Hello,
I just read your article from Sunday's
Sun about “A New Battle in Maryland Education”.
I wanted to share a few things that
might be interesting to include in future articles on the subject of
testing and teacher evaluation. But, before I begin, I should
explain who I am so you can understand the background I am speaking
from. I earned my MA Ed in curriculum and instruction thirteen years
ago. I taught middle school in Colorado and Texas. Then, I taught
remedial math in a community college GED prep program in Georgia. I
also taught math part-time in a private school in Georgia for one
term. Since moving to Maryland eight years ago, I have been
homeschooling my three children. I have seen all three modes of
schooling (public, private, and homeschooling) and do not feel that
there is one right answer for all children. For some children,
homeschooling is the best option. For others, private, and for
others it is public schooling. As a former public school teacher and
as a community parent, I care deeply about what happens in the
schools. I have many friends who work in the school districts here
and I talk to people wherever I go about our state's education
system, because I care.
When I first moved here, I was floored
to learn that the school boards were not entirely elected. I grew up
in Southern California where the boards were wholely elected. As I
researched the state board, I learned that the board was not
representative of our state's varied counties, but focused in on two
or three counties. I was shocked to read the biographies of the
board members and additionally learn that seven of the twelve have
not been educators. This last piece of information is a very
influential one. Teachers who have not been parents often think they
know how to parent because they can manage a classroom. But, on the
flip side, parents often do not understand the challenges and skills
a teacher needs to have and use constantly in the classroom if they
have not been teachers themselves.
In the same way, policy makers who have
not been teachers often place unreasonable expectations on teachers.
The SLOs are an example of this. I have assumed that teachers were
involved in the invention of these plans which are basically
“classroom IEPs” but I have not researched the matter in depth.
Most of the teachers I have spoken with in the counties surrounding
the area where I lived still didn't know how to write one of these
mid-year of this school year even though they were supposed to be
implementing one this school year. Maryland is micro-managing the
implementation of the common core standards by dictating lesson plans
and adding on the additional burden of the SLOs to teachers' plates.
My understanding from your article is that the state is requiring
teachers to be accountable to these SLOs (which many teachers have
received very little instruction about) but not the test scores from
the common core for two years? Is this true?
To connect test scores to teacher
evaluation is extremely unfair in my opinion. I recently had a
friend call me from Nevada and ask me about the schools in Maryland.
He had a friend who was offered a job in this state and was
considering the position, but wanted more information about whether
the schools would be good for his child. He quoted the national
ranking of his state (49th) and asked about Maryland. In
reply, I told him that as an educator I don't pay any attention to
those statistics. There are many important factors that statistics
cannot take into account. The first is the socioeconomics of a
community. The more resources—intellectual and physical—that a
community has, the more successful the schools in that community are.
Here are three articles that I found quickly on the web that mention
its importance:
This article explains SES and mentions
in its conclusion that although SES is often mentioned in the
introduction of research, it is not factored into the measurement of
outcomes... as it is not factored into test scores.
A quick and easy article to read which
summarizes the relationship between SES and education outcomes.
A third, easy to read article about the
relationship between SES and educational outcomes.
The second factor I mentioned to my
friend about why I don't pay attention to test scores is student
transience.
This article makes some wonderful
points about the impacts of transience on students. Students who move
a lot are typically below grade level. They do not have the academic
and emotional stability to rebound quickly from a move.
This is an excerpt from a book that
states that the number of moves a child makes is connected to lower
test scores.
This third article is a dissertation
focused on a particular school district in Tennessee. Its
implications are limited in my mind, but it made the point that most
of the transiency was interdistrict and when standard programs (ie.
Curriculum) were implemented there was less variance. The problem
with taking that and applying it to a nation like the Common Core
does is that children across the nation have such widely different
sets of background knowledge and experiences. A child from an urban,
inner city area will not understand the same stories that someone
from a rural area in Iowa would. I would daresay that the academic
needs of the communities are different. So, when the focus of
classroom education is required to focus on taking a test, teachers
are not able to build the knowledge children need to understand the
world they live in. There simply isn't time. Within our own state,
we have urban and rural areas. The state policy makers on the board
of education all come from urban areas. Hmm.
To judge a teacher on test scores when
50% of her students are not the ones she began the school year with,
is extremely unfair. Transience is not factored into test scores to
my knowledge in any way.
Lastly, the encouragement I gave to my
friend was that the greatest predictor of how a child will do in
schools is the parents. I live in an area of our county that many
people look down upon and people often ask me about the schools.
This is what I tell them in reply. How your child does depends on
you. Get involved in their schools. Communicate with their
teachers. Ask about their days. Our county uses a math program that
most parents struggle to help with at home (and which causes issues
for most students I hear about). Parents need to be able to help
their children with their homework. It is not a school's job to
parent children. They are to educate students. Teachers and Parents
need to become teams again—working towards the same goal.
Unfortunately, our system currently
seems to constantly pit parents and teachers against each other.
Teachers are defensive because they are judged by test scores, yet
there are so many factors that they have no control of. Those
factors multiplied this school year when districts micromanaged
classrooms by dictating lesson plans to teachers and how the common
core should be implemented. Teachers are not supposed to be robots.
They, like me, were trained modify curriculum and teach to the needs
of their students. Back up, go a little slower, reteach, move ahead.
Teachers have been trained. We need to let them do their jobs and
what they were trained to do.
Obviously, my opinion is that test
scores are a very poor way to measure how teachers are doing. We
live in a world now that doesn't believe in teachers and doesn't
believe they can do their jobs. Why do we have so many teachers on
instructional plans in Maryland schools? Why don't we have
administrators that are backing their teachers and believing in them?
I've heard of a few. I've heard of many that aren't. My heart
grieves for the state of education in our state. I may homeschool my
children, but I still care. I do not homeschool because I don't
think teachers can't do their jobs. I homeschool because I love
teaching my children and I am able to modify their education plans in
a way that public schools cannot do. It is the best option for my
family. I am a better teacher after homeschooling for the past seven
years. I have learned a lot. It has also prompted much reflection
in me about my time in public schools. My conviction that teachers
need to be allowed to teach and do their jobs has never wavered. I
someday hope that we will let them do their jobs again and believe in
them.
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