Nine in 10 Pima County teachers are rated good or great β but that is not always evident in their studentsβ achievement scores.
An Arizona Daily Star analysis of teacher evaluations and school district performance shows that principals rated 94 percent of Pima County teachers and 85 percent of teachers statewide as effective or highly effective. Some districts reported nearly unanimous high ratings for teachers even though their schools received low grades for student achievement and other standards.
Tucsonβs two largest school districts β Tucson Unified School District and Sunnyside β rated almost all their teachers good or great despite being among Pima Countyβs lowest-scoring districts on the stateβs math, reading and writing assessments.
In TUSD, only half of the students passed the stateβs math assessment, and fewer passed writing β but nearly 100 percent of the teachers were rated good or great.
Within SUSD, about 85 percent of teachers were rated effective or highly effective, even though about 60 percent of students failed to meet math or writing standards and nearly one-third fell short in reading.
βItβs not that a certain number of teachers need to be identified as underperforming,β said Sandi Jacobs, vice president of the National Council on Teacher Quality. βItβs that we want to see our student results and teacher results make sense together. If we have a lot of students underperforming, then it doesnβt make sense that all of our teachers are just fine.β
There is no disputing that effective and highly effective educators work in struggling schools, but the fact that very few Pima County district teachers are rated as βdevelopingβ β ranging from less than 5 percent to 15 percent β is cause for concern, Jacobs said.
βNew teachers are almost never as good as theyβre going to be β there is a serious learning curve in those first couple of years. So just based on new teachers alone, youβd expect to see a significant percentage in the developing category,β she said. βBut also we know all of our veteran teachers are not where they need to be. Does it mean they should all be fired? No, no one is saying that at all. It means weβre not doing them β and weβre certainly not doing their students β any favors if weβre not really identifying the areas for improvement.β
DEFINING THE DISCONNECT
Tucsonβs disparity between student achievement and teacher ratings is common throughout the country, Jacobs said.
Though external factors β like home life and socioeconomic status β can impact a studentβs ability to learn and succeed, within school walls, research has shown that effective teachers have the greatest impact on academic achievement.
Thatβs why studentsβ academic progress is part of what defines an effective teacher under state standards. Teacher evaluations have changed in recent years to incorporate student performance, how much a student grows over the school year and other factors. Early results havenβt proved that the new standards are effective at spotlighting teachers who need help and those deserving of very high ratings.
For Sunnyside, the goal of teacher evaluations is to improve student learning, Deputy Superintendent Jan Vesely said via email. But the evaluation systems being used in many schools do not achieve that, she said.
βThat is unfair to both the teachers themselves and the students who need their help,β she said. The district is working to improve accuracy in teacher evaluations, she added.
Each district determines what defines a good or great teacher, making it difficult to get an across-the-board look at Arizonaβs teacher quality.
Marana, which received a B grade from the Arizona Department of Education, rated 95 percent of its teachers as highly effective. By comparison, Catalina Foothills, an A district, rated only 10 percent of its teachers as highly effective. Those figures come from Arizona Department of Education data from the 2013-2014 school year, the latest available for all districts.
Catalina Foothills has a particularly rigorous evaluation system, said Denise Bartlett, the districtβs assistant superintendent. The state framework for teacher evaluation requires principals to observe teachers in classrooms twice a year. Catalina Foothillsβ system requires six.
βReally, to get into the βhighly effectiveβ category, you really have to be quite stellar,β she said.
Being in the βdevelopingβ category is not necessarily a bad thing, she said. About 10 percent of the districtβs teachers are labeled as developing. Those teachers are typically newer and less experienced with things they need to work on.
The district considers evaluation to be βa growth tool with our teachers,β she said. βItβs about the conversations that happen, along with the evaluation and the coaching that goes with it.β
Marana, which rated almost all its teachers as highly effective, uses an evaluation system that categorizes teachers differently than the stateβs framework, said Brett Kramer, the districtβs chief improvement officer.
That difference puts an overly high percentage of Marana teachers in the βhighly effectiveβ category, he said. The district is working to adjust the model so it more closely aligns with the stateβs system.
Though the Marana system is being tweaked, Rebecca Baldwin, a mother of four, believes a rating of 95 percent highly effective is appropriate for the teachers at her childrenβs D-rated school.
