Unwelcomed Evaluations by Teachers Nationwide Essay

The practice of evaluating students and teachers based on expensive and stressful standardized testing has been the focus of educational reform for over a decade and has thus far proven to be ineffective (Ravitch 51).

“…only twenty-two percent of those surveyed said increased testing had helped the performance of their local schools compared with twenty-eight in 2007” (“Public Skeptical of Standardized Testing.”). Furthermore the poll indicated an eleven percent increase, compared to last year, towards the favor of discontinuing the usage of students’ test results for teacher evaluations. William Bushaw, executive director of PDK International and co-director of PDK/Gallup Poll also stated, “Americans’ mistrust of standardized tests and their lack of confidence and understanding around new education standards is one the most surprising developments we’ve found in years” (“Public Skeptical of Standardized Testing.”). All in all, not only are these tests a concern for students, who are forced to sit through them, hoping to get a decent enough score to place into a class, receive their diploma, or even get accepted to the college of their dreams, but they are a concern for parents as well, who only want the best for their children and to see them succeed.

The No Child Left Behind act emerged as a result of a massive increase in the costs of schools, while failing to show an improvement in their students performances. (Paterson 32) Since these standardized test have been in effect teachers have been judged off them. The problem is that

By believing that instructors are the most important influence in a child’s education, teachers are given an unrealistic responsibility. Many policymakers believe that holding educators accountable for student success is the best way to improve public education. This asks educators to overcome these outside variables that are far outside of teachers’ control. Policymakers suggested linking teacher evaluations to student achievement, measured by standardized tests. This is not a beneficial way to hold teachers accountable because of the many outside factors that affect student achievement. A better way to hold teachers accountable is to stem out of a realistic perspective on what teachers can and should do for their students. Each part of society holds an important responsibility in increasing student achievement. Teachers should not be asked to be responsible for more than they can handle.

The United States of America has placed low on the educational ladder throughout the years. The cause of such a low ranking is due to such heavy emphasis on standardized testing and not individual student achievement. Although the United States uses standardized testing as a crutch, it is not an effective measure of a student’s ability, a teacher’s competency, or a school’s proficiency.

Because instructors are teaching directly for the test, the data collected may not be an accurate representation of the student’s true abilities. As standardized test grow in popularity among the school system, the pressure to achieve high scores rapidly builds. The importance of high scores goes beyond individual students’ performances, and teacher evaluations. Serious repercussions could result from poor scores, or performances. For example, “schools that continue to fail to improve may be closed, and districts that continue to fail may be subject to state takeover” (Posner). With the weight of the success of the school on their shoulders,

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

Standers developed a system that measure a student’s performance and ranks teachers based on that performance. Ravitch believed that this system is flawed and unfair to teachers and don’t take into account other variables such as students with disabilities and non english speaking students.

The argument has been made that so-called high stakes testing has caused district administrators, principals, and even teachers to focus more on teaching to the tests rather than providing instruction that is more well-rounded and perhaps more interesting to both educators and students (Au, 2011). However, regardless of how administrators, principals, and teachers may perceive standardized testing, the reliance on standardized test scores as a measure of school district effectiveness has resulted in educators attempting to find means to increase those scores that are deemed to be lower than acceptable (McNeil, Coppola, Radigan & Heilig,

I found De-testing and de-grading schools: Authentic alternatives to accountability and standardization by Bower and Thomas, an interesting read and consistent with the critiques of high stakes testing and assessment we’ve read about and watched in this class. It is a collection of essays from educators and stakeholders in the field. The book is broken up into distinct sections, the first focused on testing and the second on grading. A historical context regarding failures of testing and grading is also provided to give context to the current problems with high stakes assessment and grading. The main message presented in this book is that high stakes testing and assessments (grading) are not working and alternatives should be considered. Specifically, the law of No Child Left Behind is critiqued through out, especially in the first few chapters.

teachers are referred to as “nation builders.”22 Also, in Finland, “both men and women name teaching as among the top three most desirable professions for a spouse.”23 The old American saw “those who can’t do, teach”, continues to reverberate, reflecting elite condescension toward career educators.24 Randolf states that “educational testing has become the chief indicator of how well schools are doing, educators are being judged by these tests about which, frankly, they don't know all that much.” 25 Goldstein suggest that “testing is a part of any functional education system, but in recent years it has often seemed like the horse of school improvement has been driven by the cart of collecting student data to be used in teacher evaluation.”26

Like the use of teacher evaluation tools like VAMs or standardized testing, the United States is attempting to diagnose academic achievement through the use of standardized testing. As explained by Gratz, “Standardized test scores accurately measure student achievement and [this] constitutes for the full range of goals we have for students.” (78). Disengaged politicians have taken the forefront in determining what the expectations of the education system should be, but the actual application falls

I agree that standardize testing it's not an efficient way to evaluate educators. Unfortunately, student performance on standardized achievement test has become the primary factor by which most communities often judge their school staff’s success (Popham, 1999). Parents and the community often believe just because a school is achieving high test grade on state assessment test that the school staff is competent. Moreover, when a school has low standardized test score the community often perceives the school’s teachers as incompetent. This perception is not correct and has resulted in good teachers to being labeled as underperforming teachers making it tough for them to overcome this mark.

The increase of standardization in education in the years following the NCLB’s implementation brought more undesirable consequences, one of them being the pressure placed on teachers to perform well. More now than ever, teachers are accountable for the test scores and performances given by individual students (Wiliam, Dylan). In fact, the main purpose of standardized testing is not to assess the contextual knowledge of students, but rather to act as an assessment of teacher performance and quality. Teachers are held more accountable for the scores of their students than the students themselves are, despite the proven lack of control that teachers have over test scores. This particular facet of the American education system sets us apart other developing countries, where students are held as equally accountable to their scores as teachers are. According to Dylan Wiliam, two-thirds of the reasoning behind test scores can be traced back to socioeconomic factors, further showing that teachers have a small influence in a student’s test score, and that they should not be assessed based on them alone.

But the report noted, “Over the past five years, 37 states have improved their overall teacher policy grades by at least one full grade level because of significant reform, particularly in the areas of teacher evaluation and related teacher effectiveness policies”(concordia