The Criminals Are the Ones Going After Teachers

Once upon a time, it was a given that if you were at all capable of teaching, you received your one satisfactory observation each year, ending the year with an ever so carefree, satisfactory overall for the year. But then, someone said, wait, if so many schools are failing and yet every teacher or nearly so is satisfactory, well, that doesn't compute. Never mind free-will and oppositional defiance common to teens and ever-deteriorating influences! No! There was ONE study ONE TIME, never replicated, that showed a relation between teacher effectiveness and student achievement. It's the teachers' fault!

So, it’s the teachers that bear the onus of turning an educational corner while guiding students and parents from every corner of the planet, most experiencing turmoil in one way or another, while negotiating a new observation system that balances teaching to a rubric with high-stakes testing data. If you add an administrator breathing down your neck, exploiting every opportunity to deduct points from your rating and gives you zero credit for what you are doing, and, yeah, party’s over.

Technical jargon portion: The rating system that the "Great Thinkers" of government decided upon, currently has a matrix to determine what rating a teacher would get based on their observations, now known as "Measures of Teacher Practice" or "MOTP", and students' scores, now known as "Measures of Student Learning". Boy, do I want the job of naming these things! Someone has that job! Notice that it is possible to get a MOTP rating of "Ineffective" and a MOSL score of "Highly Effective". Yes, that is a possibility that the Great Thinkers anticipated! But, that means that students scored well on the state test in their ineffective teacher's subject. How can a teacher be teaching at an ineffective or developing level but her students show growth? Someone please explain this!

But, that never happens, right? Well, no, it does. I know of what I speak. And, it happens year after year after year. I know this, too.

So, either the determination of the MOSL is defective, or the assessment of teaching is. But, no matter how byzantine and secretively the MOSL is calculated, one thing you can say:

it is numbers in a formula that is empirical and non-manipulatable.

Now, it is this same observation system that came out in 2014 and was immediately met with practical questions, like, how do teachers that teach gym, the arts, specialized classes, etc, get a measure of student learning. The answer was, we'll test the students. The next year, they stopped using the MOSL entirely, and then the following year, rather than test each subject to tie the MOSL to each teacher, teachers were now to chose a test they'd like to use, instead. Teachers could choose a certain demographic in their school and a test that is given by the state. This means that a senior journalism teacher could select the 6th grade SWD math test if she taught in a 6-12 school. Kind of a mess, but you're still with me?

Now let's talk about the MOTP. This was first implemented, in 2014, based on the 20 component, 4 domain Danielson rubric. The very next year, it was streamlined to 8 components in 4 domains. Those teachers who still have groups that take the state test (basically ELA and Math teachers in grades 3-8, and science in 4th and 8th), received advisory scores, as well, using their students' growth, as in 2014. Student surveys were supposed to be included in the ratings, but that never happened, although school's did pilot giving the surveys.

In other words, they rolled out a new system without a great deal of feedback or forethought, and have been patching it ever since. But, still, there are problems integral to it.

Somehow, the geniuses in District 24, at the time, all math masters, had my MOTP on the decline, while my MOSL was climbing. How? Well, that is a story for another day. Strap in, baby cakes, I'm about to explain why.