The Cancer of Teacher Accountability

In 2023, as in every other year, a lot of the discussion about education in Idaho will inevitably turn to teacher accountability as an effective way to improve education throughout our state and likely we’ll see more laws passed that emphasize increased teacher accountability, because we do every year. This is because many of our policy-makers and even some of our educators buy into a notion that appeared in our country around the turn of the century that teachers are pretty much the sole determinant of what ultimately happens inside a classroom; if you can get good enough teachers (which you do by holding teachers accountable through teacher evaluation and student test scores) in your classrooms, magic will happen and all academic scores will go up. Because I’m a history guy, a while back I wrote about the origin of this notion, which I call the ‘Super Teacher Idea’ because I believe this idea has been a cancer to schools across the nation for 20 years now. The real question here though: Does teacher accountability work?

How Teacher Accountability Works in Idaho

First, we require a lot of teacher evaluation: In 2015, the Legislature mandated that all teachers be evaluated annually using the 4 Domains of the Charlotte Danielson Framework of effective teaching. This system breaks up the duties of a teacher into 4 Domains and 22 individual components. In 2016, the Legislature mandated that ID administrators not only use the 4 Domains, but every district must evaluate teachers on all 22 components in 2 observations throughout the school year. In 2017, the Legislature created a law that freed up extra salary for “Master Teachers” if they submitted portfolios demonstrating their skill according to the Danielson Rubric. After the portfolio idea proved to be a disaster, in 2020 the Legislature created the ‘Veteran Teacher Pay Act’, freeing up extra salary for veteran educators only if they score ‘Excellent’ (4/4) scores on 2 of the 4 Danielson Domains. So what this means in practice is that each year every teacher in Idaho gets observed twice and evaluated on 22 different components of their job. Each teacher. Every year. 22 components. In fairness, I should mention here that in 2021 the Legislature also passed a law that allows evaluators to only use 2 domains (11 components) for educators who have 8 or more years of experience. Phew!! That last law saves administrators a lot of work. Can you imagine someone evaluating you on whatever job you do by breaking it into 22 components and going over all 22 with you every year? That’s happened for every teacher in our system since 2016!

Has all this accountability improved our teachers’ performance?

In 2016, an analysis of evaluation data throughout the state revealed that 91.3% of all teachers received Proficient or Excellent scores on their evaluations. In 2017, 97% of all Idaho teachers received Proficient or higher scores; 2019, the number moved to 98%; 2020, 99%; While I can’t find 2021, in 2022, the amount of Idaho teachers that scored proficient or higher on their evaluations was…you guessed it...99%! So if you look at teacher evaluation scores, you may guess that this has been a moderate success: Before we really got serious about teacher accountability, 91% of our teachers were rated Proficient or higher by their evaluators, and now 99% are. My prediction for 2023, 2024, 2034, and 2064: 99% of our teachers will be Proficient or higher as well. Good thing we’ve achieved such success, too because this much accountability is a lot of work: First, evaluation is a very significant part of every administrator’s job in our state. If you have ever wondered why we now have so many vice principals, evaluation is a huge part of that because it’s a crushing load of work. Also, on the state level, we now perpetually run Danielson training courses that all admins are mandated to take and re-certify in every so often, and the state audits a certain amount of evaluations each year to make sure everything is on the up and up, which I’m sure requires a fleet of people as well. While I can’t say exactly what this costs the state each year, just based on the time it takes administrators and considering administrative salary, it’s at least in the 10’s of millions per year.

How has increased accountability improved student performance?

According to the Super Teacher theory that teachers are the sole determinant of what happens in the classroom, an 8% increase in teacher proficiency should cause an 8% increase on student test scores, but it didn’t. In 2016, when teacher accountability laws went into high gear, as a state 53% of our students were proficient on the ISAT English exam and 41% on the ISAT math exam. In 2022, 55% of our students are proficient on the English exam and 42% on the math exam, never mind that our goal from years ago was 69% English and 61% math. Well, we gained a percent! Another standard one could use to assess student success is our state’s 4 year high school graduation rate: In 2017, our grad rate was 79.9% and by 2021 it had grown to 80.1%, a 0.2% increase. Since these numbers are a little lackluster, let’s look at another goal, our ‘Go on Rate’. In 2010, the State Board of Education set a goal for “60% of its 25- to 34-year-olds to complete some education beyond high school. This isn’t only a college graduation goal, although two- and four-year degrees count toward the bottom line. One-year professional certificates also count.” In 2010, 37% of our 25-34 year olds fit the category, and by 2018 we had climbed to 42%, with no changes whatsoever in between 2015-2018. The last year I can find data for is 2019 where 44% made the goal. To summarize looking at all 3 standards of student performance here: in the same years that saw big gains in teacher proficiency, we saw marginal or no gains in student performance.

Why the cancer of teacher accountability matters

I’ve been an administrator in Idaho schools for 10 years now, and during that time, I’ve done more teacher evaluations than I can count or care to remember. Like all administrators in our state, I have to spend a significant amount of my time evaluating teachers when I know it’s only marginally important because I’m mandated to by the state. I’ve been at my current school for 7 years now and I can think of lots of things that my leadership team has implemented to improve the school, but evaluation doesn’t even make the top 10 list of items that matter. The Super Teacher idea has been around since 2000 and hasn’t worked in any school system it’s been tried in, and we’re no nearer ‘turning the corner’ in connecting evaluation with improved student results than we were in 2000 or will be in 2300. This is because teacher accountability is the wrong tool for the job of improving schools. The truth is that we need to measure schools more and teachers less, and when we do this we’ll actually see real improvement. What’s a school’s basic pass rate for its courses? We could easily measure this but we don’t. What about a school’s percentage of students taking advanced courses like dual credit and the like? Again, we could easily measure this but we don’t. And if we use tests (the Fed mandates we do), why not use a better exam like the SAT or the ACT instead of the ISAT where teachers can’t even access the tests they are supposed to be teaching to?


Last Spring, I attended the graduation ceremonies at BSU and a few weeks later at UNLV and saw something alarming at both schools: the school of engineering was larger than the school of education at both institutions. I think 20 years of beating teachers up is finally starting to hit home, and I wonder how many young people dream of becoming a teacher today when everyone knows what a whipping boy profession that now is? I leave you with a final question because inevitably teacher accountability will come up this legislative session: Are you going to cling to the myth that increased teacher accountability increases student performance or are you ready to let that myth go and seek more common sense solutions to make our schools better?









Notes:


Teacher Evaluation

https://www.idahoednews.org/news/91-percent-teachers-earn-top-evaluation-scores/


https://www.idahoednews.org/news/97-percent-teachers-earn-top-marks-latest-evaluations/


https://www.idahoednews.org/news/98-percent-of-idaho-teachers-earn-top-marks-on-evaluations/


https://www.idahoednews.org/teachers/almost-every-idaho-teacher-earned-top-marks-on-evaluations/#:~:text=According%20to%20data%20released%20by,of%20the%20top%20two%20scores.


https://www.idahoednews.org/news/almost-all-every-idaho-teacher-again-deemed-proficient-or-better/


Education 208: The Super Teacher Idea

ISAT Scores:

https://www.idahoednews.org/news/test-scores-improve-in-math-and-english-after-pandemic-drop/


https://www.idahoednews.org/news/idaho-high-school-graduation-rate-falls/


https://www.idahoednews.org/news/hitting-the-60-percent-goal-wont-just-take-work-it-requires-a-transformation/


https://www.idahoednews.org/top-news/analysis-the-day-the-60-percent-goal-almost-died/