Timeout for Leadership-your one-minute leadership idea

The dark side-What might Yoda say? (#3)

Individual migration to the dark side is systemic in nature-part 2

Yoda might say, “Even the Jedi fall prey to darkness.  Simple is it for one person to go down a dark path, and simple for others to follow.”

Two weeks ago, I started this series thinking about what Yoda might say in any given educational environment.  In that first article, I focused on our pre-service education of our future teachers.  Today, we jump forward in that new teacher’s career to take a look about how we evaluate teachers.  The dark side has called and the system has answered.

Widgets and more widgets

We continue to turn out widgets at an alarming rate.  The big educational movement of this new century centered around teacher evaluation and teacher accountability.  It has failed.  An enormous of amount of time and money has been invested and wasted trying to change the evaluation process.  These new evaluation systems have been created for just about every job description in the schools, including principals.  But are we any better off?  I do not think so.  And hence, the system is dysfunctional and paves the way to the dark side. Not only does it pave the way to the dark side, the system helps drive people to it.  For that I am sure.

In 2009, the New Teachers Project (TNTP) published the results of its study on teacher effectiveness.  The report was entitled, The Widget Effect, Our National Failure to Acknowledge and Act on Differences in Teacher Effectiveness.

Below is a summary of the report’s findings:

Most all teachers are rated as good or great.  This makes it extremely difficult to identify both he exceptionally good or the exceptionally poor teachers.

Professional development is inadequate.  Administrators and evaluators are lacking the skills or the wherewithal to provide feedback.  Teachers need to be involved in the selection of what professional development that they need.  In many cases, this professional development can be done by colleagues within the school rather than a host of outside the district and expensive consultants.

Novice teachers are neglected.  Our young are left to be consumed by the dark side.  Novice teachers are still being tossed a set of keys, pointed in the direction of his or her classroom and are wished luck.  New teachers mentor programs are inadequate or lacking.  Many of them are merely window dressing for the “outside world.”  The way the system is set up it makes it almost impossible to protect our young and to keep them on the light side of the Force.

Poor performance is rarely if ever addressed.  Poor teachers and overall poor human beings are allowed to thrive in our schools.  And yes, they thrive on the dark side continually looking to bring others over to their side. (TNTP)

Likewise, good performance goes unnoticed in this sea of mediocrity.  It becomes hard to escape being just average.  This deflates those that live on the light side. (TNTP)Let’s strip everything away and start again.  Let’s admit now that it was a failed experiment.  Perhaps the intention was noble but the results are questionable. It is time to throw out all of those expensive templates and standard driven forms.  We do not need to be sitting in classrooms more concerned with checking boxes than seeing instruction.  It is time to peel away all of the layers of nonsense and begin to talk about good teaching.

Please do not mistake what I am saying.  All of these research-based evaluation systems are great.  They are great for philosophical discussions and can very easily guide professional development.  But these forms do not have to be placed on all of our electronic devises for quick reference of quick check offs.  I do not think that our experts meant for them to be used that way.  But they are.  We get bogged down arguing about how one evaluated bullet point fits in with a twenty- or forty-minute observation.

It is time to stop this nonsense and fight to get back on the light side.  Teachers need many short administrative visits with immediate understandable and usable feedback.  Yes, of course a written record needs to be kept.  Just make this written record a short narrative paragraph or two which can be easily completed.  It is time to stop wasting time.  The process is just plain old frustrating. Let’s stop trying to force our ideas into these given templates and let’s start talking about what good instruction looks like.  Administrators can use this new found time to get into more and more classes.

You see, it is not about the administrative observation, nor is it about the talk between the teacher and principal that follows.  It really is about the action that takes place by the teacher as a result of that conversation about the visitation. And let us also remember that the only one that can improve instruction is that classroom teacher. 

And in this case Yoda may say, “principals may guide, but the teacher must do.”