Connecting Teacher Quality and Student Learning
Monday, May 12th, 2008 By Matthew CarrToday’s Wall Street Journal carries an insightful op-ed by John Merrow, the president of Learning Matters, regarding the recent decision by New York lawmakers to ban the use of student performance data in granting tenure to teachers.
State and city teacher unions lobbied the state legislature, and last month Albany gave in to the pressure. Today, the law reads, “The teacher shall not be granted or denied tenure based on student performance data.”
Celebrating the victory, United Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten said, “There is no independent or conclusive research that shows you can accurately measure the impact of an individual teacher on a student’s academic achievement.”
Independent analysts disagree. Eric Hanushek, who specializes in the economics of education at Stanford University, told me recently that “It is very clear from the research into variations in teacher quality that such information would be useful.” Calling this “very bad public policy,” Prof. Hanushek added dryly, “I guess only friendships and politics count - just what the unions have always railed against.”
Test data is not going to go away. So it is up to union leadership to decide if they’ll ignore it, or if they will help school administrators figure out how to use it in the years ahead - and help the public understand its limitations.
Forward-looking union officials would push for creative uses of student performance data - such as using it to help teachers in areas where the data reveals they are not reaching their students. This would put union officials in a position of pushing to improve the quality of our public schools, instead of simply wielding their political power to protect every union member’s job.
Denying any connection between teaching and learning is a dangerous course for teacher unions to chart. It contradicts what experience teaches us. And it flies in the face of common sense. If unions are telling us that there’s no connection between teaching and learning, why should we then support teachers, or public education?
The advent of standardized testing for all students has generated mountains of data that did not exist twenty or so years ago (Ohio was actually ahead of the curve and was testing students well before NCLB).
Print This
