Holding Teachers Accountable

Ruben Navarrette Jr.

DALLAS -- Only in the world of public education is it still considered radical and controversial for people to take even a smidgen of responsibility for the products they help turn out.

Responsibility. Ownership. Those are words that come up a lot in talking with Dallas School Superintendent Mike Moses. It was three years ago this week that Moses took the reins of the troubled Dallas Independent School District, and he is marking his anniversary by stirring up a hornet's nest.

Unhappy with student achievement, Moses has suggested a bold new plan for grading the district's approximately 10,000 teachers. The gist: Tie 25 percent of the educator's annual evaluation directly to student performance on standardized tests. Students in Texas are tested every spring as it is, and so it would be easy enough to use those scores to gauge what students have learned during the year and credit the teacher for teaching it.

"I'm just trying to get teachers to accept a sense of ownership over the students' performance," said Moses.

That strikes me as fair enough. And frankly, what Moses has in mind makes more sense than the current system for evaluating teachers, which is based almost entirely on longevity. The more time teachers log in the classroom, the higher their salaries.

I suppose the longevity argument is based on the assumption that the longer someone does something, the better they get at it. My experience as a former substitute teacher tells me that this is not always the case.

For teachers who burned out long ago and who are now coasting through most of the school year, the current system is brilliantly conceived. But for those of us who think that parents and the rest of society have a right to expect more from those whom they entrust with educating children, it's about time we tried something new.

What Moses has in mind is worth a try. But Sandra Feldman, president of the American Federation of Teachers, disagrees. After meeting with Moses recently, she told The Dallas Morning News editorial board that there is no research demonstrating that student performance is impacted in any meaningful way by teacher performance.

My guess is that many teachers are concerned about where this road leads. They worry that the next step will be to link student performance not just to teacher evaluations but also to (gasp!) paychecks.

Moses insists that is not what this is about, stressing that his plan calls for just a quarter of a teacher assessment to be linked to how students perform on tests.

"If you do everything else right, that 25 percent is not going to hurt you," he said.

The plan needs the approval of Dallas school trustees. Moses is hopeful that he'll get it and that the new evaluation system will be in place in time for the 2004-2005 school year.

Pay close attention to this debate. It will be terribly enlightening. It hints at the big truth behind public schools -- that they exist more for the convenience of the adults who work there than for the students who learn there. The debate also makes clear that, in the minds of some teachers, any proposed reform should be judged by one criterion: Does it advance the teachers' perpetual goal of getting more and more compensation with less and less strings attached?

Listening to me rant, my wife is still not convinced. Having been an elementary school teacher -- albeit in a private school -- she thinks it unfair to judge teacher performance by how well students do on tests. What about the role of parents? What about those students who learn differently and don't test well?

Still, she agrees that the current system is nuts and that we shouldn't simply be paying people based on how long they have been in the classroom.

Her solution: More public schools ought do what many private schools do. They should designate an administrator -- perhaps an assistant principal -- whose sole job is to observe, evaluate and advise teachers. That administrator should grade teachers, provide them with goals from year to year and come back and evaluate them on how well they met those goals. Educators could also be taught a thing or two about how to work with parents to get the most from students.

The private school model is all about keeping three groups happy, she said. Teachers, parents and students. Public schools are less market driven and more political. You have to focus on the kids again and, to do that, you have to get rid of the politics.

Oh, is that all?

Ruben Navarrette's e-mail address is rnavarrette@dallasnews.com.