By John Thompson.
The University of Pennsylvania’s Matthew Steinberg and Lauren Sartain of the Consortium on Chicago School Research (CCSR) find that better classroom observations contribute to improved student performance. This study is doubly important because it is consistent with the CCSR’s finding that Chicago teachers still support the observation portion of their rigorous new evaluations, even though support is declining and stress is increasing, and despite mistrust of the value-added portion of their ratings.
Steinberg and Sartain note that their research is consistent with evidence from Cincinnati Public Schools which confirms that providing teachers in the middle of their career with evaluative feedback can increase student achievement in math. (“Can Teacher Evaluation Improve Teaching?”) The Chicago study is potentially more important because it documents increases in the holy grail of school improvement, improving reading performance.
Steinberg’s and Sartain’s discovery could be even more important because it showed that improved teacher observations could be linked to gains as great a 9.9% of a Standard Deviation in reading. Such a gain “is equivalent to closing one-quarter to one-half of the performance gap between weak schools (those at the 10th percentile of the achievement distribution) and average schools (those at the 50th percentile) in large urban districts like Chicago.”
The CCSR research also shows that schools where the low-income rate is as high as 83% can see remarkable gains in reading. The down side, however, is that the highest-poverty schools showed little improvement.
Not surprisingly, Steinberg and Sartain did not discover a cheap and easy silver bullet. CPS principals spent about six hours per teacher during each formal observation cycle. The program worked when implemented with the fidelity that such an effort requires. Principals in the first cohort of the experiment were provided with initial training, additional one-on-one support, and continuing engagement with the CPS central office through weekly e-mails, and consistent reminders to principals about observation deadlines and other requirements.
Support for principals was reduced during the second year. Principals in Cohort 2 received only two days of initial training on and received significantly less district-level support throughout the school year. That cohort did not significantly increase student performance.
Steinberg and Sartain conclude:
It seems reasonable to expect that more-able principals could make this transition more effectively than less-able principals. A very similar argument can be made for the demands that the new evaluation process placed on teachers. More-capable teachers are likely more able to incorporate principal feedback and assessment into their instructional practice.
The researchers state that they:
suspect that this finding is the result of the unequal allocation of principals and teachers across schools as well as additional demands placed on teachers and principals in more disadvantaged schools, which may impede their abilities to implement these types of reforms.
I wonder what they would think about my perspective which would read the same evidence as showing this finding is the result of the “additional demands placed on teachers and principals in more disadvantaged schools, which may impede their abilities to implement these types of reforms,” as well as the “unequal allocation of principals and teachers across schools.”
In my experience, there are unequal allocations of talent in high-challenge schools, but that is mostly a symptom of the additional demands placed on disadvantaged schools, not a prime cause of unequal outcomes. We should invest in high-quality teacher observations, as we acknowledge that improvements in instruction are not enough to improve schools serving neighborhoods with intense concentrations of children from generational poverty who have endured extreme trauma
I have worked for more than forty principals and assistant principals. All of them had an impossibly long “To Do” list. Even the best principals went weeks or months at a time without having a chance to even think about classroom instruction. Principals can learn how to recognize good practice and help improve teaching quality, but it will require a major and time-consuming effort to lay the foundation for better teacher evaluations. It is inconceivable that systems can conduct high-quality teacher observations, while also implementing the value-added portion of teacher evaluations.
To improve the most challenging schools, we must reject value-added evaluations, and the use of the stress of accountability to overcome the stress of poverty, and make teaching a team effort. Then, we can invest in sustainable teacher observations.
What do you think? Why won’t corporate reformers admit that value-added evaluations are doomed and work towards better methods of improving teacher quality? Is their stubbornness simply ego and a refusal to admit they were wrong?
Image by Simon Cunningham, used with Creative Commons license.
Larry Lawrence
To be effective, we must place a priority on providing the resources necessary for effective teacher/principal classroom observations. In my many years teaching at the University Elementary School at UCLA, classroom observation was a powerful element in our work to improve our skills as classroom teachers. We had a principal sophisticated in teaching practices and an organization that provided the resources (time and knowledge) to actively work on these practices. I recall one time that I was working with a small group of lower elementary students (5-8 year olds) in reading. One of the group was having difficulty with the word “scream.” She read it “screen.” I would say ( I was not an experienced teacher of beginning reading) “screammm” and Jennifer would say “screannn!”
Well, it so happens that our principal was walking through with some visitors at the time and observed this exchange. That afternoon (buy coincidence) there was a staff meeting and the topic of the meeting became a lesson on the concept of chaining – beginning with the area of concentration “mmm” and working backwards (mmm, reammm, creammm, scream). A powerful experience where something that is a common occurrence in a classroom setting becomes the subject of overall staff education.
There were times where the staff would use the lunch time to observe a teacher who volunteered to teach a lesson. This evaluation of this lesson would be the topic of that day’s staff meeting. It was not a punitive, see what we can find wrong experience – it was an uplifting, informative experience that contributed to our skill as teachers.
In order to bring this off requires a commitment to providing time for teachers to discuss this and a philosophy that principals are educational leaders, not just company managers.
2old2tch
Several years ago, I was part of a peer observation team in which a group of three teachers would observe one of the three after discussing something the “observee” would like us to focus on. The experience was very helpful probably more so to the observer than the observed. Unfortunately, because it was part of one of those PD initiatives that last no longer than it takes for the next new idea to surface, it died a quick death. The principal was singularly ill-prepared to conduct observations; the aim seemed to be “gotcha moments.” Fellow teachers always conducted the more useful observations even outside the triad model.