Introduction
Every classroom and school needs a professional teacher who is well educated and qualified to perform their job. School systems recruit, prepare, and retain instructors who are best to teach. However, the education system in the US has equity and social justice concerns. Teacher evaluation is a critical process that addresses these concerns.
It is a component that many believe is design to improve the quality of education in the US. But in practice, systematic evaluation of teachers has been a problem. Policy makers and officials in the education sector have proposed that student test scores in mathematics and reading make up the largest component of teacher evaluation. This means that the scores students get in their standardized tests should also be used to evaluate the effectiveness of a teacher in doing his or her job. This paper seeks to determine how fair and just it is to base a significant proportion of teacher evaluation on student test scores.
There are good reasons to evaluate teachers based on student test scores. But the idea may not have any relationship with student achievement, which is the underlying objective of schools systems and education systems. Despite going through an entire learning process, student’s test scores may not reach a desired level. This is a good reason to consider changing the current system of teacher evaluation. It is also a good reason to dismiss teachers for their contribution to poor performance of students.
The law can suggest that teachers be dismissed if the test scores of their students do not reach the minimum level. But there is little evidence to suggest that the teachers who will replace those terminated will be more effective in improving student’s achievement. There is also no evidence to suggest that the teachers who are terminated are actually the poorest in their job. Another concern is whether teachers will be motivated to perform based on the results of their student’s test scores or anything monetary (Ball and Youdell).
Student test scores are good in providing information used to judge the performance and effectiveness of teachers in providing instruction and in delivery of pedagogy. However, they cannot entirely be used as a performance measure for teachers. They should be a part of the whole evaluation criteria for teachers’ performance. But the extent in which they should be used forms the basis of this debate.
Elements, circumstances, policies, and practices that impact student test scores
There is a lot involved in the learning process of students. Education is considered to be both a complex and a cumulative process, and there are numerous factors that influence learning. The school condition has an apparent impact on learning. The environment outside school and the learning experiences at home have a significant influence on the overall learning outcome of a student.
The community, summer programs, the internet, and peers are among other factors identified to influence learning. All these factors play out in the overall output of a student’s standardized test scores (Banks 67). Therefore, the overall achievement of a student cannot be solely attributed to one teacher but to a combination of all these factors including the role that teachers play in influencing learning.
Throughout their education process, students have also passed through a number of teachers. Prior teachers have an influence in the outcome of the scores. The learning experiences in earlier grades have a lasting effect on student’s learning in their later grade levels. Similarly, whatever a student learns from his or her English teacher influences what they learn in history or any other subject taught in English where students are required to write essays. The case is the same for mathematics because it greatly influences student performance in other subjects that require numerical skills.
The classroom and school conditions vary and are not similar in all schools. Some classrooms have a student to teacher ratio that is unmanageable while others have manageable student to teacher ratio. Some schools have professional counselors tasked to address issues of delinquency and undesired behaviors among students while other schools do not have such services.
Other schools have more resources and are well equipped than others. At home, there is also a variation in resources which significantly influences students learning outcome. Some parents are able to pay for private tutoring and homework help for their children while others do not see the need for such services. All these are factors that influence test scores and therefore have to be considered in determining the fairness of using students test scores to evaluate teachers’ performances.
Inequality in the education system
According to Schwalbe (23), in his book ‘Rigging the Game’ there is a problem of inequality in the American society. This problem cuts across various sectors of the society and the education system is not spared. There is inequality in the opportunities to learn what needs to be learnt in terms of content, skills, and abilities.
In efforts to ensure equality in terms of resources, most educationists and policy makers often leave out the most important thing, instruction of content to learners (Schwalbe 23). A wide volume of literature have identified that inequality in the education system in America is deeply entrenched in the delivery of pedagogy. This partly involves coverage of instructional content especially in key subject areas such as mathematics and reading.
The inequality witnessed in America’s education system plays a role in the low student achievement particularly of learners from low social economic background. The under privileged learners are disadvantaged from accessing quality education and receiving the right instructional content to build their knowledge base and skills in line with the country’s economy (Newman 45). This is also a critical factor to consider when deciding whether student’s test scores should compose 50% of teacher evaluation.
Influence of members from different social groups
Newman in the book, ‘The Missing Class’, talks about the less privileged people living America thus asserting Schwalbe’s main point that there is a great sense of inequality in America’s social structures including education. The challenges that the underprivileged children and learners face should not be ignored when considering making it a law that teachers’ evaluation should greatly be based on the outcome of student’s test scores.
The ‘missing class’ parents also throw a spanner into this debate since they are more likely to fail to provide the ideal home learning environment for their children. This will play out in how they perform in their test scores. Quite a number of children from the ‘Missing Class’ do not normally perform well in school and thus affecting the overall performance of a class. These students are also impacted by their neighborhood and the places they live because they are most likely to interact with others of the same state.
Works Cited
Ball, S. J. and D. Youdell. “Hidden privatisation in public education.” NUT Education Review (2009): 21(2), 73-83. Print.
Banks, J. A., & Banks, C. A. Multicultural education: Issues and perspectives. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons., 2007. Print.
Newman, Katherine S. The Missing Class: Portraits of the Near Poor in America. Boston: Beacon Press, 2007. Print.
Schwalbe, Michael. Rigging the Game: How Inequality is Reproduced in Everyday Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Print.