Charlie Harper: Teacher evaluations essential
I am the product of public schools. Much of who I am that cannot be attributed to my parents or my church can be attributed to the faculty of various schools in Fayette County, Georgia
Teachers don't have an easy job. The hours are long. The term "summers off" is more myth than reality. The demands put on those working in our educational system to fix many societal problems continue to increase. The job has only become more demanding and more difficult since I left the public school system as a student
The task set before them is great. We are a country that has decided that we value education for everyone. As such we are a state that has set aside a greater percentage of our budget for K-12 education than any other use. Our local governments then also tax property and sales to fund our schools. We do this because we believe every person should have the basic tools to succeed in life, regardless of their parent's ability to pay for this education.
The goal of public education is to educate students. That should seem so obvious that it doesn't need to be stated. And yet, any time there is a proposed change in educational policy, the reasons why the change should not be attempted rarely seem to mention this. Or, as is often the case, the opposition to changes would like to obfuscate the fact that the large investment made by the state and local governments is failing to achieve the desired results.
Consider the state's plan to take over failing schools. Opposition tends to question the motives of those who would demand something other than trapping children in chronically failing schools and likely condemning them to remain trapped in a cycle of poverty. Instead, opponents offer more than the usual tired cry of a failed bureaucracy: Send us more money and otherwise leave us alone.
The problem with the "more money" demand in education is that it has been tried. From Governor Joe Frank Harris' Quality Basic Education funding reforms and Governor Zell Miller's pay raises that made Georgia's teachers the highest paid in the South, Georgians have spent the money. Georgia's students and taxpayers did not see the results.
When accountability for this investment is proposed, the refrain is equally familiar. Those who seek to determine who is doing a good job have the tables turned and are accused of attacking the entire profession.
There is no profession, no matter how noble and just the cause, which has 100 percent perfect members. To pretend that by holding a teaching certificate and occupying a classroom that a teacher is effective is folly. As in any other profession, there must be a way to identify and reward the best, and remove the worst.
Unfortunately, the Georgia Department of Education is seeking to weaken the Teacher Keys Effectiveness System before it has even had time to itself be fully evaluated after statewide implementation. At issue is the requirement that principals or administrators observe and review each teacher six times during the year to assess their effectiveness in the classroom.
Under a new program currently being piloted, principals would have to evaluate only new teachers or those who had been previously determined to be falling short. The Athens Banner Herald cites state Superintendent Richard Woods as wanting to reduce the "administrative burden resulting from the Teacher Keys Effectiveness System." The move is supported by the Georgia Association of Educators and the Professional Association of Georgia Educators, the state's two largest educators' organizations.
The "administrative burden" of having an administrator review each teacher multiple times a year would actually achieve the secondary result of putting administrators in the classrooms during instruction on a daily basis nstead of isolating them to fulfill the needs of the bureaucracy, they would regularly and systematically see the real stresses and needs of both their teachers and their students.
These same organizations complain that Georgia relies too heavily on students' standardized text results to evaluate teachers. And yet they don't want meaningful in-person evaluation of the teachers, either. It seems that it's easier to pretend that all educators are teaching at Lake Wobegon, where all of them are above average.
Teachers do have a difficult and often thankless job. This fact, however, cannot make them immune from proper evaluation. Frankly, the increasing demands of the profession necessitate it.
The goal of spending tax dollars on education is to educate students. Demanding accountability for the effectiveness of the dollars spent toward this goal is not an insult to the profession. Pretending that it is, however, is an insult to the taxpayers.
Charlie Harper, author and editor of the Peach Pundit blog, writes on Georgia politics and government; www.peachpundit.com.
This story was originally published September 29, 2015 at 1:55 PM with the headline "Charlie Harper: Teacher evaluations essential ."