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Post date: Jan 30, 2015 10:33:35 AM
New state superintendent Hofmeister, Senator Ford, and other members of the state TLE Commission received a stinging new report on 1/29/2015 about the implementation of the quantitative components of the TLE appraisal system. The report came from statewide focus groups conducted by researchers from the Southern Regional Educational Board (SREB). It was authored in November 2014, but not released publicly until now.
The complete report is attached to this post.
The Tulsa World report quotes Andy Baxter of the SREB:
“Implementation of TLE has been really undermined by the educators’ severe distrust of OSDE (Oklahoma State Department of Education), and that’s an uncomfortable thing. I don’t bring that up lightly. It was a powerful, powerful theme in what we heard,” said Andy Baxter, vice president of educator effectiveness at SREB.
“If the theory is to help people get better in a rigorous way, people have to believe in it. There is going to be limits to what you can legislate or regulate. It’s going to come down to the schoolhouse discussions. … On the course you’re on now, it seems like it would just blow up in a general sense.”
New state superintendent Hofmeister was quoted as saying:
KEY FINDINGS IN THE REPORT:
“I’ve been wrestling a lot with the discussion about the equity and try to argue both sides as I think though this, as well,” she said. “It does occur to me that we already accept that there are differences in certification requirements, what we test and how the workload is different for a P.E. teacher than a U.S. history teacher. Is there a way to overcome this concern that is fair and that brings value to teachers with self-reflection, growth and professional development?”
The report's central recommendation is for Oklahoma to delay the use of quantitative measures for educators’ evaluation scores. Baxter told the commission that would provide time for state leaders to review each of the measures and for educators to better familiarize themselves with them before they are factored into their effectiveness ratings.
The TLE Commission reportedly decided to spend the next month working on recommendations based on the advice from the report authors. It could vote on those at the March commission meeting and then forward them for consideration by the state Board of Education.
Senator Ford has already introduced SB 706 to convert 2014-15 and 2015-16 into pilot years for the quantitative components, with only data collected in 2016-17 becoming 50% of TLE appraisals in 2017-18; his bill also would allow districts to modify the percentage split between Other Academic Measures (OAM) and Value Added Measures (VAM), for the 25% or so of teachers who receive ratings based on state test scores, from the current 15% for OAM and 35% for VAM. His bill retains the mandated split of 15% for OAM and 35% for local teacher-developed Student Learning/Outcome Objectives (SLO/SOO) for the 75% of teachers who do not receive a VAM. This would allow districts to put less weight on VAMs to help compensate for the clear inequities with SLO/SOO.
The qualitative portion of TLE is a significant improvement over the old teacher evaluation system, although implementation is in its nascent stage. Some teachers still receive little to no feedback from administrators about their strengths and areas for improvement. Administrators and teachers alike need more time to fully unpack the teaching quality rubric and align professional development opportunities to growth areas.
Many educators, especially teachers, do not understand the quantitative components of TLE and need guidance for developing meaningful and fair local measures. Administrators who received Value Added Measures (VAM) training lack a firm grasp of the measure and do not feel qualified to train teachers on it. Educators are generally unclear about the difference between Other Academic Measures (OAM), Student Learning Outcomes (SLO) and Student Outcome Objectives (SOO), and need guidance on choosing or creating measures of student growth that are meaningful and fair across teachers.
The vast majority of educators do not believe the quantitative components are valid, fair or helpful for improving their instruction. They want to see the quantitative portion either delayed or eliminated. Educators expressed an immense amount of pushback against the quantitative components. Some of the resistance seemed to stem from misunderstanding, but most of it came from disagreement about the theory of action, practicality and helpfulness of quantitative measures. In other words, even those who understood it rejected it.
Lack of buy-in for TLE is significantly rooted in a severe distrust of OSDE. Many focus group participants described OSDE’s school and educator accountability programs as means of “tearing down public education” and “beating down on teachers,” instead of a system genuinely intended to improve teaching and learning. The distrust was deep and wide, including everything from OSDE’s handling of sensitive data, to organizational capacity, to the motive behind the TLE work.
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