{"id":19209,"date":"2013-06-20T11:30:32","date_gmt":"2013-06-20T15:30:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/?p=19209"},"modified":"2013-07-30T11:29:43","modified_gmt":"2013-07-30T15:29:43","slug":"classroom-contemplations-how-school-grades-get-it-wrong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/2013\/06\/20\/classroom-contemplations-how-school-grades-get-it-wrong\/","title":{"rendered":"Classroom Contemplations: How School Grades Get It Wrong"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"module image left mceTemp\" id=\"attachment_19211\" style=\"width: 199px;\"><a class=\"fancybox\" title=\"Miami-Dade teacher Jeremy Glazer says the state's school report card system often doesn't send a the right message.\" href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/files\/2013\/06\/6-20-GoodJobStupid.jpg\" rel=\"\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-19211\" alt=\"Miami-Dade teacher Jeremy Glazer says the state's school report card system often doesn't send a the right message.\" src=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/files\/2013\/06\/6-20-GoodJobStupid-199x300.jpg\" width=\"199\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/files\/2013\/06\/6-20-GoodJobStupid-199x300.jpg 199w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/files\/2013\/06\/6-20-GoodJobStupid.jpg 333w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 199px) 100vw, 199px\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n<p dir=\"ltr\" id=\"docs-internal-guid-529571e3-5f64-d8e6-0863-684e6a3e435a\"><em>Editor&#8217;s note: Names of teachers and students have been changed.<\/em><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Professionals should be responsible for their job performance and should be evaluated and retained accordingly.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Who doesn\u2019t agree with that?<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">My problem isn\u2019t with accountability or evaluating teachers. \u00a0My problem is with the schemes I\u2019ve encountered so far in my career that have been designed to hold teachers accountable.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">I\u2019ve been lucky enough to teach at a range of schools. \u00a0And even though I\u2019m the same teacher, I\u2019ve been treated (and paid) differently in ways that had more to do with the kind of school in which I was working than with my performance in the classroom.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">My first encounter with Florida\u2019s school grading system and the accompanying bonuses for teachers happened when I was teaching in a large urban school in one of the poorer neighborhoods in Miami-Dade County. \u00a0The system is designed to combine many pieces of data, such as student test scores or percentage of students taking advanced classes, and reduce it to a simple A through F letter grade.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">My high school was graded an F. \u00a0My colleagues and I not only suffered the shame of being publicly labeled failures, we were denied the bonus given to the \u201csuccessful\u201d teachers at higher-performing schools.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Three years later, I taught at one of those higher performing schools, located in an affluent suburban neighborhood. \u00a0My school received an A grade and I got my accolades and my bonus.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><!--more--><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Was my teaching different? \u00a0If anything, I worked harder at the failing school. I was trying constantly to be innovative and to engage my students who were not used to rigorous academic standards.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><div class=\"related-content alignright\"><h4 class=\"related-header\">Related<\/h4><div class=\"links\"><h5>Posts<\/h5><ul><li class=\"link\"><a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/2013\/06\/18\/classroom-contemplations-the-most-important-day-of-the-school-year\/\">Classroom Contemplations: The Most Important Day Of The School Year<\/a><\/li><li class=\"link\"><a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/2013\/06\/14\/miami-teacher-ready-to-discuss-some-classroom-confessions\/\">Miami Teacher Ready To Discuss Some &#8220;Classroom Contemplations&#8221;<\/a><\/li><li class=\"link\"><a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/2013\/06\/17\/what-ohio-has-learned-from-three-years-of-teacher-evaluation-data\/\">What Ohio Has Learned From Three Years Of Teacher Evaluation Data<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/div><div class=\"topics\"><h5>Topics<\/h5><p class=\"topic\"><a href=\"\"><\/a><\/p><\/div><\/div><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">I was not a better teacher when I was in the suburbs. \u00a0But, my students\u2019 test scores were better, so I got rewarded.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">I\u2019ll talk more later about the problem with equating test scores with teaching, but first I think it\u2019s important to look at what such poorly-designed accountability systems have done for our toughest schools.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">See, the deck is already stacked against lower-performing schools in terms of attracting and retaining teachers. \u00a0Many of these schools often lack resources, community support, parent involvement, and strong academic cultures for a variety of reasons and teachers tend to quickly burn out or seek other options. \u00a0These schools have a tremendous need for a stable, committed, highly effective teaching force and often have a harder time attracting and maintaining one.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">And these accountability systems make that even worse. \u00a0When teachers get punished at tough schools and get rewarded at schools that are already high-performing, we create another incentive for teachers to flee low-performing schools.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">These \u201caccountability\u201d systems are more about where you work than how well you do the job.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">It is the opposite of what we should be doing with our policies.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><em>Jeremy Glazer is a Miami-Dade teacher writing about classroom issues for StateImpact Florida. Want to sound off on something Glazer has written? Want to suggest a topic for him? Send us an email at Florida@stateimpact.org and put \u201cClassroom Contemplations\u201d in the subject line.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Editor&#8217;s note: Names of teachers and students have been changed. Professionals should be responsible for their job performance and should be evaluated and retained accordingly. Who doesn\u2019t agree with that? My problem isn\u2019t with accountability or evaluating teachers. \u00a0My problem is with the schemes I\u2019ve encountered so far in my career that have been designed [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":155,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[16],"tags":[1035,841,1007,1106,1079],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19209"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/155"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19209"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19209\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19705,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19209\/revisions\/19705"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}