Using Student Assessments Only To Evaluate A Teacher Doesn't Work

It’s important for our students that we keep a close eye on how their education evolves over the years, and how we nurture them; adding value to their lives. We want to ensure there is growth within each classroom, and that teachers genuinely care and have high expectations for their students. Teacher efficacy is the level of confidence teachers have in their ability to guide students to success which includes helping students learn, building effective programs for students, and effectively changing student learning (Gkolia, Belia, & Koustelios, 2014).

 What are some Evaluation Insights?

Classroom evaluations are ways to identify each teacher’s needs and limitations. These observations help administrators understand the structure this teacher provides for their students, and it familiarizes us with their lesson plans, the assignments they use as well as the tools they use in the classroom. This shows us the expectations that they set for their students and the mutual respect that they portray while interacting, especially in difficult situations (Milanowski, 2004). There used to be only a handful of ways that teachers were evaluated. Classroom evaluations, student gains, test scores, etc. While these are still considered and used widely, it doesn’t nearly begin to cover all the insights we need to learn individually, grow, and help our students to excel beyond our expectations.

 Relationships can motivate and move students but Data Matters

Overall, teachers provide endless resources to their students and build relationships with them, foster their creativity, to help them grow. I really believe that data is very important for tracking student progress, measuring gains, and tracking student growth but when we only focus on formative and summative assessments we miss opportunities to identify various ways students excel. Test scores are crucial especially when it comes to higher educational access. Another way teachers are evaluated would be their communication skills. Communication is a key component in teaching, being able to relay your message is crucial. When evaluating this aspect of teaching, a few things are taken into consideration. Not only do we look at how they interact with their students, but also with the parents and other staff members too (Sword, 2020).

 A Confusing System that has too many areas of focus.

Some observation tools are subject-specific and have been known to be effective in those areas when evaluating progress. At the end of the day, teachers are always doing their best to provide access to content and curriculum. Although our student population is slightly changing we still must engage students, motivate them, and help them build efficient habits. With the number of teachers leaving the field something must change. Teachers get frustrated when leadership tries to micromanage them. They also get frustrated when they have been provided guidance by leadership and thier advice struggles to meet the expectation of the classroom. And NO, they should not be evaluated solely on how their students perform, just like students can’t be graded solely on how they test. We are starting to receive additional resources like the Value-added models (VAMs) and is attempt to measure a teacher's effect on his or her students' achievement. Only time will tell and hopefully in 10 years we will have moved away from so many assessment measures for teachers.

 References

Milanowski, A. (2004, October 1). The relationship between teacher performance evaluation scores and student achievement: Evidence from Cincinnati. Peabody Journal of Education. Retrieved March 26, 2022, from https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ683108

Sword, R. (2020, November 16). Communication in the Classroom: Skills for teachers. The Hub | High Speed Training. Retrieved March 26, 2022, from https://www.highspeedtraining.co.uk/hub/communication-skills-for-teachers/

 Gkolia, A., Belias, D., & Koustelios, A. (2014). TEACHER’S JOB SATISFACTION AND SELFEFFICACY: A REVIEW. European Scientific Journal, ESJ, 10(22).