Teachers Should Be Graded on How Well Their Students Are Learning

In his recent State of the State speech, Gov. Gray Davis issued a “call to arms” for teachers. To attract and retain these “foot soldiers” in the battle against mediocrity in public education, Davis proposed, among other things, a $30,000 bonus for teachers in low-performing schools who are certified by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards.

Nobody doubts the the desirability of rewarding excellent teachers or the need for more of such teachers, especially in troubled schools. The Davis proposal won’t accomplish those ends, however.

The first problem with his proposal is with the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, whose title implies high standards and rigorous evaluations. If, in fact, the board could guarantee that teachers who earn its credential do an outstanding job of imparting skills and knowledge to their pupils, generous rewards to those teachers would make sense. Regrettably, the board cannot make that claim. In fact, the board ignores classroom results.

Candidates for board recognition are judged by their answers to four open-response questions that probe their level of knowledge in their field and six “portfolios” that they prepare about their teaching. The portfolios contain examples of student work, videotapes of classroom activities and teachers’ essays explaining these items. Undergirding this approach is the belief that “peer review,” rather than student achievement, is the surest way to identify great teachers. It is not.

The evidence submitted by teacher candidates in their portfolios often demonstrates little about their impact on student learning. The videotapes are short (about 20 minutes) and unrepresentative of a teacher’s overall work. Nor are the candidate’s explanations of how these samples prove that they are implementing the board’s standards--which in any case are far too vague--of any real use in terms of evaluating their skills.

Note, too, that these teacher essays, despite their weight in the evaluation process, are not judged for grammar, spelling and punctuation.

Also, the board urges applicants to collaborate when preparing their portfolios. While this may give teachers a valued sense of community, a $30,000 certification bonus provides ample incentive to borrow ideas and language from other teachers. The chat room on the board’s Web site shows that teachers lean heavily on one another for assistance.

The four open-response questions, which are meant to test subject knowledge, also are questionable. While the questions for math and science teachers seem rigorous, the language arts examination is not. Teachers are given a list of possible book titles in advance, which means we don’t know whether board-certified English teachers are masters of classic literature in their fields.

Even more important than the test itself is that although the board has conducted numerous studies of its evaluation methods, it has never studied whether certified teachers have a positive impact on student learning. Before California commits to the incentive program, shouldn’t it consider whether board certification meets the needs of the state’s students, especially those in low-performing schools? We simply don’t know whether board-approved teachers can be counted on to boost their students’ academic achievement.

Until the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards can prove that its credential guarantees a boon for students, California is better off reserving its $30,000 bonuses for teachers who have demonstrated their prowess in the one arena that really matters: pupil achievement. Greatness in teaching is not, as the national board would have it, in the eye of the beholder. It’s in the hard evidence of how much and how well one’s pupils learn.