Teacher Evaluation Research Paper

Teacher Evaluation Research Paper

Introduction

The teaching profession and the attitudes towards teaching have dramatically changed over the course of our educational history. Once deemed to simply be a servant of the community, the teaching profession continues to evolve as more people recognize the importance and demanding nature it is to be a teacher. Therefore, it makes sense that, as the profession has changed, so has the needs and methods of teacher evaluations. Early on, this role was the responsibility of local clergy and local government officials. Now, evaluating the effectiveness of the teacher and how this may (or may not) affect student achievement has become a very complex process. In additional, various legislation like

He established three components to measure student learning: 1) using testing to determine the level of each students, 2) establish clear objectives in curriculum development, and 3) using reliable measurements to identify the level of learning. Avril Barr (1948) noted that supervisor’s ratings of teachers were the metric of choice, but other researchers noted that teacher evaluation showed little about students’ level of learning. In fact, Jacob and Philip Jackson (1963) called for an end to evaluations linking teacher characteristics to student learning. Donald Medley, Homer Coker, and Robert Soar (1984) described quite well the history of teacher evaluation from the turn of the twentieth century to about 1980. This history might be divided into three overlapping periods: (1) The Search for Great Teachers; (2) Inferring Teacher Quality from Student Learning; and (3) Examining Teaching Performance. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, teacher evaluation appears to be entering a new phase of disequilibrium; that is, a transition to a period of Evaluating Teaching as Professional

For one, poor quality teacher evaluation instruments can lessen the ability to evaluate a teacher’s skills. Often times, these instruments are “cookie-cutter” forms and are not modified or changed to reflect current trends in teaching or subject matter. They sometimes just have lists of desirable traits that someone identified as being important. I’m not sure it is beneficial to have one standardized form to use for all of the teachers located at the same school. Different subjects, students, and classrooms all have varying objectives and therefore, teacher evaluations should reflect these variables. Also, little guidance is provided on how to complete the teacher evaluation form, and on top of that, different evaluators have their own ideas of how to evaluate someone so their evaluations can be highly subjective. Districts typically give little direction regarding what evaluators should look for. Instead of providing guidelines and rubrics about the substance of evaluations, districts are more likely to set out time lines and explain processes (Koppich & Showalter, 2008). Also, there is a tendency for teacher evaluations to be very similar with little variance in scores. Because of this, there are few consequences associated with the evaluation. Strong teachers are not rewarded for high quality work, and poor teachers are