Evaluating America’s Teachers

W. James Popham - University of California, Los Angeles, USA

Other Titles in:
Leadership & Management | Staff Supervision/Evaluation/Retention

June 2013 | 200 pages | Corwin

W. James Popham, one of the country's foremost experts in education measurement and evaluation, proposes a commonsense approach to teacher evaluation that utilizes the expertise and professional judgment of master teachers. In this groundbreaking book, Popham:

Discusses the strengths and weaknesses of common evaluation systems such as testing, value-added models, and classroom observations

Describes a teacher evaluation system based on collegial judgment, in which experienced educators are trained and certified to evaluate teacher performance

Provides cases and examples of how collegial judgment represents the most fair, accurate, and rigorous approach to teacher evaluation

Preface

Acknowledgments

1. What Underlies the Tightening of Today's Teacher-Evaluation Programs?

What Uncle Sam Wants

A Federal Vision of Teacher Evaluation

What Could Go Wrong?

Chapter Implications for Three Audiences

2. Human Judgment: Needed or Not?

Human Judgment's Role

Evaluation Basics

What about the Evaluation of Teachers?

Judgment-Requisite Choices

Chapter Implications for Three Audiences

3. Defensible Teacher Evaluation

The Wonders of Whereas

Why Use a Weighted-Evidence Judgmental Approach to Teacher Evaluation?

A Weighted-Evidence Judgment Evaluative Survey

Who Are the Judges?

Chapter Implications for Three Audiences

4. Evidence from Standardized Tests

Key Testing Tenets

Why We Test

A Psychometric Blessed Trinity

Standardized Test- Two Tribes, Two Tasks

Traditional Test-Building and Its Off-Task Allure

The Origins of Traditional Educational Testing

Dealing with Effective Instruction

Ensuring Score-Spread from the Get-Go

Instructional Sensitivity as a Requisite

Returning to Validity

Evidential-Weight Guidelines

Chapter Implications for Three Audiences

5. Evidence from Classroom Assessments

Staking Out the Nature of "Classroom Assessment"

A Quest for Evidence of Student Growth

Formative and Summative Applications

Enhancing the Quality of Classroom-Assessment Evidence

Evidence of a Teacher's Instructional Ability

What's Assessed

The Traditional Psychometric Triplets

Following Test Development, Improvement, and Scoring Rules

Have Teachers Played it Straight?

Evidential-Weight Guidelines

Chapter Implications for Three Audiences

6. Evidence from Classroom Observations

What's Distinctive about Classroom Observations?

Observations Versus Ratings

Playing the Odds: Observation of Instructional Means

An Observational Reality: The Mysterious Middle Group

Getting the Most Evaluative Mileage Out of Classroom Observation Evidence

Two Widely-Used Observation Procedures

Danielson's Framework for Teaching

The Marzano Model

Evidential-Weight Guidelines

Chapter Implications for Three Audiences

7. Evidence from Ratings

Rooting Around with Ratings

Lurking Comparisons

Amalgam Judgments

Three Flavors of Bias

Administrators' Ratings

Students' Ratings

Making Ratings Righteous

The Rating Form

Rater Preparation

The Old and the New

Evidential-Weight Guidelines

Chapter Implications for Three Audiences

8. Evidence from Sundry Sources

Alternative Sources of Evidence for Evaluating Teachers

Academic Achievements

Changes in Students' Affect

Lesson Plans

Opportunity-to-Learn Student Surveys

Parental Engagement

Parent Ratings

Professional Development

Ratings by Colleagues

Student Interviews

Teacher-Made Tests

Teachers' Self-Ratings

Augmentation or Obfuscation?

Evidential-Weight Guidelines

Chapter Implications for Three Audiences

9. Mission Possible?

Weighted-Evidence Judgment of Teachers: A Reprise

What To Do- And How?

Chapter Imlpications for Three Audiences

Responding to a Subtitle

Index

"As states ramp up their teacher evaluation efforts, it is becoming more and more important that this is done in a way that benefits, rather than harms, students. In this important and well-argued book, Jim Popham explains why teacher evaluation absolutely has to be based on a "weighted evidence" approach, and shows what policy-makers, administrators, and teachers need to do to make this work. Everyone interested in the quality of education in the United States should read this book."

Dylan Wiliam, Emeritus Professor of Educational Assessment

Institute of Education, University of London