Teacher: The system used to evaluate teachers is a joke

Andrew K. Milton teaches eighth grade language arts at Pioneer Middle School in Tacoma. He ran for school board and lost, kept an education blog, and eventually wrote a book about it called, “The Normal Accident Theory of Education: Why Reform and Regulation Won’t Make Schools Better.”

According to Milton, teachers face an increasing number of rules and regulations aimed at weeding out education professionals who might write off students who were poor, slow, or from the other side of the tracks.

But he tells KIRO Radio’s Dave Ross the current rules and regulations, as well as the way teachers are evaluated, are a joke.

“Your evaluator would come in and you’d put on a little dog and pony show for half-an-hour. They check off ‘satisfactory’ on all these things, (benchmarks,) but they can’t really tell you why.”

A new evaluation system, however, could prove to be an effective tool if it’s used well.

“The new (system) is supposed to be based on observable things in a teacher’s room: You say these kinds of things, it builds rapport; you do this kind of work, it’s pushing to the higher level for the kids who need it; you do this kind of preparation for the kids who have special needs,” says Milton.

In this system, teachers who may not have the talent to teach won’t continue without consequences, including mediation and probation. And Milton says, “A certain amount of time on probation means you ought to start looking for something else.”

“I would say I have much more confidence in this system than in the old one, but again it’s only confidence based on knowing that you have people that you think work hard, and that includes some evaluators,” he says. “Some principals don’t work as hard as others, so we’ve got to have people watching this process, making sure it’s actually being executed well.”

According to Milton, teacher evaluators, who are often school administrators, must assure every single teacher is a caring professional completely committed to every single student. Once that’s accomplished, you could even consider throwing all the rules out the window.

Listen to the full interview on the RossFire podcast: