The Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction just released this prepared statement by Superintendent Randy Dorn on teacher evaluations. He testified today on House Bill 1609, however the statement below is not a verbatim transcript of his testimony.
The issue of teacher quality is a national one, not just a state one.
My experience as a teacher and a principal has taught me that a quality teacher has the largest positive impact on student learning. The most critical interaction in a student’s education is that between the teacher and the student.
Students deserve for that interaction to be one of quality.
How do we determine that? Unfortunately, at that moment we don’t have a system that properly evaluates teachers. We’ve talked about it for many years, and we’ve made a little progress. But the system we put in place years ago did not help ineffective teachers improve. And it did not go a good job of removing ineffective teachers.
In any business, a manager needs to objectively identify those who aren’t performing as well as others and give them the opportunity and assistance to improve. If they don’t, they should be removed.
That sums up my philosophy pretty well: “Improve or remove.” A teacher evaluation system first must do its best to improve teachers who need it most. If that doesn’t work, we need a reasonable process to remove teachers, regardless of seniority.
It’s important to understand that this is about funding. The bill we’re discussing today involves tying reductions in force to evaluations. RIFs occur because we don’t have enough money. But an evaluation system shouldn’t be tied to budgets; it should exist strengthen our teaching corps.
Last year, the Legislature passed Senate Bill 6696. That bill was in response to President Obama’s Race to the Top program. At the time the bill was being debated, I supported an amendment going farther on teacher evaluations. Even though my amendment wasn’t adopted, we wound up with a historic bill.
The probation period for teachers was increased from two years to three. And we started pilot projects that will help us develop a new system of teacher evaluations. This new system will place teachers on a four-tiered system, instead of just satisfactory or unsatisfactory.
This will help principals to work at improving teachers and, as a last resort, to remove ineffective teachers.
We must give SB 6696 time to work before passing more legislation. The pilots need to be developed and tried. They must be fair. If they are to be changed before they get fully off the ground, no one will have confidence in the process. And they won’t have confidence in the final product: a new evaluation system.
As a result, nothing will get done.
We can’t let that happen. This issue is too important – both to our teachers, who need our support and help, and to our students.
Excuse me? Let me try to understand: So we have drunk driving laws. 0.8 is the limit. Above your are drunk, below your are fine… Now that’s not really a perfect system isn’t it? Therefore I think we should suspend it and let everybody drive with any amount of alcohol in their blood until we have a better system! Ok, I get it. We have been letting people drive drunk all along…..
How an “unsatisfactory” be satisfactory? How can we even think about it this way? Do we have so little faith in our principals to perform this evaluation process fairly?
If somebody could post some numbers on how many “unsatisfactory” teachers there are in Washington, that might be interesting.
Thanks
Axel