Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Education horror story

http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/charting_my_own_course/2011/10/a_tale_of_two_teacher_evaluations.html

This horrified me. Maybe because I've heard too many stories like this. This story is why merit pay makes me nervous, why I tend not to trust new administrators until they have proven themselves, and why I feel like you never can put too much stock in teacher evaluations.

2 comments:

Snippety Gibbet said...

Years ago, I got almost all exceeds on my evaluation from a principal who never ever came into my classroom, not even once. During my next evaluation with this principal, she observed me for about 3 minutes that year as I "taught" a lesson to a severe and profound class. Bizarre. Again, I got all exceeds. I guess she figured I wouldn't have any complaints about her lack of observing if I got all fantastic marks.

The Girl said...

My first year of teaching, I was proficient (highest available score) in most areas. My second year, I was still proficient almost all the way across the board, despite being required now to submit all of my lesson plans a month in advance, written out in Madeline Hunter format complete with "teacher says...students respond" notations. Somehow, with the SAME administrator, I went from proficient to unsatisfactory the following year. Nothing I did was right, though nothing I did had changed, and no explanation was ever given for the change in evaluation scores. I hadn't changed ANYTHING that I was doing. Based on the feedback I'd received the two previous years (all year) was that everything I was doing was fine, great even in some areas and nothing *needed* to be changed. The whole time, I took a gazillion professional development classes to continue to grow as a teacher and integrated my learning into my teaching and all of them were supported by my administration--I was even asked to lead trainings for the rest of the staff....yet...they kept saying I was unsatisfactory on my evaluations and refused to give me any feedback to improve--I had no idea what they were looking for. Two years and a new school district altogether and I have still never figured out why or how I went from proficient to unsatisfactory in the eyes of the same administrator.