Everyone considers Ms. Jones a great teacher. Anyone who enters her classroom comments on the great learning environment she’s created. Former students visit her almost every week tracing their successes back to her. Parents do everything they can to have their children placed in her class. She leads one of her school’s professional learning communities.
Ms. Jones looks forward to being evaluated because she considers it a great opportunity to make her teaching practice even better.
But this year she has a new building principal. Last fall Ms. Jones had her first evaluation.
And what she found in the principal’s write-up stunned her.
After years of outstanding ratings, “needs improvement” is checked off in several areas, and here’s why:
- Her lesson objective wasn’t written on the right-hand side of the board.
- Her plan book wasn’t opened to the day’s lesson.
- Her window shades were uneven.
“What do any of these have to do with my students’ learning?” she wondered.
New Jersey's "D+"
Late last month, New Jersey residents may have been similarly scratching their heads.
New Jersey is considered one of the best places in the nation to educate children. The 2011 administration of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) placed our reading and math scores among the nation’s best. We boast the highest graduation rate in the nation among all students generally and among minority students in particular.
Read more good news about NJ's public schools
At last year’s NJEA Convention, educator and historian Diane Ravitch quipped that today’s brand of education reformers should come to New Jersey, not to tell us what to do, but to learn from us how to do it well.
We’re used to hearing good things about our schools, our students, and our teachers.
So when even the right-wing American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) reported that New Jersey outperformed every state on the NAEP except Vermont and Massachusetts, you’d think ALEC would seek to identify the causes of that success and promote them for national emulation.
After all, another part of ALEC’s report reads, “…the greatest factor regarding a student’s academic success within school walls is teacher effectiveness.” One would think we must be doing something right when it comes to teacher quality.
Instead, ALEC placed into its report a nonsensical grade assigned to New Jersey by the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ): a D+ for Teacher Quality and Policies.
Florida, which scored 12th on the NAEP, earned a C. South Carolina, which scored 50th on the NAEP, earned a C-.
Vermont, ranked second on the NAEP, received an F from ALEC on Teacher Quality and Policies. First-ranked Massachusetts got a D+. In fact, no state that ranks in the top 10 in student performance scored higher than a D.
Window shades and merit pay
High performing New Jersey, Vermont, and Massachusetts received poor grades from ALEC for the same reason that Ms. Jones scored “needs improvement” on her evaluation: they were measured on criteria that has no basis in research.
Here’s why we earned a D+ from NCTQ:
- ALEC and NCTQ support merit pay despite the absence of research backing it as a means to improve student performance.
- ALEC and NCTQ report that “objective evidence of student learning” [read standardized test scores] are not the “preponderant criterion of teacher evaluations.”
- ALEC and NCTQ mischaracterize tenure and evaluation in New Jersey.
- ALEC and NCTQ oppose seniority as a fair means of laying teachers off during reductions in force.
- ALEC and NCTQ oppose defined-benefit pensions.
Does any of this sound familiar? It should.
ALEC’s influence was at play in many of the state battles last year that garnered national attention. ALEC is a corporate-funded, right-wing think tank that specializes in creating model legislation, primarily for state legislatures. It claims to have nearly 2,000 state legislators among its members.
As NCTQ graded states, it was not measuring teachers and state policies based upon classroom performance or research on how students learn. NCTQ was measuring states against its political agenda. And that agenda is better served when the news blares the headline that in a national research study, high performing states like New Jersey earned a D for teacher quality.
Bad press about New Jersey’s public schools serves ALEC and its band of corporate education “reformers,” including our own governor. It does not, however, serve New Jersey’s students.
New Jersey’s teachers are among the very best in the nation. Their real-world results prove that. The state’s teacher policies helped build this excellent workforce.
When organizations like NCTQ and ALEC twist or disregard the data to support a political agenda, it’s irresponsible. When the media give them a largely uncritical platform to advance that agenda, it’s even worse.
This editorial appears in the February issue of the NJEA Reporter.