Should Secondary School Teachers Lose their Jobs after Poor Evaluations?

It's a scenario that plays out in hundreds of schools around the country every day - word reaches the school that one of the district’s teacher evaluators plans to show up soon and everyone had better be ready. Every primary and secondary school teacher knows that these evaluations don’t just end in a few harmless recommendations of what to do to improve things. If it's an underperforming school and the evaluator finds that the teacher is doing something wrong, she could actually stand to lose her job.

And they do. States like Washington have actually fired hundreds of teachers already based on the findings of teacher evaluators. It's all part of a hated new system called Impact that the teachers’ unions (understandably) oppose. The Race to the Top competition that President Obama has announced $5 billion for, has many states in the country taking up teacher evaluations like these to try to tighten their system up and improve their chances of making the grade.

As much as primary and secondary school teachers consider the system to be deeply unfair for placing all the burden of responsibility on them, the system does have its supporters. They feel that school districts across the country that have always lacked focus, that have never had any real teaching aims, that have always done without teaching standards, are suddenly greatly enabled by the establishment of these clear-cut standards and targets. The fact that teachers know that falling short will result in dismissal, they feel, is a great way to motivate them to do better.

Those who are appalled by the harshness of the new standards and the punishments dealt out feel that it is unbecoming of any established system that it should be more eager to throw people out of jobs than to help them attain the standards expected. If the system doesn't have a solution for a problem it picks up, how can it expect teachers to have one, they contend. Of course, the fact that the evaluation system just doesn't seem to sympathize with teachers who have to work against enormous odds in poor districts with poor budgets, and in crowded classrooms, does make sense. After all, teaching evaluators usually come away with excellent results for teachers in wealthy school districts and with poor grades for teachers in poor districts. The results do show that budget has a great deal to contribute to the success of a class; why fire the teachers for the failings of the budget, they wonder.

The Impact system is fairer  at times more than others though. It doesn't always depend on student test scores to grade primary and secondary school teachers. At times, it relies on classroom observations, where teachers are graded on how clearly they explain content and check for how well their students understand. It's only teachers who are completely and totally ineffective who are dismissed summarily. Even minimally effective teachers get a year to change.

However, as anyone who's been in a job knows, an evaluating boss can often be critical in a way that makes no sense. Teachers who get evaluated complain of arbitrary and petty evaluating techniques. That certainly is some truth to that.