US Politics Mega-thread - Page 1496

On December 01 2014 02:18 Yurie wrote:


How is that stupid? You have their grades the year before. If the student improved compared to that you did a good job. If they got worse you did a bad job. The problem is how to measure it the first year when you have no base on that person.

On December 01 2014 04:27 TheTenthDoc wrote:


You have their grades in another set of classes which may have little to no relevance to their performance the next year in a great many school systems. Performance in world history and national history may have nothing to do with each other and algebra and geometry are staggeringly different.

You can implement some silly "global assessment of ability" tests but then you run into the problem of incentivizing teachers teaching to them instead of the areas they're supposed to be covering that are, you know, actually educational. And it sucks away class time too.

On December 01 2014 04:40 JonnyBNoHo wrote:

If everyone is on common core, what goes on in one school district should be similar to another. Subject matter differences shouldn't be much of an issue either. Yes, algebra and geometry are different, but I find it hard to believe that you'll have classes of students consistently doing well in algebra and consistently bad in geometry just because the subject matter is different. And if that really is the case, it should hold true at a state or national level which would allow the evaluation to remain valid.

On December 01 2014 02:18 Yurie wrote:


How is that stupid? You have their grades the year before. If the student improved compared to that you did a good job. If they got worse you did a bad job. The problem is how to measure it the first year when you have no base on that person.

On December 01 2014 06:22 Toadesstern wrote:


It's quite important for a teacher (imo) to not have any incentive to change a students grade besides how it naturally changes if the student gets better or worse.
I feel like basing someone's salary on that opens a whole new can of worms you certainly don't want to open ...

On December 01 2014 06:26 Yurie wrote:


I personally feel a standardized test would be a good way to keep it working. I agree with you that if there is no external oversight you will get grade inflation.

On December 01 2014 05:56 GreenHorizons wrote:


Well at least we've moved past the silly objections to 'the standards'. It seems we also agree that currently we don't have an effective way to measure teacher performance (or wouldn't without common core).

On December 01 2014 06:42 JonnyBNoHo wrote:

You can still measure teacher performance without common core. Having a common core (any common core) just makes the process easier, more effective, and more universal.

On December 01 2014 06:51 GreenHorizons wrote:


How would you like to see teacher performance measured? (the 'can', as opposed to 'do', makes it sound like you still agree that we don't have an effective way currently) Either way sounds like having a common core makes it better.
Sounds like at least one more good reason for a common core.

On December 01 2014 08:33 JonnyBNoHo wrote:

Well, how teacher performance should be measured is too general of a question. All I can really say is that teacher performance should be measured fairly, and be based on relevant facts.

I'm not sure how to respond to your point about using 'can' rather than 'do'. Anyways, you did not interpret the sentence correctly.

On December 01 2014 08:49 GreenHorizons wrote:

Let me make it more clear: Do you think that currently "teacher performance is measured fairly, and is based on relevant facts"? How consistently do you think it is (exclusively, mostly, rarely, never, etc..)? If they are not always being assessed fairly and based on relevant facts now, how so and why do you think that happens?

The question you deemed to general, was aimed at hearing what types of differences (if any are needed, in your opinion) in the assessment of performance that you would like to see or think would better meet the mutually agreed criteria that teachers performance assessments be fair and based on relevant facts?

I'm not trying to be a jerk or anything I am just genuinely curious whether you think teachers assessments currently meet what we agree should be the expectation or not, and what we could do to get closer to doing such.

This is most of what the reservations on common core of the left who support teachers is about, as was touched on by someone (Sub I think?). We all want to fairly assess our teachers performance but there is real debate about what that takes. I am just genuinely asking for your input as to what you think those changes should be or if you think they are even needed?

I took the second part to mean that you thought a common core would make such an exercise "easier, more effective, and more universal". Was that not an accurate interpretation?

On December 01 2014 09:41 JonnyBNoHo wrote:

I wasn't commenting on what is or is not done currently, nor is it relevant to my post or the discussion. Yes, a teacher could be evaluated poorly currently, but the same could happen with common core. Conversely, a teacher could be evaluated well now, or just as well with common core.

If we're talking about linking teacher performance evaluation to student test scores, it's the same dynamic really. If you take those test scores and use them stupidly, you'll end up with an unfair assessment of the teacher's performance. For example, a teacher's students could do worse on a test because a lot of them are English as a second language learners. In that case, you're making an unfair comparison but anyone with even a basic understanding of performance measuring should understand the error. Problems like that are fair concerns, but they are not problems that are intrinsic to the evaluation process.

The reason I felt your question was too general is because many problems like the one above can exist, but they can also be accounted for and overcome. So whether or not a performance evaluation works or not depends on far too many details that we can list and go over on a discussion thread. Suffice to say, however, that evaluating teacher performance can work and so there isn't reason to oppose it outright.

