Well, it certainly has been a while since I last wrote here and it is good to be back at it. I'd like to thank those of you who gave me input on my last entry, it has really helped with my thought process.
I did run into some confusion and think that this would be a good opportunity to explain exactly what I am trying to do.
First, this is an intellectual endeavor. I am not trying to create a tool to be used to identify bad teachers. Rather, I'm hoping to explore and understand the difficulties inherent in trying to differentiate between good and bad teachers with the available tools to do so.
Second, I am attempting to frame this work as a "real world" exercise. In other words, I am only using tools and statistics that are readily available and relatively standardized across the nation. This means that there are some areas that may be very helpful in evaluating teachers (class participation rates, student satisfaction surveys, etc.) that are either unmeasurable or non-standardized to the point that they are not a useful metric. I fully intend to take some time later in the exercise to review what seems to be missing and discuss what could be done to improve upon current metrics.
Third, while my goal is to create a formula, such as the one found below, the exact values can only be determined through lengthy statistical input from a wide variety of sources. As the formula grows and adjusts, I welcome anyone interested to send me the relevant data for teachers in their experience to begin compiling a database that could be used to test the efficacy of the formula. Any current or former teachers who'd like to self-evaluate, please do, your reactions would be priceless.
Moving on, the response to my initial list of statistics was strong. TT (Time as Teacher) seems to be the most contentious as it is the most related to style and so I am omitting it from calculations for now. STR, on the other hand, was universally considered a top priority, but there are some issues with standardization. I have, at this point, decided to simply recommend that STR reflect the results of the most applicable standardized test for that teacher's grade level and subject. To adjust for wildly different scoring scales, STR will itself be a composite reflecting the variation above or below the test average. Definitions of the metrics can be found in the next post.
Finally, I was repeatedly pushed to consider that a teacher cannot be measured independent of their environment. In other words, a good teacher may be hindered by a tough school/community and vice versa. Therefore, I have developed a number of factors that attempt to reflect the environment in which a teacher works. I consider these factors to influence the composite score of each of the previous for areas (Experience, Classroom Engagement, Academic Success, and Continuing Education). The Environmental factors are:
Budget Factor (BF) - Comparative level of school budget to state average.
Professional Development BF (PDBF) - Comparative level of professional development budget within the school to the state average.
Socioeconomic Factor (SEF) - Comparative level of average family income in the district the state average.
Community Education Factor (CEF) - Comparative level of average highest degree earned in the district the state average.
Staff Ratio (SR) - Ratio of teaching to non-teaching staff members in the school.
Student - Faculty Ration (SFR) - Ratio of students to teaching staff members in the school.
Each factor will be based on a calculation that places the state average at 1.0. This will eventually result in a compound formula where the environmental factors will be found as factors to the whole equation, leaving the numerator as a useful tool to consider teacher scores independent of the environment. An example of how the formula may end up looking is this:
The next post will explore how each of these, and the previous list of factors could be mathematically defined.
I did run into some confusion and think that this would be a good opportunity to explain exactly what I am trying to do.
First, this is an intellectual endeavor. I am not trying to create a tool to be used to identify bad teachers. Rather, I'm hoping to explore and understand the difficulties inherent in trying to differentiate between good and bad teachers with the available tools to do so.
Second, I am attempting to frame this work as a "real world" exercise. In other words, I am only using tools and statistics that are readily available and relatively standardized across the nation. This means that there are some areas that may be very helpful in evaluating teachers (class participation rates, student satisfaction surveys, etc.) that are either unmeasurable or non-standardized to the point that they are not a useful metric. I fully intend to take some time later in the exercise to review what seems to be missing and discuss what could be done to improve upon current metrics.
Third, while my goal is to create a formula, such as the one found below, the exact values can only be determined through lengthy statistical input from a wide variety of sources. As the formula grows and adjusts, I welcome anyone interested to send me the relevant data for teachers in their experience to begin compiling a database that could be used to test the efficacy of the formula. Any current or former teachers who'd like to self-evaluate, please do, your reactions would be priceless.
Moving on, the response to my initial list of statistics was strong. TT (Time as Teacher) seems to be the most contentious as it is the most related to style and so I am omitting it from calculations for now. STR, on the other hand, was universally considered a top priority, but there are some issues with standardization. I have, at this point, decided to simply recommend that STR reflect the results of the most applicable standardized test for that teacher's grade level and subject. To adjust for wildly different scoring scales, STR will itself be a composite reflecting the variation above or below the test average. Definitions of the metrics can be found in the next post.
Finally, I was repeatedly pushed to consider that a teacher cannot be measured independent of their environment. In other words, a good teacher may be hindered by a tough school/community and vice versa. Therefore, I have developed a number of factors that attempt to reflect the environment in which a teacher works. I consider these factors to influence the composite score of each of the previous for areas (Experience, Classroom Engagement, Academic Success, and Continuing Education). The Environmental factors are:
Budget Factor (BF) - Comparative level of school budget to state average.
Professional Development BF (PDBF) - Comparative level of professional development budget within the school to the state average.
Socioeconomic Factor (SEF) - Comparative level of average family income in the district the state average.
Community Education Factor (CEF) - Comparative level of average highest degree earned in the district the state average.
Staff Ratio (SR) - Ratio of teaching to non-teaching staff members in the school.
Student - Faculty Ration (SFR) - Ratio of students to teaching staff members in the school.
Each factor will be based on a calculation that places the state average at 1.0. This will eventually result in a compound formula where the environmental factors will be found as factors to the whole equation, leaving the numerator as a useful tool to consider teacher scores independent of the environment. An example of how the formula may end up looking is this:
The next post will explore how each of these, and the previous list of factors could be mathematically defined.
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