View: Don't misuse testing to grade teachers, colleges

There's no doubt about it, teacher quality is a hot topic, and the evaluation and training of teachers are in the political spotlight. The Cuomo administration has made it clear it wants reform of teacher evaluations to make it easier to remove low-performing teachers. The U.S. Department of Education is seeking to hold institutions accountable for producing educators who have demonstrated the ability to boost student achievement.

Test scores grade teachers

The problem is: How exactly do you measure teacher quality? Most schools rely on principals to evaluate teachers by observing their teaching, taking account of their other professional contributions to the school and writing up annual evaluations. Critics say these measures are too subjective, and that getting rid of teachers who are not doing a good job is too difficult.

Another approach has been to use student test scores to identify the better teachers. But this introduces a slew of problems, including that tests are designed to measure a small portion of student knowledge and are not designed to measure teacher quality. Test scores are tempting metrics to use because they are ubiquitous. Once one begins to sort and compare, it's easy to see how student test scores can be maneuvered to become the primary tool of evaluation, applied to individual teachers, to schools, districts, states and so on.

The irresponsible misuse of standardized tests has led to an increasingly problematic rhetoric of "failing schools." Gov. Andrew Cuomo egregiously said last year that such schools deserved "the death penalty." Some reformers propose closing "failing schools" and replacing them with charter schools. Because research comparing charter schools to their comparable public schools often misuses standardized test scores to do so, the verdict is still out on this strategy.

It's likely that a focus on standards and accountability contributes to both public and charter school success as measured by test scores. It remains incontrovertible, however, that our state has among the most economically and racially segregated schools in the country, and many believe our most pressing problems in education are poverty and inequitable and inadequate funding.

What makes quality?

Now we are seeing a similar misuse of standardized tests in comparing programs that train and certify teachers. The New York City Department of Education was the first to produce a report comparing programs in 2013 and using 2012 "growth scores" from math and language arts tests of fourth- through eighth-graders as a key metric of teacher quality. One striking finding is that there were no obvious or remarkable differences across programs.

Committed to identifying "failing" programs, the state now has released early data on new teacher certification exams broken down by institutions. This is yet another misuse of tests designed for a purpose other than measuring the quality of a preparation program.

What's lost in all this fervor to compare and rank teachers, schools and teacher education programs is a more nuanced question: What makes a high-quality school or college program work well? What's in the secret sauce?

As institutions undergo the rigorous process of gaining national accreditation they realize how important a spirit of collaboration is in addition to the requisite leadership, clear guidelines and support. At Mercy College we also found that our collective belief in our teacher candidates and their capabilities was instrumental in getting successfully accredited.

Competition, public shaming and ridiculing, and heavyhanded consequences will not lead to improvement in education. Nor will this out-of-control misuse of standardized tests. What educators long for are the timeless psychic rewards of teaching and the values of cooperation and connection that have informed our democratic way of life. Together, we can do more and do better if we have a vision infused with high standards and social responsibility.

The writer is professor of childhood education at Mercy College in Dobbs Ferry.