Do New Teacher Evaluation Systems Makes a Difference?

Education shows a great impact on the economic rate of a country. But what happens if the providers of that education are not that well-experienced. What if, they are not educated to teach the students and make them learn? Do all these things show adverse effects on economic growth? The answer is ‘YES’.

From a recent research done by Matthew Kraft and Alison Gilmour which shows- the effects of education in 19 states where the teachers have evaluated. The whole school system seems different from the previous one, only a small proportion of teachers like 2-5 per cent was still giving the flat or below proficiency results. But the real point is the large majority of teachers showing satisfactory or better results.

The only reason why all the schools are in the range of satisfactory line is only that they rely heavily on their principals. Principals have the full authority to rate their teachers, but there are a large number of administrators who are not sufficiently educated to evaluate the teacher. It’s all because of lack of insufficient communication gap and this problem is known as "building bias". To improve the situations of a school (classroom), it’s better to remove all the weak teachers who were given poor performance and appoint highly-educated teachers at their place. It will not only improve the school reputation but also make the children’s learn things quickly.

There are only two more interesting and important issues on which we want to discuss more.

Incentives should only depend on the results: as the line clears itself if the teacher is giving good result and performing above the level of satisfaction, then definitely he/she should be awarded. These types of teachers show their correct behaviour in all the accountability system and must lie in the first category of professional or economic development.

Within-state variation is critical here: according to the report of Kraft and Gilmour, there are 12 districts in four states which primarily lie under larger urban districts. The distribution of ratings in all the urban districts is quite different than the statewide score. Because of it, a large number of teachers in urban districts receives lower ratings as compared to the statewide teachers.

However, our primary aim is to improve the teaching quality of the students which helps in the converting the developing state into a developed state. All this can happen only with the aid of teachers and parents. The broken communication of teachers with students and administrators is another big reason for their performance failure. Bt this is largely improved by the latest technological advancement of school management software. The feature of instant messaging and SMS alerts in modern school management softwares have enabled teachers to communicate directly in a hassle-free manner.

Karan is a self-motivated blogger who writes about the latest in technology and education.