As CPS prepares to close a record number of schools, the fate of students and communities is in question.
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State issues draft rules for new performance evaluations
By: Sarah Karp and Rebecca Harris / November 18, 2011
Growth in student learning would count initially for at least 25 percent and eventually 30 percent of teacher and administrator evaluations, under new rules that won preliminary state approval on Friday.
The impact of the new rules will be wide ranging, affecting, for example, the state's recognition of teacher preparation programs as well as teacher tenure and layoff decisions.
The public will have 45 days to comment on the rules before the Illinois State Board of Education takes a final vote. The rules spell out how the state’s Performance Evaluation Reform Act is to be implemented. That law requires that student performance be a “significant factor” in teacher and principal evaluation.
Some school reform advocates maintained that 25 percent was too low; teacher unions maintained it was too high.
Calling 25 percent “almost negligible,” Mary Anderson, executive director of Stand for Children, said, “An educator with proficient or excellent practice ratings would never receive an evaluation other than proficient or excellent – even when student growth is unsatisfactory.”
She said she is also concerned that the rules allow schools to exclude high-mobility students. “Without a rule in place, districts would be permitted to exclude students with high truancy rates or who enter mid-year from the growth calculations. … We don’t want to see any incentives to push out these at-risk students or enable them to slip through the cracks.”
The Illinois Education Association and the Illinois Federation of Teachers both said they thought the 25 percent was too high, given that growth evaluations are uncharted territory for the state and concerns over their reliability.
“We believe student growth should be at 20 percent during the phase-in period," said the IEA’s Daryl Morrison.
The phase-in reflects the staggered start for the new evaluations, which begin next fall for principals throughout the state and for teachers in 300 Chicago schools.
“We are at the point where this seems like the right direction,” said Larry Stanton, co-chair of the council that drafted the rules, “but it seems like a huge execution challenge.”
One challenge is training the evaluators before the effective dates. ISBE Deputy Superintendent Linda Tomlinson said the state recently learned it will get $28 million under the federal Race to the Top program. Some of that money will be used to train principals and superintendents to do good evaluations, she said.
“Everyone who does an evaluation must be certified,” she noted, and that will require passing a test.
A number of advocates have questions about how the evaluation rules will affect teachers of English language learners and special education students. Those issues may be addressed in a future rule, the state board noted.
Phase-in, the result of public comments, stirs more controversy
The percentages that the state approved for student growth are a floor. Under state law, districts and unions negotiate the process and could go higher. However, if they deadlock for at least 6 months, the percentage would default to 50 percent (except in Chicago, where it defaults to CPS’ last proposal).
According to the law, the student growth portion of the evaluation must show “demonstrable change in learning between two or more points in time.” The law treats Chicago and the rest of the state differently on a number of points, which is not unusual.
It allows CPS to use value-added state test scores as its only measure of student growth. But it instructs other districts to use several other measures and rules out use of the states ISAT and PSAE tests.
“We have been very up-front about the fact that the ISAT and the PSAE were not designed for teacher evaluations,” Darren Reisberg, the state board’s general counsel, said during an explanation of the rules at Friday’s meeting.
Principals, however, will generally be evaluated based just on state tests or district-wide assessments, unless they are at schools where most students don’t take such tests (for instance, because the students are too young.) Assistant principals can be evaluated on student growth data that relate to their duties – for instance, attendance and discipline progress. (No new evaluations are required for CPS assistant principals.)
Eventually, Tomlinson said, the state may suggest that districts use the assessments that are being developed to align with the Common Core State Standards, a new set of more rigorous standards that Illinois is in the process of implementing.
Using teacher practice
The evaluations must also account for “teacher practice,” measured by observations using a tool supported by research. Districts also can come up with their own evaluation framework or choose one like Charlotte Danielson’s “Framework for Teaching,” a well-regarded evaluation tool. A University of Chicago Consortium on School Research study of a Chicago pilot program on the Danielson framework found that the ratings principals gave teachers reflected growth in student test scores.
At a future meeting, the Illinois State Board of Education will likely adopt “model” teacher and principal evaluation processes – intended largely as resources for districts that lack time and money to design them from scratch..
The new rules for teacher evaluation
If teachers will be evaluated in part by the improvement of students, will they be penalized if students do not improve or do not improve by the margin the state says they should? And if so is that a fair evaluation? given the fact that some students have so much going on in their home life that it makes it difficult for them to learn.
Yes!!
