U.S. Teacher Evaluation Policy Analysis

Teaching, it is argued, is’at the heart of education, so one of the most important actions the nation can take to improve education is to strengthen the teaching profession. Improving student learning and school effectiveness are consequently viewed as dependent upon the implementation of a wide range of’quality teacher’programs and policies related to the selection, training, certification, hiring, evaluation and retention of good teachers in public school classrooms Evaluation is a means toward providing better education for students, improving academic performance, and making better personnel decisions. The evaluation of teachers is not a new issue, but rather one that has been around since America’s one-room school houses.Teacher evaluation policies have spread rapidly throughout the world over the past decade, implemented as quick-fix solutions to assure the public that governments are addressing educational problems. Overwhelmingly, these policies are driven by a neo-liberal business imperative that has captured the imagination of publicsector policy makers. Hence, the discourses of managerialism and accountability have become the taken-for-granted paradigm shaping teacher evaluation policies.Some scholar comments on the new teacher evaluation in the US like this,"A new era in teaching has begun in which performance evaluation will no longer be regarded as simply a formality and teacher effectiveness in the classroom will become a matter of consequence." This drives the author to choose the US teacher evaluation policy as a major subject to study.This dissertation discusses the most relevant issues concerning teacher evaluation policy in primary and secondary education in the United States by reviewing the recent literature and analyzing current policy documents and practices in the nation wide in order to borrow success experiences and learn critical lessons from the US to help promote the teacher evaluation policy improvement in China. Toward this end, these questions will guide this analysis:1) Where did the US teacher evaluation policy originate and what were the values that directed the historical trajectory of this policy?2) What are the factors and roles shaping the policy and promoting the implementation of the policy?3) What are the consequences of this policy for in terms of promoting teachers’professional development and student learning?4) What lessons can we learn and what experience can we borrow to China to improve our own policy and practice in teacher evaluation? Each of these questions will be considered and answered throughout the chapters in this dissertation.This dissertation adopts a conceptual framework of policy elements analysis, and is structured in a policy analysis frame by analyzing policy history, policy environment, policy value, policy making, policy implementation, stakeholders’roles in policies, and policy effects in totally6chapters beyond the Introduction chapter.In the introduction chapter, it provides a conceptual framework highlighting key features of teacher evaluation and policy analysis. In particular, it emphasizes the importance of clarifying the purposes of teacher appraisal, whether summative when designed to assure that the practices enhancing student learning are undertaken or formative when conducted for further professional development objectives. Chapter1reviews the historical trajectory of the teacher evaluation practice and policies as well as related research in order to provide a context and basis for understanding the current teacher policy evaluation in the US.Chapter2discusses the social ideals such as democracy, freedom, rights, equity, social factors like globalization, technology, and educational factors like the common core curriculum reform in the US, that all drive the change of values and criteria of teacher evaluation policy from accountability to professional development to student learning. It deals with a number of contentious points, including the question of the use of different criteria such as student outcomes to measure teaching performance, the advantages and drawbacks of different approaches given the purpose emphasized and resource restrictions. It also encompasses the diverse criteria and instruments commonly used to assess teachers under varying policy values.In Chapter3, it provides an overview and detailed account of the teacher evaluation policies on the national, state and district levels. It especially focuses on the recent federal and state policy initiatives-including No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top-that highlights on improving teaching practices and better demonstrating teacher effectiveness through a new standard-based student learning oriented teacher evaluation system. This new attention has resulted in many state departments of education and school districts to turn to student assessment results (both summative and interim) for evaluating educators and measuring the effectiveness of teachers and principals. This chapter illustrate the case of Massachusetts STAR policy as a detailed example.Chapter4provides a general analysis of the implementation results of the new teacher evaluation policy in the nation wide in US and the state level implementation results through the example of Massachusetts. Analysis in this chapter is based on the data and reports by the State Teacher Policy Yearbook by the National Council for Teacher Quality and the Race to the Top annual report by Massachusetts. Findings show that almost all states in the nation wide are implementing the new teacher evaluation policy which connects student achievement to teacher performance according to the policy goals set up by the Race to the Top fund, however, with the final control of the education policy making, each state and districts under each state is retaining their own stance based on their values and cognition for teacher effectiveness evaluation, forming a consistent yet divers policy landscape on different levels.Chapter5adopts a policy-sociology approach that examines the roles of actors/stakeholders generally involved in the educational policy reform process since it is important to acknowledge their varying and contradictory roles so as to better understand the educational evaluation policy making, implementation and potential consequences. Teacher evaluation policies formulated by governments and implemented by local education agents, teacher unions, teacher registration boards, professional teaching councils, boards of education, school principals (who are removed from teachers’unions so that they can now function as managers of teachers), and by teachers themselves demonstrate how the state governs from a distance by devolving power to other institutions and individuals. The tensions and bargaining between different roles in the process demonstrates how the teacher evaluation policy is in reality a game based on compromise of various interests involved in the policy.Finally, Chapter6provides an account of historical and current policies and practices of teacher evaluation in China, pointing out mixed problems stemming from the need-improvement policies. It concludes by considering borrowed experiences from the US teacher evaluation policy analysis and suggesting alternative circumstances under which teacher evaluation systems seem to be more effective, fair and reliable in China. Developing a comprehensive approach to evaluate teachers is critical to make demands for educational best practice compatible with teachers’ appropriation of the process as well as to enhance the decisive attractiveness and recognition of the teaching profession.In sum, the teacher evaluation and development process endeavors to shift the national paradigm of thinking on teacher evaluation to one in which both administrators and teachers approach individual and team-based development as the highest priority to achieve student learning goals. Hopefully, this dissertation can contribute both theoretically and practically to shift the traditional paradigm of teacher evaluation and to build a new teacher evaluation policy and system in China.