Teachers and Test Scores

It is not fair to blame Paul Hubbert, Executive Secretary of the Alabama Education Association, for all that is wrong with our school system. We suffered for many generations with poor schools long before he came along. Nevertheless, he manages to be identified with substantial road blocks to progress in education.

It is noteworthy, then, when he makes a sound point. I am referring to his opposition to using test scores to evaluate teacher performance. It is understandable why the boards may want to find an objective measuring stick to determine promotions and retention of teachers. With strong tenure rules, the incompetent teachers seem to be embedded in the system. Bureaucrats need an objective test that is both fair and effective in weeding out the incompetents. Unfortunately test scores may be objective, but they are not a fair measuring tool.

I do not think that these tests were designed to evaluate teachers or schools. They are supposed to assess the progress, accomplishments and capacity for learning of the individual student. The tests provide valuable information which should enable the school to determine the needs and opportunities available to that student.

Using test scores to make hiring, firing and retention decisions is based on an assumption that teachers have the capacity to materially affect those scores. That is simply not the case. For instance, Mountain Brook students regularly score at the top and those from poorer communities bring up the rear. Is it realistic to suggest that the teachers in a black belt county can under any circumstances teach their students up to the Mountain Brook level? I have no hesitation to suggest that the students of the worst teacher in the Mountain Book System would easily out perform those of the best teacher in one of our poor counties. On the other hand I suspect that the star teacher from the poorer school would be much the better teacher.

Therefore, where is the fairness in comparing teachers on a test score basis when they are not working on a level playing field?

A common retort would be that the teacher should be measured by the “improvement” in test scores instead. The assumption there is that all teachers in all systems have been performing poorly in the past and even an average teacher should be able to raise the scores. Do I need to answer that argument?

Then there is the teacher who does in fact raise the scores but has turned the class room into a year long cram course for the test. This can be done by finding in old tests and looking at the tendencies that would indicate what will be asked. (Law graduates do this all the time when preparing for the bar exam.) If the score has been raised, it means nothing other than that the school has learned how to short cut the system. It does not indicate any inherent improvement in the quality of the education.

The truth is that successes of great teachers are not measured by improving statistics but by their impact of the teacher on individuals one by one. Most people who are successful in life can point to one or two of such teachers and are grateful for the profound impact those teachers made. That is what teaching is all about.

I wish I could say that this phobia over test score evaluations is harmless, but it is not. In the first place, it represents a gigantic misuse of scarce resources. But it is much more. It stifles creative teaching. I had much rather my child be exposed him to the magic of Mark Twain or Louisa May Alcott, rather than pouring over old tests.or listening to a lecture on how to eliminate the obviously wrong answer on a multiple choice test in order to improve the odds of finding the correct one.

Worst of all, the test score is so simplistic that the school boards (who are a big part of the problem but not the subject of this blog) act on misinformation and come up with poor choices in the direction of their school systems. Their job of making personnel evaluations is extremely difficult and can always be flawed, but there is no panacea. Drawing draconian conclusions based on a multiple choice tests is both meretricious and misguided.

Mark up an attaboy for Paul Hubbert.