Students + Testing = Job evaluation

I've been a teacher for a long darn time and over the years teacher evaluations have changed significantly. It used to be the principal came to see you, looked at your lesson plans, wrote some things about you and then you signed it. It worked pretty well; until you realized that there were teachers getting these kinds of evaluations that had no business being in a school building, let alone teaching in one. So we came up with a new set of criteria and had a rubric created just for that. You get points from 1-4 and then a few comments. Worked, but yet again there were some who still didn't belong in the teaching field.

This brings me to the new teacher evaluation system. Let me say, for the record, that I have nothing against evaluating teachers and their efficacy in the classroom. However, in my opinion, this one isn't any better than the others and maybe a worse one. Beginning this year, we are being asked to set goals for our students, teach them, test them midway through, teach some more, then do final testing. (Don't get me started on having to have the final assessment done 6 weeks before the year is over!) So in the beginning of the year we pre-assessed our students and created our goals. Of course we were fresh off our summer break and full of energy and optimism, so we set our goals nice and high for our kids. Why set them so high? I'm glad you asked. We were told to reach for the best and as long as we show progress of any sort it would be a win.  So we set our goals and began our year.

By the time we got to the mid year assessment it was pretty obvious about how things were going. A few students take their work seriously, they study, and they try extremely hard. The rest can't be bothered to do anything, let alone bring their materials to class each day. I am now being graded on how well the students who only come to school half the time, students who refuse to study or do homework, and students who come from horrible living conditions do on their assessments. My bright eyed enthusiasm keeps trying to poke through and there are days when I just KNOW my students are going to get it and show the world what they know. Then I wake up and realize that many of these kids don't care and I can't make them care. So now I'll be evaluated on my efficacy as a teacher when I have no way of controlling what they do when they leave here at 345 each day. I also know that it doesn't matter how great a teacher is, or how exciting their lessons are, or how many of the "new" tricks of the trade are applied, if the child doesn't do their part, nothing the teacher can do will make a bit of difference on a test.

So now I'm left thinking that I understand why teachers bring themselves to jeopardize their career by cheating when it comes to high stakes testing. I would never do it, but as one who has never had a bad evaluation, I can see why they do it and I feel for them. I guess this is just the latest innovation and it will be gone in a few years with something newer and better. But in the mean time, I can only hope that my students can show the world what I've taught them in a 50 questions test.