Students will have input on evaluating instructors

This fall, students statewide will be asked to rate their classroom experiences in surveys that will soon become one of the measures used in a new teacher evaluation system.

But the surveys are being met critically by the teachers union, which says student feedback has no place in a performance-based evaluation system that will be linked to pay, tenure and other high-stakes decisions.

Wil Okabe, president of the Hawaii State Teachers Association, said the survey may provide insight to teachers but is not appropriate for all grade levels and is not culturally sensitive.

"We believe that the job of evaluating teacher effectiveness belongs to our administrators," Okabe said. "It’s basically about fairness."

The new concerns could mean another hurdle for the Department of Education as it looks to overhaul teacher evaluations.

A revamped evaluation system is being piloted now, and the DOE has pledged to tie teacher ratings to personnel decisions in 2014.

HSTA has also raised concerns about the use of student test scores in rating teacher effectiveness.

This school year the student survey is being administered to kindergarten through 12th-grade students in 81 schools. Students statewide will take the survey in the 2013-14 school year.

Department of Education officials say the survey is nationally standardized, has been found to be predictive of effective teaching practices and is a fair measure to consider in an evaluation system.

The DOE also points out that the survey has been translated into Hawaiian for immersion students and that work is under way to determine whether any other changes are needed to make it accessible to all students.

Stephen Schatz, assistant superintendent for the DOE’s Office of Strategic Reform, said the survey is ultimately about improving practices.

"It’s not a popularity contest," he said, adding, "You don’t want to just focus on this. You need to look at teacher efficacy from a whole bunch of different angles."

Hawaii is among at least 12 states that consider or plan to consider student surveys when formally evaluating teachers.

The DOE has said the new teacher evaluation will also include an observation, measures of student academic growth, and student learning objectives.

It’s not yet known what weight the survey will carry in the evaluation.

Rob Ramsdell, director of the Tripod Proj­ect, which creates the student surveys for dozens of school districts, said teachers understandably have lots of questions about the surveys.

But he said that including the measure in an evaluation system will increase the reliability of the rating system and is in teachers’ best interests.

"I absolutely understand why people would want to know more," he said.

In the first use of the survey last school year, teachers in 18 Zone of School Innovation schools along the Wai­anae Coast and in the Kau-Pahoa area of Hawaii island scored on par with their mainland peers on the evaluation.

The surveys ask students about such things as classroom management and whether they’re challenged and engaged.

Students in kindergarten through second grade get a proctored, simplified survey and are asked to weigh in with a "yes," "no" or "maybe" on statements like, "I like the way my teacher treats me when I need help" and "Our class stays busy and does not waste time."

Older students are asked to indicate on a five-point scale (totally untrue to totally true) whether they agree with statements such as, "Students behave so badly in this class that it slows down our learning" and "My teacher in this class encourages me to do my best."

According to statistics released earlier this month, 40 percent of Hawaii Zone of School Innovation third- to fifth-graders included in the 2011-12 survey responded favorably when asked about whether their teacher adequately controlled their classroom, compared with about 52 percent nationally.

But 83 percent of those students responded favorably when asked whether their teacher regularly clarified and explained content, 20 points higher than the national average.

Meanwhile, 65 percent of students in sixth to 12th grade said their course content was rigorous, compared with 49 percent nationally.

And 56 percent responded favorably to questions about whether their teachers care, 11 points lower than the national average.

The DOE said the results from the survey show elementary and secondary schools have different strengths and weaknesses.

"The data validates that we are on the right track and identifies opportunities for the DOE to guide professional development and practice," Schools Superintendent Kathryn Mata­yo­shi said in a statement.

She added the department is using the survey as a "formative tool that will give us insights into what happens in each of our classrooms beyond the simple measures of student achievement based on standardized test scores."

Okabe, the HSTA chief, said the surveys can be used to improve teacher effectiveness but shouldn’t count against teachers.

Many teachers appear to agree.

In a recent poll of about 500 teachers conducted by HSTA, 88 percent said they did not believe the student survey should be a part of the evaluation system.

Okabe said he believes the survey may be difficult for younger students to understand and is not "culturally relative."

He also said that teachers who are strict or difficult may perform poorly on the surveys, something the developers of the tool rebut.

"You want to get feedback from the students," Okabe said, "but not in the sense of an evaluation."