My guess is yes. There are people who have argued to judge teachers and principals with high mobility too. Also, they want this to not only to judge schools, but the University the schools went to, too! Just read SB7 law for education. Our union, our politicians, have sold out the Illinois Teacher..and CPS even gets an extra effect!!
Performance evaluation
A major factor in the equation is being left out. Parent involvement has a huge impact on student success. If the teacher is to be evaluated, one must include parent involvement also. How often does the child come to school? How often is homework done? How often does the parent attend school functions such as report card pick-up? How often does the student attend school without supplies and is not prepared for the school day? How often does the student fall asleep during instructional time? Each school should include this information on the school's report card.
Why so much disrespect toward teachers?
Why so much disrespect toward teachers?
By Jeff Libman
November 27, 2011
One thing I've always marveled at is how much respect teachers command in most countries of the world outside the United States. Public school teachers in the developing world make very little money but are honored members of society. As an English as a second language instructor for young adults at Truman College, I am reminded of this every day. My students call me teacher or professor (I'm not a professor) or Mr. Libman. More than a handful even say thank you at the end of class. Sure, every once in a while a cellphone rings during a lesson or students fail to do their homework, but in general I am offered a level of respect that seems, well, normal.
In Chicago Public Schools, it's not the students who are short on respect for the teachers, although that is certainly a cause for concern in some schools. It seems that the biggest threat to teachers' dignity comes from the very board of education that hires them to teach.
The Chicago Board of Education has recently taken many steps that diminish its respect for our educators. Word came down at the end of the last school year that our elementary school teachers would immediately be required to serve breakfast to their students during what was formerly instructional time. I can't think of a more demeaning and inefficient use of the time and expertise of professional educators than asking them to be waiters and waitresses. I have nothing against the restaurant industry. Waiting tables is a tough job, but our educators earned bachelor's and master's degrees to teach, not serve food.
Then in the summer, the board reneged on its contractual obligation to teachers of a 4 percent salary increase, claiming it didn't have the money to meet this obligation and could therefore forgo these terms of the contract. Given the financial climate and the fact that this was the final year of the contract, teachers accepted it and went back to work without incident this school year.
Not long after, the board tried to entice teachers to decide, outside of their union contract, to extend their school day and work 90 minutes longer for this reduction in pay. If they had voted "yes," teachers would have received a small stipend and schools would have received up to $150,000. Independent estimates calculated that if every school had accepted this deal, the amount of money the board would have paid out would have been comparable to the 4 percent salary increase obligation that the board claimed it could not meet. Teachers were rightfully angry at what seemed like a disingenuous plea of poverty by the board.
Only a few schools accepted the deal, so public school teachers were attacked for being selfish and not really caring about their students. It seemed no one came to the aid of educators who refused such a deal. Religious leaders, parents and elected officials all urged teachers to do the right thing for their kids. I guess teachers were supposed to be saints and sacrifice everything, including their contract, for the good of their students.
And just recently, we learned of Mayor Rahm Emanuel's plan to offer up to a $20,000 bonus to principals whose schools meet certain achievement standards for their students this year. How big of a bonus will the teachers who teach these students receive? Zero. That's right. Nothing. And that's about the same amount of respect our teachers are receiving these days.
My wife teaches 32 third-graders at a magnet elementary school. No teacher's aide. No cafeteria. Little money so she can stock her classroom with the extra books and supplies she needs. Long nights grading papers. Full weekends preparing lessons. If it weren't for the love she feels for the kids, she'd be gone. I venture to guess many other Chicago Public Schools teachers feel the same way.
In general, most teachers are not opposed to a longer school day, but they want to know how the day will be used and that class size will be reduced. They are not opposed to feeding children breakfast, but they should not be employed to do it. They know economic times are tight, but they want honesty from the board. They are not opposed to merit pay, but they want it to be fair.
There are always claims that teachers are failing our students. To be sure, like any industry, education has its share of teachers who are not performing as they should. And yes, the union contract makes it harder to remove these instructors, but not impossible. But let's be honest. These educators are by far the exception and not the rule. Most educators are well-educated, well-intentioned professionals who are highly committed to teaching. They put in extra hours, their own money and mountains of care, compassion and thought so their students can succeed. They need to be supported, not marginalized. I fear that these dedicated and talented instructors may unfortunately become more the exception than the rule if CPS continues to treat them as it has.
Jeff Libman, author of "An Immigrant Class: Oral Histories from Chicago's Newest Immigrants," teaches English as a second language at Truman College in Chicago.
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