New teacher assessment necessary
There’s a mini war going on in Los Angeles.
Rita Yeung | Daily Trojan
On one side of a lawsuit are five parents backed by an advocacy group, who are suing Los Angeles Unified School District for not following a 40-year-old state law that requires student performance data be linked to teacher evaluations.
On the other side is LAUSD and its teachers union fighting to keep standardized test scores separate from the school district’s teacher evaluation system.
The lawsuit is one puzzle piece of a much larger issue affecting all levels of education: allowing test scores and data to dictate the way teachers teach and the way students learn.
Last spring LAUSD implemented an evaluation system that generates a teacher’s effectiveness rating based on students’ past and predicted future test scores.
The lawsuit also sheds light on a critical need, from the lower to university level, for new teacher assessment systems.
The group of parents are invoking the 40-year-old law, the Stull Act, in order to force action on a current stalemate between the L.A. superintendent and the teachers union over performance reviews. The parents and advocacy group filed suit last week, on the same day as a district deadline for settling contract provisions, some of which involve teacher evaluations.
LAUSD should be able to look toward higher education for a positive example of teacher assessment. The system at USC, however, is in need for a makeover as well.
For universities, mid-and end-of-the-semester evaluations, in addition to RateMyProfessors.com, just don’t cut it. The data collected from these mid-semester and end-of-semester evaluations is hard to find. The Office of the Provost publishes unique course and teacher evaluations, specific to term, every semester on the Student Affairs Information Technology website. This site, however, is not publicized to the degree it needs to be.
If the student body was adequately informed about the site, it would easily supplant RateMyProfessors.com.
The Office of the Provost site, however, has its flaws. The surveys taken during the year are very specific and not open-ended. The site should add a section where students can add paragraph responses to teacher evaluations, by addressing any complaints or questions not answered by the surveys.
Data-based evaluations pressure teachers to teach to the test. This can fundamentally weaken children’s education from kindergarten to 12th grade. If LAUSD loses the lawsuit, education from the K-12 level could become more about passing a test than the love of learning.
LAUSD, despite budget cuts, is actively trying to become a progressive and premier school district in the nation. By fighting such an antiquated law, they are making a concerted effort to re-evaluate their system.
Just five parents have managed to create a monumental problem — legal and academic — for an already broken system.
A number of California teachers have been accused of helping students cheat this year, as reported by the Los Angeles Times. The driving force for cheating is feeling the pressure to raise standardized test scores.
How is creating more of that pressure going to promote a student’s right to educational equality and opportunity?
As a whole, the educational system needs to re-assess teacher evaluations and the method in which we make them available.
Elena Kadvany is a senior majoring in Spanish. Her column “Beyond the Classroom” runs Mondays.
If students continue to be socially promoted through grade after grade at LAUSD without fundamental skills in English or math, why would you hold a 12th grade teacher responsible for a student with a 3rd grade reading ability not being able to pass his or any other class where the student has been consciously put into a single-subject credentialed teacher’s class without the skills necessary to do the work.
And yet superintendent after superintendent comes into LAUSD only to be immediately anointed by the mainstream media as public education expert although none of them have done anything to stop student failure, which they and not the teachers have the power to do.
Superintendent Deasy, like 43% of public school superintendents around this country are graduates of the Broad Academy, which along with the Gates Foundation want to privatize the $250-$370 billion a year public education “business” – think credit default swaps and sub prime meltdown if you want to know where this is going. At http://www.perdaily.com we tell about what is really going on at LAUSD/UTLA, which neither the mainstream media nor the Gates/Broad subsidized NPR refuse to publish. Check it out and decide for yourself. At perdaily, we will never ask you to believe what we cannot prove.
Thank you, thank you, thank you. Our kids have been used by pawns dictated by the unions. Last week I read teachers have no time or money to teach science. Of course it’s not tested so it’s off the priority list. There’s time to give illegals special attention. There’s time to give sex education to first graders…in detail. Our teachers are constantly asking for higher benefits and higher pensions. Did you know 40% of the states budget shortly is for union benefits and pensions? We’ve asked them to contribute to health care and pensions and of course they are furious of the thought. Can’t fire them and our kids suffer. How can our kids benefit if they constantly picket or now they are marching with the wall street crowd. Parents have to take a bigger part and vote these liberals out of office. Let’s help our kids. Again thank you.