Three isle educators offer their own ideas about what it would take to ensure    improvement in student performance.

Administrators are the ones really affecting achievement
By John Mussack

While it’s worthwhile to evaluate teachers’ job performance, I think it’s a bad idea to include student achievement as a benchmark. That is because individual teachers have almost no control over student achievement. It is a myth that teachers work independently and "do their own thing."

For instance, when I was a special-education teacher for the state Department of Education several years ago, most of my recommendations for remediation and accommodations for my students were vetoed by the principal. I was compelled to implement the school’s usual way of doing things. A teacher in that position should not be blamed for his students’ lack of progress.

Many exceptional teachers have come here from the mainland, under special contract, only to leave in disillusionment after one or two years. Indeed, half of all new teachers leave within three years. That is because they run into the hard reality that everything they do is under control of the school, not their own professional judgment.

To understand the internal dynamics of a school, you have to start by realizing that a school is a workplace. As such, it has the same office politics and cronyism as any workplace. Principals do favors and give assistance to those teachers who "play ball" with them. And the flip side is that principals make the job difficult for those teachers who try to improve on the school’s usual way of doing things. The result is that our state schools remain mediocre in general, but the teachers who play politics successfully are the ones who end up with reputations as good teachers.

When someone complains about a bad teacher, almost always what they mean is the teacher can’t control the class, not that the teacher doesn’t understand pedagogy or uses bad teaching methods. That happens when students and parents are influenced by the social relations of the school personnel. If the principal and influential staff members don’t respect a teacher, then the parents and students won’t respect her and won’t cooperate with her. That is what lowers achievement.

At one elementary school where I worked, the principal undermined another teacher’s control of her class. That teacher was a very fine kindergarten teacher, but the principal didn’t like her. So the principal transferred her to a sixth-grade class and then proceeded to tell the students and their parents that the teacher was doing a bad job. Yes, principals in this state do behave like that.

Other teachers in the school also undermined that teacher, in harmony with the principal. The result, predictably, was that the teacher lost control of her class and achievement dropped.

But the opposite also happened: The same school had a part-time science teacher who was close with the principal. That science teacher had a very poor teaching method. But, with the approval of the principal, she gave orders to the other faculty to help students with their science projects. Nobody was brave enough to say, "No, you do your own job." The result was that the science teacher won awards as a supposed "outstanding teacher."

Over the past 12 years or so, there have been several audits of Hawaii schools by various agencies: the legislative auditor, PricewaterhouseCoopers and others. What they have always identified as the sources of school failure have been administrative functions, not the performance of individual teachers.

The ones in control — administrators, not teachers — should be judged by student achievement.

Incessant micromanaging saps teachers of motivation
By Susan Kay Anderson

The state of Hawaii and the Hawaii district are overwhelming teachers and underpaying them, and using evaluation tools as instruments of harassment and intimidation. This is creating a hostile workplace environment. This is also called workplace violence.

I grew up attending rural, isolated schools in Nome, Alaska, and on Indian reservations in Nevada and Montana. I know America’s disenfranchised, rural poor.

I want to share with you my experience teaching at a school which, for the past three years, has had no library access for students, no school librarian and is in one of the poorest communities in the state, replete with the problems of such. Students who do not work with encyclopedias or atlases or who can’t browse the shelves are being asked to evaluate my performance as a teacher. Scores of middle managers are also evaluating my performance — to determine my pay, my teaching line, and even if I can keep my job.

Who is being targeted to solve these overwhelming problems? Teachers. Strict monitoring, micro-managing and evaluation of teachers — all tied to a 10th-grade test score — is seen as the solution.

Students are evaluating me by scoring bubble sheets. One statement on the sheet is, "This class is like a happy family." The students are expected to bubble-in a rating, from highly agree to highly disagree.

I have a master’s degree in English literature and creative writing from the University of Colorado. I am an award-winning writer. I have worked as an educator in Hawaii since 1995. Instead of my expertise being sought by the complex, district and state, I am mandated to attend and participate in endless trainings, evaluations and "professional development" — or be deemed insubordinate and therefore lose my job.

