Californians support making teachers' reviews public

[TomCADem]

Source: LA Times

California voters want teachers' performance evaluations made public, a new poll has found. And most also want student test scores factored into an instructor's review.

Of those surveyed, 58% said the quality of public schools would be improved if the public had access to teachers' reviews; 23% said it would not help or could make things worse.

"They want to see the evaluations," said Linda DiVall, the chief executive of American Viewpoint, a Republican firm that co-directed the bipartisan poll for the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences and the Los Angeles Times. "Just like with corporate America, there is the same desire here for transparency and accountability."

About six in 10 voters said test scores should count for at least 30% of a teacher's evaluation. But voters also said they want a range of measures used, including parent feedback and classroom observation, to determine an instructor's effectiveness.


Read more: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-poll-teachers-20111121,0,4971525.story

---

The California First Amendment Coalition and the California Newspaper Publishers Association have been very effective in their efforts to promote transparency and accountability.

[msongs]

1. just like with corporate america??? We can read reveiws of corporate employees now? effing liar nt

[abelenkpe]

2. Just like with corporate America?

What we are able to have a say in CEOs pay based on their performance and test scores? To judge them on how well their employees perform? Seems to me the past fifteen years have seen CEO pay skyrocket as they outsourced jobs and laid off people. That can't be what the hope to mirror.

[slackmaster]

5. That information is public, and the public has recourse if it isn't happy with the person

Don't buy their stuff or their stock.

[abelenkpe]

12. You know it does not work that way.

[slackmaster]

13. I practice it daily

What's the problem?

[abelenkpe]

15. There aren't enough people as well informed and intelligent?

[alp227]

3. So that parents will know about potential teachers? What's there to hide?

[roguevalley]

10. in my career i have hadtwo principals

who felt their job was to fire one teacher a year and nothing was off limits. Does that help?

[CRK7376]

4. Stupid stupid idea....

Sopunds like something my state would try. What about teachers that don't have standarided tests in their specific concentration....home econ, pe teachers, language teachers. I Hated being graded by tests that don't account for student/parent apathy. Plus I've never seen pay scale for the manager of Subway or Sears much less Bank of America...

[bemildred]

6. All of the public's business should be public.

No exceptions.

[Mrs. Ted Nancy]

7. Really?

You want to post evaluations of teachers that are based on this?



"Making the Grades: My Misadventures in the Standardized Testing Industry
by Todd Farley
(Sausalito: PoliPoint Press, 2009)
Review by Jim Feast

Making the Grades by Todd Farley is a devastating look at the U.S. standardized testing industry that works on two levels. First, it shows that tests are scored in ways that are arbitrary and screwball, ending with results that are often (no, in most cases) doctored. Beyond this, it shows this travesty is unavoidable, given current economic conditions.

Let’s begin by noting why test results are skewed every which way, usually with little relation to a student’s actual achievement. Understand, Farley is not writing about students answering a question such as: In what year was Reagan first elected president? Those can be scored by a machine. He is discussing tests where students give written responses, ones that must be evaluated by fallible humans.

The first problem is that the questions and, more importantly, the rubrics, the set of written standards, such “good use of details” or “lacks details” that those scoring the test are supposed to use to grade responses), are written by experts who are blithely ignorant of students’ potential creativity and ingenuity. Take the problems that arise in grading these two “science” questions: What is your favorite food? How does it taste? The second one is even simplified in that the students are told to choose sweet, sour, salty or bitter. Fine. But, for pizza, for example, different students give the following answers to the second question: sweet, sour, salty or bitter. The graders, those who defend these responses to the supervisor, note (among other things) that pizza with pineapple is sweet, while ones with anchovies can be salty, and so on. Not only pizza is categorized with different tastes but so is ice cream – isn’t lemon sherbet sour? – as are multiple other foods.

But, let’s go further. What is food? What if a student says his favorite food is dirt? No, the supervisor tells the grader, that’s not right, because a food has to be nutritious. Then a grader brings up a different student, one who says her favorite food is … grass. Isn’t that nutritious? What about ice cubes. And so on."



The rest of the review gives a very good summary of the rest of the book.

http://www.evergreenreview.com/120/feast-todd-farley.html

[bemildred]

8. Really. All that stuff needs to be exposed to public criticism. nt

[Blue_Tires]

16. Cool...Let's start with police reviews first

And there are a few other public positions I'd be interested in before getting to teachers...

[bemildred]

17. I can agree that teaching is not where the most urgent need for transparency is. nt

[SoapBox]

9. I first want a TOP down review...I want reports and scoring on MANAGEMENT

and ADMINISTRATION. As we all know...it flows from the top down.

Do the evaluations take into account the massive increase in class size? And in lack of resources? And in
how much work the parents do to help the kids? In kids being hungry? In the stupidity of No Child?

There are SO many things about this that make me angry.

I still feel that this is all driven by those that want MORE power...MORE money...MORE for-pay-schools
and for putting the 99% further and further behind.

[knitter4democracy]

11. That sure sounds good. Let's make all job reviews public.

I need to know which manager at the store to deal with, the one with the best review, and I need to know which secretary is most likely to help me with getting through to the right person, and I need to know which corporation to give my money to because it has the CEO with the best review.

If teachers should be entirely public, so should our admins. If all of us should be public, then all schools, charter, private, you name it, should be. If schools should be, why not everyone? Don't the same arguments apply to pretty much every single service job out there?

[lunatica]

14. Can we make the same demands of our legislators?

[BiggJawn]

18. Why not make their bedroom habits public knowledge while we're at it?

Can't have anyone who's sexuality doesn't match our own pathological Puritanism teaching our kids, right?

As a public employee, my salary is public knowledge. Indeed, the local Gannett-run rag puts out a special issue every year with the salaries of everybody at the school in it.

I fail to see what purpose this serves other than to put fuel on the fire of the local LTTE mouthbreathers who didn't finish High School and earn $12 an hour shoveling guts at the packing house who then scream bloody murder that I'm "overpaid" because I have a degree and earn $40,000 in a field that would pay double without disclosing my salary in the private sector.