NYC - measuring teachers (just like the rest of us)
From the NY Post:
Grading Teachers
Kids' test scores must count
January 28, 2008 -- IF you want good teachers in the schools, the first step is obvious: Figure out who they are.
And not by relying solely on water-cooler chat and subjective judgments but by also looking at rock-hard data on teacher performance.
Such common-sense thinking has led Chancellor Joel Klein & Co. to undertake a pilot project to measure and track teachers' results - based on their students' test scores.
The idea is revolutionary for city schools, but even baby steps in this direction could do a world of good for kids.
Imagine teachers treated like other professionals - having their performance monitored and quantified. In other fields, workers are routinely judged against numerical indicators.
Sales folks get measured:
- Future leads and pipeline sales
- Orders booked
- Repeat and new sales
- Services vs Product vs Warranties
As a software engineer, I do very unique things most days. Each project is pretty much different - often radically different than anything else I've ever done. Yet, even within that variability, I've been measured (lines of code / function points, bugs, tech writing, seminars, consulting dollars, customer satisfaction, assisting sales / number of accounts won).
If you are going to manage something, you gotta measure it. That's one reason why I kept bringing up one simple measure during the SAU budget meetings - what's your ratio of indirect / direct cost?
I ran into the expected obfuscation of "well, we do it this way, they do it another way, and somebody does it a third. So, how can you measure us?" As Terry Stewart pointed out, that's a simple org chart that almost all businesses have ready all the time.
We're still waiting to receive it.
Gee, I thought it would have been rather simple for the SAU / School Board to come up with the simple ratio that I was asking for
Still have not received that either. So much for measurements....
Numbers, after all, don't lie. The Giants should beware of Patriot QB Tom Brady in Sunday's Super Bowl because his lifetime win-loss record is 100-26 and he's thrown 222 touchdowns. Salesmen, entertainers, doctors and lawyers are often weighed against statistical standards.
Shouldn't educators be judged similarly? Absolutely. If their students do well, teachers should get credit. If not, teachers should share blame.
Given how vital the good ones are and dangerous the bad ones, it's insane that they're not already tracked this way. Most folks agree that:
* Education is vital.
* Teacher quality makes a key difference.
* Some teachers are shining lights while others are god-awful lousy.
Parents have long understood the importance of good teachers; every summer, they beg, steal or borrow to see that little Johnny escapes Ms. Jones or gets into Mr. Smith's class come fall.
Yet rookie teachers, good and bad alike, get lifetime tenure almost automatically after just three years of service in New York. By definition, some kids are being short-changed.
Let's be clear: The problem has never been how to sort the wheat from the chaff but, rather, how to get the teachers' union to allow merit-based distinctions.
In theory, sophisticated stats shouldn't really be necessary. A good principal knows from long-term observation which teachers are the crème de la crème and which are hopeless. They should be able to make staffing changes accordingly.
Alas, the union - and the teachers' contract - makes that nearly impossible.
