student’s performance on a test has little to nothing to do with their instructor. Some students are simply better test-takers than others and do not even attempt to do well on exams. Teachers should not be held accountable for the laziness of a student. Even if a student does do well on a test, it does not mean the teacher’s methods were effective. Because standardized tests are not accurate measurements of students’ abilities, a student who naturally excels at language skills, for example, could do extremely well on a test even though their teacher was not very effectual at their job. These people also say that standardized tests do not produce an overabundance of stress in students. As a student myself, I can say with certainty that this is not true. Testing has caused a great amount of stress for people I know and me personally, I am sure that other students would support this as

There is this idea of how if the teacher’s students do great on the test it means that they are great teachers, which is not necessarily the case. Columbia University states, “Standardized testing causes many teachers to only “teach to the tests,”. This practice can hinder a student’s overall learning potential. With the stakes getting higher and higher for teachers, this practice will only continue to increase. The sad reality is that it fosters an atmosphere that is boring and lacks creativeness. Teachers have such pressure to get their students ready for these exams that they neglect to teach students skills that go beyond the tests.” With the lack of teachers actually using their skills to teach the curriculum and the only thing they teach is how to take tests, school will not be where students would want to learn, and they will eventually drop out in the future. Also teaching tests will not help students in life in any way, especially without the teacher and student

Around 66% of Americans say the scores shouldn’t be used to evaluate teachers. Since the test scores don’t come back until the following year, the teacher has no time to teach what the students are struggling with. So if standardized testing doesn’t reflect student abilities,can’t evaluate teachers properly, and students don’t have the opportunity to learn what the are struggling with that school year then what is the point of standardized testing? Many people want to take away standardized testing and replace it with more

Countless of students are not being educated as well as they should be. The article argues, the wrong test can ineffectively evaluate quality of strong teachers. Therefore, those teachers become penalized. Whereas, the wrong test can fail to identify a weak teacher. As a result, the student is who suffers in the end. Secondly, the article discusses three primary purposes for the educational testing’s; compare, to instruct, and to evaluate. Comparison allows the educational system to identify score differences among students, whereas instructional testing is an ongoing evidence of a student’s level of achievements. Lastly, evaluation is to determine the quality of teachers. So, if the tests are appropriately implements, students can benefit. However, comparison has dominated the American education system.

Numerous states have linked student performance to teacher assessment. This is another implementation of teachers just resorting to teaching the test to their students. Because there is so much riding on the results, teachers often feel compelled to do this. In most schools across the country, the sciences, social studies and the arts are being neglected to have more time for the students to prepare to take the tests in math, reading and writing.

I can explain in my own words what the median is and I will be able to find the median for a set of class-created data.

Standardized tests are a reliable measure of student improvement and achievement. According to procon.org “Without them, policy makers would have to rely on tests scored by individual

I agree standardized test are not a great assessment tool to measure success of school and teachers. I feel most students get anxiety, over prepare or just don't take it as serious. The best way to hold teachers accountable while testing students maybe a monthly exam to cover what's been taught so far in the class.

The School District of Monroe implemented the Educator Effectiveness System at the beginning of the 2014-15 school year. Teachers were trained on a program called Teachscape, which would house all of the information and artifacts for individual teachers, and teachers were informed if they were in the summary year. Summary year teachers had a full lesson evaluation which included a pre and post meeting with an administrator. Overall, I felt that our administrators at Monroe Middle School were very supportive and made sure everyone felt comfortable throughout the year.

While i was reading the aritcle “Psst ... It Ain't About the Tests: It's Still About Great Teaching” by Robert DiGiulio i believe that his main points is how he views different teaching point of views. He mentions some of his point of view of what a good teachers is, But he also mention some of the charastics of what a “good teachers” needs to have. I believe that he focus more on teahers teaching, instead of test scores. He mentions that stadndarized testing should not be how we mention student knowledge. My opion is you cant based how good a teacher based on some sort of standarizes test.

Methodology is simply the methods in which a teacher will get information and material across to his or her students. Methodology will vary among teachers but a teacher’s methodology will fall under three main categories. Direct instruction methods, indirect instruction methods or a combination of direct instruction and indirect instruction methods. Direct instruction methods involve the following strategies: reviewing previous day’s work, presenting new material, stating the purpose of lessons, modeling, providing guided practice, providing independent practice, checking for understanding, and practicing learned material (Woolfolk). Indirect instruction methods involve the following strategies: place students in learning groups, have students discuss material, have students role play, have students participate in games or debates related to the material, and have students work on projects and problem solving as well as other indirect methods (Woolfolk).