βBeing in the classroom, volunteering at the school, you see how hard the teachers work, and the students work equally hard to grasp the materials,β she said of Roadrunner Elementary School. βItβs not fair that the results of one test can make it look like the teachers are bad or that students didnβt try hard enough.β
REASONS FOR THE GAP
Ideas vary about the gap between high percentages of effective teachers and low student achievement levels.
βItβs not standardized across the state,β said Cecilia Johnson, an associate superintendent of the Arizona Department of Education. βEvery district gets to decide what their evaluation system will be as long as it adheres to the state law for the educator effectiveness framework.β
The teacher evaluation standards set by the department are relatively new, Johnson said. It will take time for districts to get on the same page.
For Andrew Morrill, president of the Arizona Education Association, a statewide teachers union, the high percentage of effective and highly effective teachers accurately reflects the stateβs teacher workforce.
βTeachers in Arizona are working as hard as they can,β he said. βTheyβre doing the things that good educators do. They are aligning their lessons to the academic standards. They are observing and creating good classroom management plans so that students are learning in a safe and effective environment.β
But teachers can only do so much, he said. They rarely have control over external factors, such as students dealing with the challenges of language barriers and poverty or the lack of funding for classroom resources. And increasingly, they are tasked with doing more while Arizona ranks among the lowest in teacher salaries and per-pupil spending, he added.
βWeβre really on a collision course between our expectations and the reality weβve created,β he said.
Another factor, he said, is that schools and districts are graded based on standardized tests that do not reflect what kids have learned.
βWhile it seems that evaluation is in some way not matching up with the test scores, itβs actually the test scores that are the distorted view, because they are so limited in what they can show,β he said.
Test scores, for example, do not capture the fact that 72 percent of TUSD families live below the poverty line, yet the districtβs graduation rate is higher than the state average, said Superintendent H.T. Sanchez.
The C-rated district also has worked to boost the number of students taking advanced coursework and college-readiness tests β efforts Sanchez says are trending in the right direction.
βJust by looking at the numbers, you can make the statement that itβs a very generous rating system,β he said. βBut you can also make the statement that principals are evaluating teachers based on the inclusion of factors that are beyond simple numbers.β
Though Sanchez wouldnβt say whether he thinks TUSD principals were going too easy on teachers, he said he would like to see closer alignment in student test scores and teacher ratings. He hopes the districtβs new evaluation system, paired with comprehensive training, will do the trick. The new system takes into account student feedback, as well as pre- and post-assessments that let principals more easily determine if what is being taught reflects the curriculum.
Shift in the culture
Few would argue against evaluations that effectively separate great from good, good from fair, and fair from poor educators. But getting to that point wonβt be easy.
Districts that are generous with ratings may appear to have high-performing teachers, while others that have cracked down may look weaker by comparison.
For Renee Griffith, a Catalina Foothills mother of two who described all her daughtersβ teachers as dedicated, learning that their A-rated elementary school identified only about 60 percent of its teachers as effective or highly effective came as a shock.
βI would guess over 90 percent would be highly effective or effective,β Griffith said. That said, once she heard the districtβs logic in reserving the highest rating for truly extraordinary teachers, she was fully supportive of the seemingly lower ratings.
Principals may have a harder time making that philosophical change, said Jacobs, of the National Council on Teacher Quality. First they have to abandon the natural defensive posture of, βI hired them, of course theyβre good.β Then they have to steel themselves for some uncomfortable conversations with teachers whose rating will plummet although their results and dedication are unchanged.
βI think weβve maybe underestimated the culture shift we are asking the profession to make,β Jacobs said. βItβs really hard to move from a system where everybody got the box checked every year that said βsatisfactoryβ to one that is looking more critically at the elements of good instruction.β
Effective evaluations require ongoing training on how to identify effective teaching, and how to give meaningful feedback and individualized support. The state education department said it is working on exactly that.
βWeβre going to continue to do training and focus on that piece and providing support and guidance to the districts as they continue to refine their evaluation instruments,β said Johnson, of the state Department of Education.
The state Board of Education recently reconvened a teacher-principal evaluation task force, which formed after the Legislature adopted a state framework for educator evaluation in 2010, she said. The task force will make recommendations to the board on improving the framework.
