This issue, one among many in “school reform,” has me worried. You have to wonder whether teacher evaluation based upon test scores will only further marginalize arts education, as arts education assessment lies outside of the types of teacher evaluation being heavily promoted by so very many.
For the record, this type of assessment is called value added assessment.
Okay, here’s a very good take on the issue, by one of my all-time favorite voices on public education: Larry Cuban.
Cuban takes a good look at the recent move by the Los Angeles Times to issue its own evaluation of Los Angeles Unified teachers based on test scores in reading and math. Oh, don’t worry, none of the teachers evaluated are arts teachers!
There is one particular issue that Cuban highlights, an issue raised recently by John Merrow in his blog, namely that everyone can identify the bad teachers in a a given school.
So, click on through to Larry Cuban’s wonderful blog, for his useful masterful turn on the issue of value added assessment, and whether or not the “bad” teachers are so easy to identify.
If there is such a thing as a master teacher, can there be such thing as a master blogger? Larry Cuban has my vote.
My reservations begin with the common assumption often expressed explicitly by supporters of value-added measures that the Los Angeles Times hardly revealed anything since “just about everyone in any school can tell you who the really good teachers are in the building. Whether they will tell you is another story, perhaps, but everyone knows who’s good and who’s bad.”
Harris and Smith in this week’s Ed Week question whether we know how to determine whether a teacher is effective and indeed what constitutes effectiveness (contradicting Merrow). Jay Urwitz in the 8/11 issue goes even further, questioning whether effective teaching is the most important lever in raising student performance or whether other factors mights be at least as important.