If Congress Wants Better Educators, It Can’t Let States Off the Hook

The Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) committee recently held a hearing on supporting teachers and school leaders in Sen. Lamar Alexander’s draft bill to reauthorize No Child Left Behind (NCLB). So far, the debate has centered on the annual testing mandate and school accountability in Title I. Until now, we’ve heard far less about the bill’s effects on teaching and leading in U.S. schools, the focus of his Title II rewrite, “High-Quality Teachers, Principals, and Other School Leaders.”

What we did hear wasn’t good. While Alexander includes improving educator effectiveness as a key purpose of Title II, his bill does nothing to require that states actually hold educators accountable for student achievement and help them improve to meet all students’ needs.

Unsurprisingly, the issue that has gained the most attention, both in the hearing and in the media, is whether to mandate educator evaluation based partially on student test scores. Both Senate Democrats and Republicans seem keen on excluding the requirement and appear wary of recognizing its rationale and potential benefits. This is unfortunate because states are just beginning to make progress in this area. And data from new evaluation systems have the potential to better inform educator accountability and professional growth opportunities.

The mandate to include student growth as a component of evaluation, along with classroom observations, arose for a valid reason: to better understand educators’ performance, help them improve their practice, and dismiss those unable to improve over some time. While never in the original law, the Department of Education made test-based evaluation a key condition for states receiving waivers from NCLB or winning Race to the Top grants. Previously, evaluation systems were based on cursory measures that led to almost all educators rated as satisfactory despite big gaps in their students’ achievement. Requiring or incentivizing states to adopt student outcomes in  evaluation—nearly 40 states plus Washington D.C. have now done so—was well intentioned and can lead to more reliable data on educator effectiveness.

Multiple measure evaluation systems provide much-needed information to states and districts to help educators improve their practice. But Alexander’s bill does nothing to guarantee that states invest in professional development (PD) for educators—whether tied to their evaluation data or not. The bill actually converts Title II and Title IV (Safe and Healthy Students) into block grants, allowing states to transfer 100% of Title II funds into other efforts unrelated to helping educators improve. This change would make it difficult to track and hold states accountable for their spending on professional development. And given that dollars currently spent on professional development fail to align with educators’ needs, it would make it even more difficult to determine which development opportunities have an impact on teacher practice.

The pushback toward requiring more rigorous educator evaluation systems arises amidst heightened anxiety around over-testing in schools and a misunderstanding about the role tests play in educator evaluation. For instance, a recent Ohio report found that student learning objective (SLO) tests, used as one measure of educator performance in subjects and grades where annual testing isn’t available, are contributing to over-testing in the state. For SLOs, teachers use baseline data to set goals for what their students should learn in a given year and identify or select an assessment to measure student progress toward those goals. Michael Petrilli of Fordham argued that eliminating the educator evaluation mandate would lessen the testing burden caused by these tests. But his argument misunderstands the role SLOs can play in evaluation—SLOs often are developed by groups of educators, serve as a valuable professional learning opportunity, and help teachers drive their instruction.

In addition, for teachers in tested subjects and grades, there is a misperception that educators are evaluated on tests alone. For these teachers, many districts use value-added measures, which research shows are powerful indicators of educator effectiveness particularly when combined with other measures. Value-added measures estimate a teacher’s impact on students’ state test scores in a given year by taking into account their incoming test scores among other factors outside the teacher’s control. In the Senate hearing, both Sen. Patty Murray and Kentucky Commissioner Terry Holiday alluded to test-based measures as a sole factor in evaluation—but they aren’t and never were. These measures account for no more than 50 percent of a teacher’s total evaluation rating.

To be sure, the test-based educator evaluation mandate has led to complicated and unintended consequences for states and districts in implementation. For instance, Washington State saw its waiver revoked because it failed to incorporate student outcomes in its evaluation system, and now it’s failing under NCLB. Meanwhile, Texas and Maine run the risk of jeopardizing their waiver renewal as the Department places pressure on them over the same issue. What’s more, incorporating student growth into educator evaluation is extremely complex—particularly in untested subjects and earlier grades as my colleague Laura Bornfreund has explained. Even for teachers in tested subjects and grades, more research is necessary to understand whether the measures used are just as valid and powerful in high-stakes situations. And data emerging from new state evaluation systems still show the vast majority of teachers as rated effective or higher.

But this means states and districts need more time to get implementation right for all educators involved and learn how to better differentiate between and support them. And researchers need more time to inform the process. Reverting to the status quo, where states were left to their own devices on teacher evaluation, could lead them to abandon implementing more rigorous systems altogether or never begin the work. A requirement that states invest in more rigorous educator evaluation data could also help them spend federal dollars on professional development more wisely—if only that were a requirement under this bill, too.”