Benefits and Drawbacks of the NJ Effectiveness Task Force Report

In recent years, policymakers and other education constituents have practiced various strategies to improve academic outcomes, especially for our most disadvantaged children. It has been crucial to effortlessly improve educator effectiveness. For decades we have known that a number of external factors, most notably poverty, can significantly depress student learning. Yet research has found that teachers and principals have the ability to overcome these obstacles and help all students achieve at high levels.
Governor Christie established the Education Effectiveness Task Force through a September 28, 2010 Executive Order in which nine experienced members were selected. Experience includes knowledge of education policy, administration, and teaching. The Task Force recommends an educator evaluation system based on measures of effectiveness. Recommendations must include measures of student achievement (representing at least 50% of the evaluation); demonstrated practices of effective teachers and leaders; and weights for the various components. The purpose of this report is to help New Jersey create a new system for evaluating teachers and principals that leads to significant and lasting improvements in public education.
The report is composed of four sections. The first section recommends the growth of a New Teacher Evaluation System, which includes two subsections, one for measures of teacher practice and the other for measures of student achievement. This is based on student learning, explicitly, all measures used to assess effectiveness should be linked to achievement, and it would consist of equal parts teacher practice and direct measures of student achievement. Teachers would be evaluated as Highly Effective, Effective, Partially Effective, and Ineffective. The second section recommends a New Principal Evaluation System. It has three subsections keen to measures of effective practice (40%), retention of effective educators (hiring and retaining effective teachers and exiting poor performers, 10%), and measures of student achievement (50%). The third section includes a Set of Recommendations regarding additional considerations. These recommendations will lay the foundation and build the support structure for this new system. Some issues considered are training for those conducting observations, informing educators of the new system’s components and implications, and more. The final section is on Next Steps. The Task Force has identified a number of activities to advance the implementation of education reform in New Jersey.
The Task Force highlights the concept that the needs of students are supreme and that public education exists for the benefit of children. It believes that the reforms recommended in the report are good for both children and adults. It also highlights that all children can achieve at the highest levels. Some argue that a child’s neighborhood, race, and family income are determining factors and that so much from public schools can be anticipated because of these external forces. The Task Force believes that the purpose of public education is to lead all students to high levels of achievement no matter where they begin. The report also highlights that educators have the power to inspire, engage, and widen opportunities for students if equipped with the right skills, knowledge, and temperament and given the appropriate supports.
However, there may be some drawbacks to these recommendations. For instance, some may say that even with the best models and data, teacher ratings are highly inconsistent from year to year, and have very high rates of misclassification. According to one recent major study, there is a 35% chance of identifying an average teacher as poor, given one year of data, and 25% chance given three years. Some children learn over the summer and higher income kids learn more than their lower income peers over the summer. As a result, annual testing data aren’t very useful for measuring teacher effectiveness. Annual testing data significantly disadvantage teachers serving children whose summer learning lags. This problem can be fixed with fall-spring assessments. But it cannot be resolved in any fast-tracked plan involving current New Jersey assessments, which are annual. The Task Force report ignores this concern, recommending fast-tracked use of current assessment data. Also, basing teacher evaluations, tenure decisions and dismissal decisions on scores that may be influenced by which student a teacher serves discourages teachers to serve students with the greatest needs, disruptive students, or those with disruptive family backgrounds. Many of these factors are not, and can not be captured by variables in the best models. Establishing a system where achieving tenure or getting a raise becomes a roll of the dice and where a teacher’s career can be ended by a roll of the dice is no way to improve the teacher work force.
The NJ Education Effectiveness Task Force report presents recommendations to create a fair and apparent system of educator evaluations, centering on student learning and achievement and demonstrates practices of effective teachers and administrators. Although, some may agree to the idea of retaining teachers and principals on the basis of statewide evaluation system that takes into account the success of their students, others may see this as being unfair. The Task Force hopes to implement premium evaluation systems for teachers and principals that will enable districts and the state to improve personnel decisions, such as the awarding of tenure and the setting of compensation levels, and drive significant improvements in student learning.
Retrieved from:
http://www.nj.gov/education/educators/effectiveness.pdf
http://schoolfinance101.wordpress.com/2011/03/13/student-test-score-based-measures-of-teacher-effectiveness-won%E2%80%99t-improve-nj-schools/
http://www.nj.gov/governor/news/news/552011/approved/20110303a.html