Teacher evaluations are not the solution

There is a myth that Hawaii’s schools are filled with bad teachers protected by the Hawaii State Teachers Association at the expense of students.

Further, if we have teacher evaluations, we can find these bad teachers and fire them, thus improving education.

Not only is this a myth, but teacher evaluations actually make education worse, not better.

The top education systems such as Finland and Singapore have learned what Hawaii has not: The goal should not be fixed on firing bad teachers, but on hiring good teachers.

In Finland, only the top 10 percent of college applicants become teachers. In Singapore, teachers are recruited from the top one-third of college graduates. In Japan and Korea, teachers are paid as well as engineers.

The best way to improve education is to have well-qualified, well-paid teachers in the first place. In Hawaii we have the opposite: Teachers are the worst-paid in the nation (based on the cost of living). In other school districts with the same high cost of living — Chicago, New York, Washington, D.C. — they pay their teachers 60-90 percent better than Hawaii.

When we put poorly paid new teachers in hot classrooms with 40-plus students, they leave. Into this environment we have added teacher evaluations.

Hawaii already has the highest teacher-turnover rate in the nation; in some years, the teacher-turnover rate is as high as 56 percent after five years. Yet, supposedly this new evaluation system will allow the state to fire even more teachers. Who, then, are we going to replace them with? We already can’t find enough teachers for the openings we have now. In some years, as many as 65 percent of new teachers are emergency hires and some classes are taught by long-term subs.

Teachers are now being held accountable for factors beyond their control. Student test scores and behavior are directly correlated with a student’s socio-economic status. If a teacher wants to get a pay raise, the teacher will obviously choose well-behaved, high-scoring students and leave poorer schools — thus increasing the teacher-turnover rate and continuing the cycle of poverty.

Studies on high-performing education systems show if you want to improve education, you need high-paid, well-qualified teachers, low class sizes, quality learning environments, high standards and a good vocational education system.

Teacher evaluations achieve none of these goals. Instead, the added stress of doing the evaluation may actually increase the teacher-turnover rate, thus contributing to poor teacher quality in underserved communities.

An effective evaluation aims to improve teaching, not to intimidate teachers or link it to pay.

For instance, in Finland, teachers have a year-end review where the principal works with the teacher on how to improve.

The goal is to improve teachers, not threaten them.

Let’s stop pretending that these new evaluations will fix Hawaii’s education system and, instead, let’s do what is right for Hawaii’s students.