How to Evaluate K-12 Teachers

[Concerned American]

Dress and grooming are the LEAST of our concerns

If you don't teach personal responsibility FIRST, everything else is moot.

 

[DGS49]

The fact is that it is possible to identify teachers who are able to get the job done, even when some of the parents do nothing to support the process. Yes, we have incorrigible kids and yes, we have some awful parents, but the schools have the kids for the largest part of their waking day.

This thread is about whether it is possible to fairly evaluate teachers' performance, and how "we" go about weeding out the teachers who are not performing. One poster who claims to be an active teacher right now says that students are administered standardized tests three times per school year. HOW ARE THOSE RESULTS USED?

I, for one, would be willing to pay higher school taxes (currently about $7k/yr) if I could be confident that there was some mechanism to evaluate our teachers and weed out the worst ones. But there isn't.

 

[GMCGeneral]

Appropriate dress need not be uniforms, just tasteful; 'dressy casual' if you will.

Actually, uniforms do help.

 

[Admiral Rockwell Tory]

The fact is that it is possible to identify teachers who are able to get the job done, even when some of the parents do nothing to support the process. Yes, we have incorrigible kids and yes, we have some awful parents, but the schools have the kids for the largest part of their waking day.

This thread is about whether it is possible to fairly evaluate teachers' performance, and how "we" go about weeding out the teachers who are not performing. One poster who claims to be an active teacher right now says that students are administered standardized tests three times per school year. HOW ARE THOSE RESULTS USED?

I, for one, would be willing to pay higher school taxes (currently about $7k/yr) if I could be confident that there was some mechanism to evaluate our teachers and weed out the worst ones. But there isn't.

How about grading dentists on the number of cavities their patients get?

 

[Woodznutz]

How about grading dentists on the number of cavities their patients get?

To the extent that dentists are responsible for supervising their hygienists, yes.

 

[initforme]

Appropriate dress need not be uniforms, just tasteful; 'dressy casual' if you will.

Clean jeans, clean t shirt. And a healthy breakfast instead of sugar. I slam this nation for letting soft drink companies slowly kill people.

 

[braalian]

To the level of sending 5.5 year old children to school not toilet trained.

You mention this a lot.

It can’t happen that often unless you’re some sort of special ed teacher with students with significant developmental disabilities. In which case it kinda comes with the territory.

 

[braalian]

To the extent that dentists are responsible for supervising their hygienists, yes.

How can the hygienist control what the patient eats or how often they brush and floss at home?

 

[Woodznutz]

How can the hygienist control what the patient eats or how often they brush and floss at home?

Hygienists can make recommendations to their patients about their oral care.

 

[Woodznutz]

To the extent that dentists are responsible for supervising their hygienists, yes.

Unkotare,
As a teacher I would have thought you would agree that dental patients should be taught how to care for, and the importance of, their oral health.

 

[SweetSue92]

You mention this a lot.

It can’t happen that often unless you’re some sort of special ed teacher with students with significant developmental disabilities. In which case it kinda comes with the territory.

Of course we're going to have special ed children who are not toilet trained; that's been the case for years. I'm not talking about them. I'm talking about normally-developing gen ed children whose parents just didn't "get around to it".

That's indicative of where we are as a society. 50 years ago most parents--the vast, vast majority--would never dream of starting their gen ed child in school if he/she wasn't toilet trained. They would be embarrassed to do so. Moreover, the school wouldn't take them.

Now, by law, the schools MUST take them and some parents just shrug it off. Granted, it's a small, even tiny percentage. But significant if that child is in your classroom. So now, you're not only trying to teach the basics, but you're teaching basic socialization AND toddler skills like....potty training.

You bet I mention that a lot.

 

[SweetSue92]

There is so much ignorance here it's hard to know where to start.

How about I just start with this.

I'm going to randomly select 25 teenagers. I'm going to have you teach them all to drive. Then, their driving record will be all on you--on how you taught them. Your job as a driving instructor will be completely dependent on their record.

Seem fair?

Let's start there.

To come back to this:

There would be some fairness if it could be shown that, year after year, your class of randomly-selected students make considerable academic progress. Or the opposite: that year after year, they do not. Because then of course you're not so much relying on that particular "batch" of students but results over time, no matter which students arrive in your classroom.

My evaluation rubric is about 50 pages long at this time. I'm not even kidding. Luckily our admin is still pretty flexible with it. One common joke in education is admin destroying teachers for stupid minutiae like "exit tickets" or "learning targets". As in: if you don't write on the board for students exactly what they're supposed to be learning that day, you fail the evaluation.

Right, shall we apply that genius in real life? How many of you never learned how to read because your first grade teacher did not write on the board, "I will learn to read today"?

This is the stupidity of my profession. This is what I can't wait to leave when I retire, not the kids or the actual teaching.

 

[Woodznutz]

Right, shall we apply that genius in real life? How many of you never learned how to read because your first grade teacher did not write on the board, "I will learn to read today"?

.

Successful business executives often write down their goals for the day. I once saw a note pad that was titled, "The Six Things That I Must Do Today."

(Of course, it could be five, or even seven.)

 

[SweetSue92]

Successful business executives often write down their goals for the day. I once saw a note pad that was titled, "The Six Things That I Must Do Today."

(Of course, it could be five, or even seven.)

Sure. Good teachers tell their students and usually have it down in some form written. But for picky admins it has to be a "learning target" written in a specific way. Right, because no one in the entire history of humanity ever learned a darn thing if they didn't know what the "learning target" is.

We have too many Chiefs in my field and not enough Indians, so this is what you get.

 

[Woodznutz]

Sure. Good teachers tell their students and usually have it down in some form written. But for picky admins it has to be a "learning target" written in a specific way. Right, because no one in the entire history of humanity ever learned a darn thing if they didn't know what the "learning target" is.

We have too many Chiefs in my field and not enough Indians, so this is what you get.

Looking back at my school days, with the exception of math, it wasn't always clear to me what exactly I was supposed to learn.

 

[SweetSue92]

Looking back at my school days, with the exception of math, it wasn't always clear to me what exactly I was supposed to learn.

If you were studying the Civil War, you didn't know it?
Or kinds of rocks?
Or how to diagram a sentence?
Your teachers never told you what material would be on a test, or what to study?

 

[Unkotare]

Sure. Good teachers tell their students and usually have it down in some form written. But for picky admins it has to be a "learning target" written in a specific way. Right, because no one in the entire history of humanity ever learned a darn thing if they didn't know what the "learning target" is.

We have too many Chiefs in my field and not enough Indians, so this is what you get.

Again, it is pretty clear that you want to quit. So just quit. Or maybe you really get off on bitching and crying about your job here all the damn time?

 

[John Edgar Slow Horses]

Guys and Gals, the fault is the Parents first and last and foremost.

85% of them could care less.

 

[John Edgar Slow Horses]

Sweet Sue may be Spec Ed because she was told she could always get a job in the field, which is true.

It probably is that she hates teaching Spec Ed.

If true, she needs to retrain into another job profession.

 

[Woodznutz]

If you were studying the Civil War, you didn't know it?
Or kinds of rocks?
Or how to diagram a sentence?
Your teachers never told you what material would be on a test, or what to study?

In any discussion of any subject we kids seldom had the answer the teacher was angling for. The teacher always had a better answer. That left us feeling pretty stupid.

Regarding such subjects as the 'Civil War' as an example; what about the war were we supposed to learn? What would appear on the test?

Personally, I often was looking for something more meaningful in some subjects. Most were simple and easy, so I thought that I must be missing something.