NYTimes | AS the founder of a charter school network in Harlem, I’ve seen
firsthand the nuances inherent in teacher evaluation. A few years ago,
for instance, we decided not to renew the contract of one of our
teachers despite the fact that his students performed exceptionally well
on the state exam.
We kept hearing directly from students and parents that he was mean and
derided the children who needed the most help. The teacher also
regularly complained about problems during faculty meetings without
offering solutions. Three of our strongest teachers confided to the
principal that they were reluctantly considering leaving because his
negativity was making everyone miserable.
There has been much discussion of the question of how to evaluate
teachers; it was one of the biggest sticking points in the recent
teachers’ strike in Chicago. For more than a decade I’ve been a strong
proponent of teacher accountability. I’ve advocated for ending tenure
and other rules that get in the way of holding educators responsible for
the achievement of their students. Indeed, the teachers in my schools —
Harlem Village Academies
— all work with employment-at-will contracts because we believe
accountability is an underlying prerequisite to running an effective
school. The problem is that, unlike charters, most schools are
prohibited by law from holding teachers accountable at all.
But the solution being considered by many states — having the government
evaluate individual teachers — is a terrible idea that undermines
principals and is demeaning to teachers. If our schools had been
required to use a state-run teacher evaluation system, the teacher we
let go would have been rated at the top of the scale.
Education and political leaders across the country are currently trying
to decide how to evaluate teachers. Some states are pushing for
legislation to sort teachers into categories using unreliable
mathematical calculations based on student test scores. Others have
hired external evaluators who pop into classrooms with checklists to
monitor and rate teachers. In all these scenarios, principals have only
partial authority, with their judgments factored into a formula.
This type of system shows a profound lack of understanding of
leadership. Principals need to create a culture of trust, teamwork and
candid feedback that is essential to running an excellent school.
Leadership is about hiring great people and empowering them, and
requires a delicate balance of evaluation and encouragement. At Harlem
Village Academies we give teachers an enormous amount of freedom and
respect. As one of our seventh-grade reading teachers told me: “It’s
exhilarating to be trusted. It makes me feel like I can be the kind of
teacher I had always dreamed about becoming: funny, interesting,
effective and energetic.”
Some of the new government proposals for evaluating teachers, with their
checklists, rankings and ratings, have been described as businesslike,
but that is just not true. Successful companies do not publicly rate
thousands of employees from a central office database; they don’t use
systems to take the place of human judgment. They trust their managers
to nurture and build great teams, then hold the managers accountable for
results.