Additionally, what constitutes a fair assessment isn't something that needs to be discussed publicly or at a national level. The discussion needs to be between teachers and administrators. Adding political rhetoric into the mix will just make the entire process toxic.

Yes, you interpreted "easier, more effective, and more universal" correctly. It was "[y]ou can still measure teacher performance without common core" that you seemed to botch. Keep in mind though that the big issues with common core are the same as with evaluations. By themselves they are good ideas. It is all about how you use them.

On December 01 2014 11:22 GreenHorizons wrote:


I can agree with pretty much everything you said there.

I think the issues are the realities versus the possibilities of those "can's" and "could's". But just getting to the point where we ALL agreed that neither should be opposed outright would be a step forward for both sides.

Teachers shouldn't spastically react to performance being tied to employment nor should people spastically react to the idea of common standards.

I think the political part is again because of how the "can's and could's" actually play out. There is no doubt that our schools are performing poorly overall and especially bad for certain groups (namely poor folks). Common Core is essentially an attempt to address some of those issues. So rhetoric like "defeating common core" or "teachers effectiveness can't (and therefore shouldn't) be measured and linked to performance" is counter productive like you say.

However, if there are specific problems with common core or assessment techniques than we (and our representatives [political and within education]) can discuss those, and look for resolution.

For instance. If teachers had the assurance that they could be observed by something like a fair jury (other teachers) before suffering significant consequences as a result of inadequate "performance" that would probably go a long way to opening them up to their performance and employment being connected. While not ideal, in conjunction with national standards, we could start from K-1 and then have the metrics be tied to performance for the teachers of those students going forward. We could make the same statistics available for teachers of other students so they have an opportunity to prepare themselves. There is more we could do here these are just a couple ideas.

As for the opposition to the common core, I haven't really seen any other than what I have outlined and/or stuff not based in reality. We are all looking for some substance as to why it is there is such fierce opposition to just the idea of the standards themselves?

Beyond the standards (which no one seems to have a specific problem with, yet seemed to be despised by some), and the federal involvement (which seems to largely be a result of not knowing what it is, how it works, or having an acceptable alternative), we all seem to be at a loss for understanding why it is people like XDaunt would make "defeating Common Core" a top priority/"biggest concern" or at least use such rhetoric in attempt to "keep the education system from sinking further"?

On December 01 2014 13:38 IgnE wrote:
Performance is never "just that." It has a meaning that is peculiar to the speaker. GH is saying that teachers want assurances that bureaucrats don't decide what "performance" means without they and their peers having a say in what it means.

On December 01 2014 13:48 JonnyBNoHo wrote:

Of course they'll have a say. You never don't have a say. That's not how rules are written. Laws get written by people you vote for, agencies put rules out to the public for comment and local administrators will try to adapt to local needs.

As for the opposition to common core, some of it is just a lack of knowledge about what common core is. Conservatives tend to like standards and accountability, which is a lot of what common core is about. However, you also need to keep in mind that there's a difference between the simple idea of having a common core (at a state or national level) and and common core, the thing that has Federal backing.

On December 01 2014 13:48 JonnyBNoHo wrote:

Of course they'll have a say. You never don't have a say. That's not how rules are written. Laws get written by people you vote for, agencies put rules out to the public for comment and local administrators will try to adapt to local needs.

On December 01 2014 17:38 Simberto wrote:


The problem here is that everyone has to go through school, and thus everyone thinks they are experts in how a school should work. And teachers are a clear minority of people, so if the only "voice" teachers have in how teachers are evaluated is their voice at an election, there is a rather high chance of this ending in disaster.

I am not opposed to teachers performance being evaluated in general. I think it needs to be done very carefully and correctly. Sadly, there is a high chance of very bad ideas coming in here. Like "Let everyone in the country take the same test, and the better a class scores, the better their teacher is". Sounds good on the surface, is a horribly bad idea. There are classes that are better, and classes that are worse. There are ways to improve test scores that do not actually teach any of what you should want to teach your students.

The university-style student polling also has a lot of problems in schools due to the immaturity of the students there. From my experience, most school students, especially in the lower grades, will positively review the most entertaining and friendly teacher and those teachers that give the best marks. While those can be positive things, they should not be a teachers main focus.

Thus, it is really hard to get actually good data on teacher performance without giving really bad incentives to teachers. To correctly monitor a teachers performance, you would have to compare a class that they have tought to the average of classes with similar baselines over a long period of time. Really effective teaching does not show on the next test, its results show in how much the students have actually understood and internalized the concepts, and how much they are capable of recognizing and using them in a variety of situations in the future, as opposed to how good they are at answering exactly the test questions. Also you need to be very careful when figuring out what "similar class" actually means.