My classes are disrupted by numerous observations by administrators, district teams and other teachers at the school in their role as "coaches" or "school design team" staff. They are my colleagues and serve in a supervisory position. They make three times my salary. I am being micromanaged to the point of no return. I have lost my focus as an educator.

I do not have time to prepare for upcoming classes because I am so concerned with fulfilling the mandates of the school and district. If I question current policies in department meetings or other meetings, my concerns are belittled and I am put on Pep-T (Professional Evaluation Program for Teachers). The new evaluation tool appears to be even more arbitrary and vague in its language.

The state needs to trust that teachers are fulfilling their job duties as professional educators. Teachers are trained at universities. Please respect their education. Working with students, teachers receive valuable experience. Please respect their years of service and compensate them for remaining until the end of the year. Please provide opportunities to teachers that are voluntary only. Cut out the huge waste of middle management administrators. Please allow teachers to do their jobs. The constant training, retraining, evaluations, observations, workshops, professional development, mandated "pacing guides" and "common assessments" with their grid sheets, charts and analysis defeat the purpose of educators, that is, teaching individuals and addressing their various learning styles, interests, backgrounds and skill levels.

This is a call to reject participation in Race to the Top and to repeal the No Child Left Behind law mandating high test scores for teacher promotion, retention and salary increases.

Save money by installing solar panels at every Hawaii school. Pay for teacher transportation to and from work. Provide a generous salary package for existing professionals and to attract bright, new teachers. Trust teachers to do their jobs by allowing them the freedom to do their jobs. This does not involve teaching to a 10th-grade test.

Fair evaluation system and support are keys to success
By Bev Royden

Teachers are gravely concerned about the way teachers and the educational system are perceived and valued by communities, and they have the most at stake — their jobs.

Good teachers are overly dedicated to their profession and completely dedicated to the success of every student. However, they need community and parental support to succeed.

Teachers face insurmountable workloads, little admiration and lower pay than most college degreed professionals. Teaching used to be a highly regarded, respectable profession. Nowadays, teachers are considered the problem in the educational system. People rationalize this attitude by blaming teachers for low test scores, bad teaching habits and an unsubstantial evaluation system for teachers.

As a teacher, I believe most teachers are the kind of teacher I described above. However, I have also witnessed teachers who are burned out, lacking motivation, feel stuck in a job — not so good teachers. We must retrain them, reposition them or fire them.

Teachers want a clear, fair evaluation system, reasonable raises and job security. The public and government want an educational system that can make every student able to enter college and compete in the global community. This goal is hard to attain, with budget cuts, overcrowded classrooms and current inclusion conditions.

Most teachers would be happy to participate in a fair and equitable evaluation system.

To create an amicable system, all teachers and administrators would be required to participate in surveys (questionnaires) to set the perimeters and standards for which they would be evaluated. Peer evaluations should be random and unannounced to be effective and keep all teachers performing at their best daily. Even underperforming, inadequate teachers can put on a good show during a formal, announced evaluation. If a teacher is rated inadequate or low by common, agreed-upon standards, then that teacher would be assigned a mentor for a set amount of time and given one chance to improve his or her rating. If the rating does not improve to normal, adequate standards, then the teacher would be released or retrained for a different type of position.

Every teacher and administrator could be evaluated, at minimum, twice a year. For peer teacher evaluations, teachers and administrators could peer evaluate as an assigned duty twice a year. The teacher would receive coverage for the day to complete two observations in a different school (their same grade level or position) in another district or county, not their own. This would fulfill a few requirements:

» By participating in setting up the criteria for judgment, teachers would fully understand and be required to practice the evaluation criteria daily.

» Teachers would get a chance to observe and learn the best practices of other teachers.

» Teachers would score each other without bias.

For community evaluations: Once a year, a respectable citizen using a different type of criteria could evaluate a teacher (possibly on a volunteer basis). Parents could not evaluate a teacher who teaches one of their own children. This evaluation could be more about common courtesies, classroom management and common misconceptions of the public. This would create social awareness and active community involvement in our educational system standards. Education should be a commodity that conforms to general consensus.

I hope the state of Hawaii finds a quick and fair resolution to the evaluation issue facing Hawaii public schools.