Dear Editor,
On April 16th, the Commissioner of Education in Massachusetts released a set of proposed regulations on teacher evaluation. These regulations have been greeted with much enthusiasm, as they will utilize standardized test scores to evaluate teachers. The common belief is that finally teachers will be held accountable.
The belief is that we can identify those “good” teachers and put them in the lowest performing schools. I find it unfortunate that the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education doesn’t realize that many of our best and most dedicated teachers are already working in the these schools.
The belief that data from test scores can actually show whether a teacher is good or not is seriously flawed. When the data is examined, the most common factor among students who perform poorly is poverty. Every piece of data we have shows that children who live in poverty perform poorly on standardized tests.
Twenty one percent of the children in the United States live in poverty. This is the issue that needs to be addressed by the government. The call should be for a war against poverty, not an attack on teachers.
Very truly yours,
Janet Anderson
President, Taunton Education Association
Sunday, April 17, 2011
Poverty Impacts Students
To the editor:
Massachusetts is #1 on state rankings of national student test scores. Business, and now the state’s education commissioner (Globe Apr 17, “Rating teachers on MCAS results”) have come up with a nifty new idea: In evaluating teachers, we should put more emphasis on standardized test scores.
The model for this is Tennessee – which is #43 on state rankings.
When a teacher moves from a low-income district to a high-income district, their students’ scores go up dramatically. Did the teacher change by moving five miles? Is this a plan to drive good teachers out of low-income school districts?
Study after study shows that by far the largest factor explaining low test scores is a child’s family income and neighborhood. If we want to improve student test scores, and much more important student learning, we should guarantee the students’ parents the right to a living wage job, and we should be sure the kids get adequate food and health care.
But to do that we’d have to make rich people start paying their taxes. It’s a lot easier to beat up on teachers.
Sincerely,
Dan Clawson
Professor of Sociology, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Member of the statewide Board of the Massachusetts Teachers Association, but emphatically not speaking for the MTA
Massachusetts is #1 on state rankings of national student test scores. Business, and now the state’s education commissioner (Globe Apr 17, “Rating teachers on MCAS results”) have come up with a nifty new idea: In evaluating teachers, we should put more emphasis on standardized test scores.
The model for this is Tennessee – which is #43 on state rankings.
When a teacher moves from a low-income district to a high-income district, their students’ scores go up dramatically. Did the teacher change by moving five miles? Is this a plan to drive good teachers out of low-income school districts?
Study after study shows that by far the largest factor explaining low test scores is a child’s family income and neighborhood. If we want to improve student test scores, and much more important student learning, we should guarantee the students’ parents the right to a living wage job, and we should be sure the kids get adequate food and health care.
But to do that we’d have to make rich people start paying their taxes. It’s a lot easier to beat up on teachers.
Sincerely,
Dan Clawson
Professor of Sociology, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Member of the statewide Board of the Massachusetts Teachers Association, but emphatically not speaking for the MTA
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