In “Continue the Race” (August 29, 2010) the editors of the New York Times continue to celebrate the misguided goals of the “Race to the Top,” which include evaluating teachers by the test scores of their students. This kind of assessment of teachers is wrong on so many levels: psychometry, pedagogy, social equity, and ethics. Why do reputable journalists continue to hold teachers to standards they would never allow for themselves?
A cardinal principal of the science of mental testing, psychometry, is that a test should never be used to evaluate what it was not designed to evaluate. Therefore, a test designed to evaluate math or reading should not be used to evaluate the teacher of math or reading. It would require an inference that could not be supported by the data. Otherwise we might hire journalists based on their S.A.T. scores or fire copy editors for their low scores on the Millers Analogy Test. Even reliable tests can be abused and make faulty judgments.
Standardized tests are not true indicators of academic progress, especially for students who think critically or methodically. All teachers know students who do not test well, because of the emotional pressure or because they read questions too critically or because they need time to process their thoughts. Standardized tests privilege the quick response and the suppression of ambiguity, so that thinking is always convergent and the first answer is better than the second one. What we consider higher order thinking, the core of our curriculum, is not assessed by standardized tests.
Perhaps journalists are accustomed to this on-demand world or even prefer it, since theirs is a world of deadlines. Journalism is the one kind of writing with relentless and unforgiving cycles and only certain kinds of writers can adapt to them. Yet writing in other circumstances allows the luxury of multiple drafts and time to receive feedback from other writers and editors. The same can be said of problem-solving in math, science and the social sciences. Standardized testing does not foster these process-oriented, critical thinking skills, yet it is becoming the primary indicator of educational success.
The test performances of students in urban schools are a target of “Race to the Top.” The conditions in urban school environments can subvert effective teaching to the extent that good teachers will run away from them. Good teachers know they are constrained by the effectiveness of their schools. Numerous factors are beyond their control, such as class size, flagrant absenteeism, aliterate family environments, and undiagnosed or over-diagnosed special needs. These conditions contribute enormously to the achievement gap. Until such conditions can be reliably addressed, urban teachers and teachers of disadvantaged children should not be evaluated by their students’ performance. Otherwise good teachers will avoid the urban schools, knowing they will be penalized for teaching there.
And if a young journalist began her career writing for a pulpy tabloid, how would that reflect on her style? How much opportunity would a writer have to shine under the pressure to tell the most lurid story of the day? How does the writer’s prose reflect her ability, if the text must be written at the fifth grade level? Professionals might call this “paying their dues,” but what would a similar early career performance do to a teacher, evaluated by her students’ performance? Would anyone take into account the above-mentioned variables that undermine her good teaching?
Ultimately fairness in evaluation is a matter of ethics. You should not evaluate a job performance with the blunt instruments of standardized tests any more than you should evaluate a journalist by the word count she produces each month. The professional standards implied by such thoughtless evaluation are unconscionable. How can we expect teachers to teach compassionately when they are assessed by tests they don’t take, with so many factors beyond their control? They will become as disillusioned as a stringer might over time, because he never received a special assignment or appreciation for anything except meeting the deadline.
Since I am a teacher, I do not truly understand the conditions that might coarsen a young journalist, but I try to understand. I wish for the same consideration for teachers from the editors of the New York Times.