Evaluating Teacher Performance

Experts talked about the pros and cons of tying student performance to teacher evaluations with most of the discussion focusing on so-called "value added" testing, which means measuring a student's progress over time through a data system.

Henry Braun of Boston College pointed out that teachers are professionals and warned about the pitfalls of equating teaching to test scores and noted that other factors can influence this.
He said that it should really be used not so much a measure of performance, but more as a way to pinpoint where triage in needed i.e. which teachers need help or training.

George Noell of Louisiana State University talked about how Louisiana, one of the poorest performing states, has been trying to turn around schools for over a decade. He said they have been taking a look at graduate programs for teachers to determine how well they are training future teachers and to try to determine which subjects they teach well and which are weak.

Julie Baker said Houston's public school system has been using value added system since 2007 with success. The review process rates a teacher's performance and gives them feedback. She said teachers need meaningful effective feedback to improve.

Other points made during this session seemed to be that teachers should be involved in setting up any kind of evaluation system and that test scores should be only one measure of perfomance.