Introduction
Throughout the nation, the use of teacher evaluations has become increasingly popular. Since educators are partially responsible for the development of younger generations, teacher evaluations were created in order to measure a teacher’s performance. After the creation of teacher evaluations, there has been members of the educational realm that have disagreed with it. While some believe that formative feedback is the best way to analyze a teacher’s performance, others believe that it is unfair to give a teacher evaluation based on their student’s performance. This is due to the fact that teachers do not have control over the external issues going on outside the school. In other words, teachers do not have a responsibility when it comes to what goes on in a child’s life outside the classroom. The teacher is only responsible for what happens within the school walls. Thus, teacher evaluations have created some controversy when it comes to their efficacy. The following attempts to show how teacher evaluations are not an accurate method when it comes to measuring the efficiency of a teacher.
Discussion
It has been suggested that teacher evaluations do not always measure what they are intended to measure. Smylie (2015) discusses the increased use of evaluations when it comes to teachers. Over the past 10 to 15 years, almost all schools across the nations have dramatically overhauled their evaluation system when it comes to improving teacher’s practices. The aim for these evaluation is to improve the teacher’s instructional skills. However, recent studies have suggested that the effectiveness and efficacy of these systems are weak. “One of the major factors associated with the lack of impact of these systems is the troublesome relationship between evaluation and professional development” (p. 97). In other words, there is no correlation when it comes to the opportunities for these teachers to improve their practices in response to the evaluation itself. Furthermore, policies that govern the teacher evaluation system tend to make weak and vague provisions regarding professional development. Smylie suggests that if states improve the effectiveness of the teacher evaluation system, then provisions should be made regarding the high quality professional development to all of the teachers throughout these systems (p. 97). In other words, states need to revise their evaluations profession in order to increase their accuracy throughout the educational system.
Other studies have been conducted in Bolyard (2015) attempted to analyze the responsibility of the current teachers throughout Ohio with their new evaluation policies. During the 2013-2014 school year, Ohio decided to create the Ohio Teacher Evaluation System (OTES). Bolyard wanted to analyze the subsequent implications and consequences that the evaluation system placed on educators. One of the requirements of the teacher evaluations is that each teacher has the responsibility to grade their own test scores. To give teachers this responsible assumes they have control over certain circumstances that affect a student’s performance on a given test. One main criticism of this responsibility is that “it presents a major obstacle to the improvement of student performance and to the achievement of many outcomes that are important in education” (p. 76). In other words, teachers do not have control over any external factor that impacts a student and their educational ability. Home life and other outside influences could be altering a student’s performance, rather than the performance of the teacher.
Overall, Bolyard (2015) found that there are problems when it comes to the implied responsibilities of the educators throughout the OTES. Bolyard stated that evaluations do give educators feedback when it comes to their performance. However, the OTES is designed to evaluate a teacher’s performance in content areas. This isn’t consistent with what stakeholders had planned for when it came to teacher evaluations. Stakeholder’s anticipated that the teacher evaluation would accurately represent the performance of that teacher. Lastly, Bolyard stated that the evaluation system does not work because the educator does not have responsibilities when it comes to a student’s personal life and any obstacles that may stand in their way educationally. Thus, evaluating a teacher based on student performance is incongruent with the professional philosophy of education (p. 82).
Advantages of teacher evaluations
On the other hand, there are several studies that have should teacher evaluations to be effective when it comes to accurately measuring the performance of teachers. Garcia-Ros et al. (2015) analyzed the predict capacity when it comes to teachers interpersonal self-efficiency in regards to levels of burnout. A teacher’s self-efficacy is important when it comes to planning and development. Thus, teachers with high levels of self-efficacy tend to think the difficulties that students have can be resolved with support and evaluation methods. On the other hand, teachers with low self-efficacy believe they have little impact when it comes to the success of their students. This leads to teachers with high self-efficacy to have closer relationships with their students than teachers with low self-efficacy. The study consisted of 103 teachers from different levels throughout the Spanish education system. The results confirmed the relationship of teachers’ interpersonal self-efficacy and burnout. Thus, teacher evaluations can be used to measure an individual’s self-efficiency in order to measure a teacher’s performance.
Furthermore, Young & Range (2015) analyzed the effectiveness of the teacher evaluation system commonly used throughout the nation. The findings suggest that the use of teacher evaluation is beneficial when measuring teacher performance. This study suggested that the formative feedback that is provided by teacher evaluations is one of the most important aspects of the teacher evaluation system. Lastly, principles throughout this study stated that they were able to assess a teacher’s strategies and behaviors throughout the use of teacher evaluations.
Fidan et al. (2013) aimed to determine what types of characteristics teacher educators’ exhibit and are expected to exhibit. This was a qualitative study that used a group interview technique. The interview consisted of 6 open-ended questions. The study found that a teacher’s professional and communication characteristic is related to their teacher characteristics. In other words, high-preforming teachers held all of the typical teacher characteristics. Teacher evaluations can be used to assist. Teacher evaluations can specifically look for certain teacher characteristics in order to measure the performance of that teacher (p. 486).
Fidan et al. (2013) also went a step further and analyzed which types of characteristics are associated with different types of teaching methods. This study found that teachers who are flexible and make changes with their current teaching practices are the ones who exhibit the typical teaching characteristics. Furthermore, teachers who are empathetic with their students tend to have a closer bond with them. The use of teacher evaluations can help analyze which characteristics are associated with teacher success. By evaluating teachers, researchers can learn which teaching styles are the most successful and encourage their other teachers to follow similar teaching practices. In other words, teacher evaluations not only benefit the individual, they also benefit other teachers as well (p. 486).
Overall, there has been large amounts of research that has shown that the teacher evaluation system does little when it comes to teachers’ practices. Teacher evaluations have shown little discrimination when it comes to high-preforming and low-preforming teachers. There has been suggestions that teacher evaluations should be based on student assessment. Teacher evaluations have shown evaluators what types of teaching practices are successful and which ones are not. In other words, everyone learns from a teacher evaluation and not only the individual teacher being evaluated. This is a positive of the teacher evaluation. It allows educators to learn from one another in order to discover the best educational method when it comes to high student performance.
However, teacher evaluations have been shown to give inadequate data in regards to a teacher’s performance abilities. Several critics of teacher evaluations have shown that measuring a teacher’s performance based on student’s performance is an inadequate method of measuring a teacher’s ability. Teachers do not have responsibilities when it comes to external factors effecting a student’s performance. Thus, teacher evaluations are not an appropriate method when it comes to evaluating a teacher’s performance.
Conclusion
References
Bolyard, C. (2015). Test-based teacher evaluations: accountability vs. responsibility. Ohio Valley Philosophy of Education Society, 46, 73-84.
Croft, S., Roberts, M. & Stenhouse, V. (2015). The perfect storm of education reform: high stakes testing and teacher evaluation. Social Justice, 42(1), 70-94.
Fidan, N., Duban, N. & Yuksel, A. (2013). Characteristics of teacher educators from pre-service classroom teachers’ perspectives.
Garcia-Ros, R. & Fuentes, M. (2015). Teachers’ interpersonal self-efficacy: evaluation and predictive capacity of teacher burnout.
Smylie, M. (2015). Teacher evaluation and the problem of professional development. Mid Western Educational Researcher, 26(2), 97-113.
Young, S. & Range, B. (2015). Teacher evaluation reform: principals’ beliefs about newly adopted teacher evaluation systems. Planning and Changing, 46(1/2), 158-174.