If teacher evaluations are to be taken seriously, they must become a factor in issues like compensation, layoffs and other areas. While a 2013 National Council on Teacher Quality report found that no state had developed those kinds of comprehensive policies, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Michigan, Rhode Island, Tennessee and District of Columbia public schools were said to be close.
At the time, Louisiana was the front-runner. It connected teacher effectiveness to decisions on tenure, professional development, teacher improvement plans, public reporting of aggregate teacher ratings, compensation, dismissal, layoffs and licensure advancement. Also, the state linked studentsβ performance to their teachersβ β and to the institutions where their teachers were trained.
Such practices not only identify teachers in need of assistance but also those deserving of rewards, both of which could benefit students and decrease teacher turnover.
βThe goal is to help all teachers grow and develop and improve and be their very best for kids day in and day out,β Jacobs said. βThatβs what every teacher wants to do, and itβs certainly what our students need.β
DEFINING THE DISCONNECT
Tucsonβs disparity between student achievement and teacher ratings is common throughout the country, Jacobs said.
Though external factors β like home life and socioeconomic status β can impact a studentβs ability to learn and succeed, within school walls, research has shown that effective teachers have the greatest impact on academic achievement.
Thatβs why studentsβ academic progress is part of what defines an effective teacher under state standards. Teacher evaluations have changed in recent years to incorporate student performance, how much a student grows over the school year and other factors. Early results havenβt proved that the new standards are effective at spotlighting teachers who need help and those deserving of very high ratings.
For Sunnyside, the goal of teacher evaluations is to improve student learning, Deputy Superintendent Jan Vesely said via email. But the evaluation systems being used in many schools do not achieve that, she said.
βThat is unfair to both the teachers themselves and the students who need their help,β she said. The district is working to improve accuracy in teacher evaluations, she added.
Each district determines what defines a good or great teacher, making it difficult to get an across-the-board look at Arizonaβs teacher quality.
Marana, which received a B grade from the Arizona Department of Education, rated 95 percent of its teachers as highly effective. By comparison, Catalina Foothills, an A district, only rated 10 percent of its teachers as highly effective. Those figures come from Arizona Department of Education data from the 2013-2014 school year, the latest available for all districts.
Catalina Foothills has a particularly rigorous evaluation system, said Denise Bartlett, the districtβs assistant superintendent. The state framework for teacher evaluation requires principals to observe teachers in classrooms twice a year. Catalina Foothillsβ system requires six.
βReally, to get into the βhighly effectiveβ category, you really have to be quite stellar,β she said.
Being in the βdevelopingβ category is not necessarily a bad thing, she said. About 10 percent of the districtβs teachers are labeled as developing. Those teachers are typically newer and less experienced with things they need to work on.
The district considers evaluation to be βa growth tool with our teachers,β she said. βItβs about the conversations that happen, along with the evaluation and the coaching that goes with it.β
Marana, which rated almost all its teachers as highly effective, uses an evaluation system that categorizes teachers differently than the stateβs framework, said Brett Kramer, the districtβs chief improvement officer.
That difference puts an overly high percentage of Marana teachers in the βhighly effectiveβ category, he said. The district is working to adjust the model so it more closely aligns with the stateβs system.
Though the Marana system is being tweaked, Rebecca Baldwin, a mother of four, believes a rating of 95 percent highly effective is appropriate for the teachers at her childrenβs D-rated school.
βBeing in the classroom, volunteering at the school, you see how hard the teachers work, and the students work equally hard to grasp the materials,β she said of Roadrunner Elementary School. βItβs not fair that the results of one test can make it look like the teachers are bad or that students didnβt try hard enough.β
REASONS FOR THE GAP
Ideas vary about the gap between high percentages of effective teachers and low student achievement levels.
βItβs not standardized across the state,β said Cecilia Johnson, an associate superintendent of the Arizona Department of Education. βEvery district gets to decide what their evaluation system will be as long as it adheres to the state law for the educator effectiveness framework.β
The teacher evaluation standards set by the department are relatively new, Johnson said. It will take time for districts to get on the same page.
For Andrew Morrill, president of the Arizona Education Association, a statewide teachers union, the high percentage of effective and highly effective teachers accurately reflects the stateβs teacher workforce.
