HR Files
The Ratings Game
How Do We Fix Our Broken Teacher Evaluation System?
by Cindy Clegg
Areport slated to be re- leased by the Texas Education Agency (TEA) at the end of August details how ineffective
the state teacher appraisal
system is at distinguishing effective from ineffective teachers. Why would TEA release
such a report? Because the
federal government believes
that teacher evaluation is a
cornerstone to ensuring a
quality teacher in every classroom and expects this data
to shine a bright light on the
problem of inflated teacher
evaluations. A summary of
teacher appraisal ratings must
be reported by each state as a
condition of federal funding.
Texas schools had to report
their appraisal ratings to TEA
by June 30.
There is little to argue
here. Nearly all teachers get
good ratings on the Texas
Teacher Professional De-
velopment Appraisal Sys-
tem (PDAS). Houston ISD
revealed that only 1 percent
of its 12,000 teachers were
evaluated below “proficient.”
And, according to the PDAS
appraisal guide, a rating of
proficient is a high standard
indeed:
“Since the goal of PDAS is
to enhance the learning of all
students, the ‘proficient’ level
is a high standard of perfor-
mance. Teaching behaviors
that result in considerable
impact on student learning
and which are demonstrated
a high percentage of the time
and with a high percentage of
students (80-89%) is ‘profi-
cient.’ Words associated with
‘proficient’ teaching behaviors
or the rating of ‘proficient’
are: skillful, experienced,
masterful, well-advanced, and
knowledgeable.”
When assessment of stu-
dent performance and assess-
ment of teacher performance
are so obviously disconnected,
it is clear that our teacher
evaluation system is broken.
Dodging a Bullet
National leaders are not
the only ones concerned about
teacher evaluation. The Texas
Senate Education Committee
was charged during the last interim to study this issue. At a
hearing held on July 20, 2010,
the experts’ testimony was
unanimous: Teacher evaluation is vitally important to
developing teacher quality, and
the current Texas PDAS will
not get us there. Two bills to
reform teacher evaluation were
filed by the chairs of the Senate and House Education committees this session (SB 4 and
HB 1587). Neither bill passed
because the budget deficit
quickly reordered priorities.
As a result, those who do
not embrace the challenge of
reinventing teacher evaluation
can breathe a sigh of relief—
for now. We may have dodged
a bullet, but we cannot ignore
the issue forever. The shortcomings of teacher evaluation
will still be there, as the upcoming PDAS report is bound
to illustrate.
What’s Wrong with PDAS
PDAS began in 1997-98,
and numerous tweaks and
modifications have been made
along the way. PDAS was a
response to legislation passed
in 1995 (SB 1) that called for
the commissioner to develop a
new teacher appraisal system
that included a “link” to student performance. That link
turned out to be a very weak
one that bears no influence on
a teacher’s summative performance rating.
PDAS is essentially an
observation instrument that
describes a rubric of teacher
