Teachers: New evaluation system 'artificial,' 'frustrating,' 'humiliating'
Ohanian Comment: This teacher evaluation systems travels with the Common Core State [sic] Standards.
When will the unions stop taking money from the Bill and Gates Foundation and instead take up the bullying of teachers as a critical issue?
Marzano calls his plan Dr. Marzano's Causal Teacher Evaluation Model
Question: How does this differ from Lydia E. Pinkham's cure-all?
The five herbs contained in Lydia Pinkham's original formula:
- Pleurisy root: diaphoretic, anti-spasmodic, carminative, and anti-inflammatory.
- Life root: traditional uterine tonic, diuretic, anti-inflammatory, and emmenagogue used for amenorrhea or dysmenorrhea.
- Fenugreek: vulnerary, anti-inflammatory, anti-spasmodic, tonic, emmenagogue, galactogogue, and hypotensive.
- Unicorn Root: dysmenorrhea, uterine prolapse, pelvic congestion and to improve ovarian function.
- Black cohosh: emmenagogue, anti-spasmodic, alterative, nervine, and hypotensive;used traditionally for menopausal symptoms.
As Wikipedia notes, "The formula also contains drinking alcohol, ethanol, as in wine, beer and liquor of all sorts." Many have suggested this was the most important ingredient.
One has to be a member, with a user name, to access Marzano's Learning Map updated with numbering system for 60 elements across the four domains, so I can't report if Marzano's plan follow the cure-all model set by Lydia Pinkham and include alcohol as major ingredient.
Look up Research Base and Validation Studies on the Marzano Evaluation Model and you find all the studies are done by Marzano.
Haystead, M. W. & Marzano, R.J. (2010) Final Report: A Second Year Evaluation Study of Promethean ActivClassroom. Englewood, CO: Marzano Research Laboratory (marzanoresearch.com)
Haystead, M. W. & Marzano, R.J. (2010). Meta-Analytic Synthesis of Studies Conducted at Marzano Research Laboratory on instructional Strategies. Englewood, CO: Marzano Research Laboratory (marzanoresearch.com)
Marzano, R.J. (2003). What works in schools. Alexandria, VA: ASCD
Marzano, R. J. (2006).Classroom assessment and grading that work. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.
Marzano, R.J. (2007). The art and science of teaching. Alexandria, VA: ASCD
Marzano, R. J., Frontier, T., & Livingston, D. (2011). Effective supervision: Supporting the art and science of teaching. Alexandria VA: ASCD
Marzano, R. J., Pickering, D. J., & Pollock, J. E. (2001). Classroom instruction that works. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.
Marzano, R.J., Marzano, J. S., & Pickering, D. J. (2003). Classroom management that works. Alexandria, VA: ASCD
Marzano Research Laboratory. (2010) What Works in Oklahoma Schools: Phase I Report. Englewood, CO: Marzano Research Laboratory (marzanoresearch.com)
Marzano Research Laboratory. (2011) What Works in Oklahoma Schools: Phase II Report. Englewood, CO: Marzano Research Laboratory (marzanoresearch.com)
Advice to the Florida affiliate of the NEA, the Florida Council of Teachers of English, the and the Florida REading Assocation: If you're unwilling/incapable of standing up and fighting for teacher professionalism, at least supply the people who pay dues to your organizations with a bountiful supply of Lydia Pinkham's formula.
By Leslie Postal
High-school chemistry teacher Steve Fannin was honored recently in Washington, D.C., as one of the nation's best math and science educators.
Fannin, a 31-year veteran of Tallahassee schools, has mastery of his subject and "exemplary" classroom skills, according to the judges of the Presidential Awards for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching.
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Yet when Fannin was evaluated under Florida's new teacher-assessment system, the results weren't so impressive.
A mid-year evaluation identified him as a "beginning" teacher.
His failing? Fannin had erased the day's "learning goal" from his board to make room for information to help his students grasp the chemistry lesson at hand.
"It's just been real frustrating all the way around," Fannin said of the new system. "I don't see how that promotes innovation. I don't see how that helps student learning."
His views are echoed by teachers across the state, who say a classroom-observation system meant to improve their teaching instead reduces their work to what one Lyman High School educator called a "humongous checklist" of "artificial gestures."
In some districts, for example, teachers felt judged mostly on whether their students used hand gestures to indicate how well they had learned something and on whether they wrote "learning goals" on the board every day.
"I definitely felt it didn't capture everything I was doing," said Liz Randall, who teaches English at Lyman.
"It's been humiliating for a lot of extremely accomplished people," added Mary Louise Wells, a longtime Orange County teacher who in 2002 was one of five finalists for the state teacher of the year award.
"A lot of it is very clear, good educational practice," Wells said of the new evaluation plan but it was implemented so quickly and so rigidly that it made "a mockery of what I think the goal is."
The system was introduced this past school year and is part of the new teacher evaluations required under a sweeping teacher merit-pay law the Florida Legislature adopted last year.
The most controversial piece of the law, which has been challenged in court by the state teachers union, requires that student test-score data be used to help judge teacher quality and, eventually, help set pay.
The law says half of a teacher's evaluation will be based on that test-score information and the other half on a new, more-detailed way of observing teachers in action.
Implementing the new observation system has not been easy, conceded Robert Marzano, the education researcher whose evaluation plan was chosen as Florida's model and then adopted by 31 school districts, including most in Central Florida.
His organization said some districts have initially focused too narrowly on certain aspects of the plan, ignoring the complexity that is teaching, and frustrating teachers in the process. The state's quicker-than-ideal timeline for implementation likely created those problems as did districts' phased-in implementation of the plan, it said.
But Florida, Marzano said, "is doing some amazing things" and its efforts to revamp teacher evaluations are an important part of a national push to do away with traditional reviews that deemed most every teacher "satisfactory."
His complicated plan aims to hone in on teaching activities he says will lead to improved student learning. It involves four broad "domains" and 60 strategies to help teachers "get better over time."
Marzano is a former teacher and professor who has promoted his books and work on teaching through his Marzano Research Laboratory in Colorado. His new teacher-evaluation plan has become popular recently as a number of other states, including New Jersey and Oklahoma, have adopted it as they also look to overhaul how they judge teacher quality.
Florida used about $4.7 million of its federal Race to the Top money to develop its model, parts of which were also adopted by those districts that picked other evaluation systems besides Marzano's.
Advocates say they think teachers will come to view it positively.
"The beauty of this is the assumption that everybody can get better, everybody can become a master teacher," said Merewyn Lyons, the administrator for Orange County schools who is overseeing the district's plan.
But Lyons said it is a huge, time-consuming "culture shift" that the state wanted done very quickly. "We really have been kind of learning on the fly."
The new law kicked in last July and required the new evaluation systems be used in the 2011-12 school year.
The new systems are more time consuming for both teachers and principals, who have detailed reports to fill out.
"They had to spend a lot more time in the classroom, which is a good thing, except the other things they had to do didn't go away," said Boyd Karns, the Seminole County administrator who is overseeing his district's plan. But Karns added, "It's creating a lot of conversations about what good instruction is."
— Leslie Postal
Orlando Sentinel
July 13, 2012
http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2012-07-13/features/os-florida-teacher-evaluations-20120713_1_new-teacher-evaluations-evaluation-plan-teacher-meri
Index of Common Core [sic] Standards