βTeachers in Arizona are working as hard as they can,β he said. βTheyβre doing the things that good educators do. They are aligning their lessons to the academic standards. They are observing and creating good classroom management plans so that students are learning in a safe and effective environment.β
But teachers can only do so much, he said. They rarely have control over external factors, such as students dealing with the challenges of language barriers and poverty or the lack of funding for classroom resources. And increasingly, they are tasked with doing more while Arizona ranks among the lowest in teacher salaries and per-pupil spending, he added.
βWeβre really on a collision course between our expectations and the reality weβve created,β he said.
Another factor, he said, is that schools and districts are graded based on standardized tests that do not reflect what kids have learned.
βWhile it seems that evaluation is in some way not matching up with the test scores, itβs actually the test scores that are the distorted view, because they are so limited in what they can show,β he said.
Test scores, for example, do not capture the fact that 72 percent of TUSD families live below the poverty line, yet the districtβs graduation rate is higher than the state average, said Superintendent H.T. Sanchez.
The C-rated district also has worked to boost the number of students taking advanced coursework and college-readiness tests β efforts Sanchez says are trending in the right direction.
βJust by looking at the numbers, you can make the statement that itβs a very generous rating system,β he said. βBut you can also make the statement that principals are evaluating teachers based on the inclusion of factors that are beyond simple numbers.β
Though Sanchez wouldnβt say whether he thinks TUSD principals were going too easy on teachers, he said he would like to see closer alignment in student test scores and teacher ratings. He hopes the districtβs new evaluation system, paired with comprehensive training, will do the trick. The new system takes into account student feedback, as well as pre- and post-assessments that let principals more easily determine if what is being taught reflects the curriculum.
shift in the culture
Few would argue against evaluations that effectively separate great from good, good from fair, and fair from poor educators. But getting to that point wonβt be easy.
Districts that are generous with ratings may appear to have high-performing teachers, while others that have cracked down may look weaker by comparison.
For Renee Griffith, a Catalina Foothills mother of two who described all her daughtersβ teachers as dedicated, learning that their A-rated elementary school identified only about 60 percent of its teachers as effective or highly effective came as a shock.
βI would guess over 90 percent would be highly effective or effective,β Griffith said. That said, once she heard the districtβs logic in reserving the highest rating for truly extraordinary teachers, she was fully supportive of the seemingly lower ratings.
Principals may have a harder time making that philosophical change, said Jacobs, of the National Council on Teacher Quality. First they have to abandon the natural defensive posture of, βI hired them, of course theyβre good.β Then they have to steel themselves for some uncomfortable conversations with teachers whose rating will plummet although their results and dedication are unchanged.
βI think weβve maybe underestimated the culture shift we are asking the profession to make,β Jacobs said. βItβs really hard to move from a system where everybody got the box checked every year that said βsatisfactoryβ to one that is looking more critically at the elements of good instruction.β
Effective evaluations require ongoing training on how to identify effective teaching, and how to give meaningful feedback and individualized support. The state education department said it is working on exactly that.
βWeβre going to continue to do training and focus on that piece and providing support and guidance to the districts as they continue to refine their evaluation instruments,β said Johnson, of the state DOE.
The Arizona State Board of Education recently reconvened a teacher-principal evaluation task force, which formed after the Legislature adopted a state framework for educator evaluation in 2010, she said. The task force will make recommendations to the board on improving the framework.
If teacher evaluations are to be taken seriously, they must become a factor in issues like compensation, layoffs and other areas. While a 2013 National Council on Teacher Quality report found that no state had developed those kinds of comprehensive policies, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Michigan, Rhode Island, Tennessee and District of Columbia public schools were said to be close.
At the time, Louisiana was the front-runner. It connected teacher effectiveness to decisions on tenure, professional development, teacher improvement plans, public reporting of aggregate teacher ratings, compensation, dismissal, layoffs and licensure advancement. Also, the state linked studentsβ performance to their teachersβ β and to the institutions where their teachers were trained.
Such practices not only identify teachers in need of assistance but also those deserving of rewards, both of which could benefit students and decrease teacher turnover.
βThe goal is to help all teachers grow and develop and improve and be their very best for kids day in and day out,β Jacobs said. βThatβs what every teacher wants to do, and itβs certainly what our students need.β
