Observations Classrooms

Observations Classrooms – Classroom observations may hurt teachers more than they help, study says

By Laura Devaney, Director of News, @eSN_Laura ,January 19th, 2016

===============================================

I’m not sure that this research study tells us anything that we didn’t already know and completely misses the real student success issues:

• Classroom Observations don’t work, if the observer doesn’t understand how to improve student success outcomes, because they are unable to provide educationally innovative advice, to improve teacher performance
• History has documented that teachers evaluating teachers improves nothing; I remember an article reflecting a high 90% approval rating for all teacher rating teacher evaluations; Job protection was priority #1 – you rate me high, I’ll rate you high, with no advanced performance improvement outcomes, for those need help the most
• The incumbent, flawed, ineffective and inefficient, one size fits all system of teaching benefits those teachers with a student population that has high classroom achievement. On the flip side it doesn’t work at all for everyone else, hence the need for education reform.
• Traditional education and traditional educators are obsessed with preserving the incumbent, flawed, 20th Century, factory model of teaching, to their benefit (change is hard) to the direct expense of their students (it only, sorta works for some of the students and doesn’t work for the rest, but that’s secondary)

What are the real issues?

• We are failing to provide ALL students with an effective, efficient way to adaptively learn, 21st century skills: empowering ALL individual student success outcomes, resulting in sustained individual student performance improvement outcomes for ALL students
• There is no legitimate teacher accountability, or proven learning methodology, integrated into traditional education, that benefits all students sustained performance improvement outcomes
• Unless the one size fits teaching paradigm, changes to a differentiated learning paradigm, student success outcomes will not advance for ALL students
• Everything, including this study, is a subset of the real issue which is student centered, 21st century, adaptive learning, methodology, that empowers ALL students with advanced student success outcomes, that result in sustained, performance improvement outcomes
• There is tremendous resistance to positive change, paradigm paralysis, to maintain the staus quo, which is not working. This means up to 75% of students may not have the opportunity to become productive members of society.

Your thoughts?

===============================================

Observations Classrooms – Classroom observations — one of the most widely-used forms of teacher evaluation — might be setting teachers up to fail

Teachers might be at a disadvantage during classroom observation of their instructional practice, which is one of the most widely-used tools for high-stakes job performance evaluations. And whether or not students have a history of high classroom achievement could be the reason why.

Research from the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education (Penn GSE) and the American Institutes for Research (AIR) indicates that evaluations based on observing teachers in the classroom often fail to meaningfully assess teacher performance.

The study, published in Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, adds to the ongoing policy debate over when and how teachers should be evaluated.

Researchers Matthew Steinberg, from Penn GSE, and Rachel Garrett, from AIR, found that students’ prior academic achievement is a significant predictor of teacher success in the high-stakes evaluation system.

“When information about teacher performance does not reflect a teacher’s practice, but rather the students to whom the teacher is assigned, such systems are at risk of misidentifying and mislabeling teacher performance,” Steinberg and Garrett wrote.

Next page: Which teachers are more likely to be among top performers when assigned high-achieving students?

Observations Classrooms –Access the Entire Article, Here

==================================================================

To Discuss how these Solutions will add value for you, your organization and/or your clients, Affinity/Resale Opportunities, and/or Collaborative Efforts, Please Contact:

Tom McDonald, tsm@centurytel.net; 608-788-5144; Skype: tsmw5752