Material de interés circulado por Jeffrey Puryear & Marcela Gajardo, Codirectores de PREAL, sobre la evaluación de maestros en dos estados de los EEUU, donde se muestra el zigzagueante progreso de esta metdología y las dificultades de sun implementación.
Notas de ambos codirectores para introducir el material
Recientemente, Nueva York y Washington, DC han modificado las evaluaciones de los maestros con el fin de responsabilizar más a los docentes por su desempeño. Las modificaciones son ejemplos de esfuerzos a nivel nacional para mejor identificar y recompensar sistemáticamente a los maestros muy eficaces, y despedir a aquellos que no son eficaces.
Respondiendo a las quejas de que la escala actual es demasiado amplia, el programa de evaluación de los docentes en Washington, DC (IMPACT) reclasificará a cientos de maestros que actualmente se encuentran catalogados como “eficaz” a “en desarrollo”, poniendo en riesgo sus empleos si no logran mejorar. Previamente, dos terceras partes de los maestros han sido calificados como “eficaz”. Ahora aproximadamente la mitad de ellos recibirá clasificaciones de “en desarrollo”, según el Washington Post. La nueva categoría afectará a aquellos que se encontraban en el extremo inferior de la categoría “efectiva”, dándoles tres años para mejorar su calificación o perder su puesto de trabajo. Otras modificaciones incluyen menos peso en las pruebas estudiantiles anuales estandarizadas, más énfasis en observaciones en el aula, y aumentos salariales basados en el desempeño limitados a los docentes que trabajan en las escuelas más pobres.
El nuevo y más riguroso sistema en Nueva York, el cual comenzó a implementarse en su totalidad el año pasado, redujo el número de maestros que reciben plazas permanentes por antigüedad por 42 puntos porcentuales del 2007 al 2012, de acuerdo con este artículo del New York Times. El nuevo sistema pretende que las plazas permanentes garantizadas sean algo que los maestros tengan que merecerse, y no un beneficio automático, como solía serlo. Los maestros son evaluados de manera más crítica por parte de sus directores, por la mejora de las calificaciones de sus estudiantes, por las contribuciones que hacen a su comunidad, y por observaciones en el aula.
Ambos artículos mencionados, el del Washington Post y el New York Times, pueden leerse más abajo.

New rating system will put more D.C. teachers at risk
By Emma Brown, The Washington Post, Published: August 2
More D.C. teachers will be at risk of losing their jobs for poor performance in coming years, under a revised rating system, even though standardized test scores will carry less weight in their job evaluations.
The changes — to be announced Friday — amount to the most extensive overhaul of a three-year-old evaluation system that has led to the firing of almost 400 teachers.
D.C. schools were among the first in the country to link teacher pay and job security to student achievement on standardized tests — an experiment that has drawn criticism from many teachers but inspired similar efforts in cities across the nation.
Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson said the revisions are, in part, meant to raise expectations for teachers. They are also a response to complaints that the evaluation system is too rigid and too reliant on test scores, which don’t render a complete picture of a teacher’s work.
“I’m not stuck with what we thought was right in ’08, or too stubborn to ignore what we’ve learned over the last three years,” Henderson said.
Washington Teachers’ Union President Nathan Saunders welcomed some of the changes to IMPACT, as the evaluation system is known, and praised Henderson for making an effort to listen to teachers.
But he balked at a revision that could lead to the reclassification of hundreds of teachers who are now rated effective. Those teachers might fall into a new category, labeled “developing,” which would put their jobs at risk if they failed to improve.
“You cannot keep changing the d— bar. We’ve got to be shooting at something, and the target can’t be moving,” Saunders said. “I don’t like it. I don’t think that our members are going to like it.”
Under the evaluations launched in 2009, the 4,100 teachers in D.C. public schools have been put into one of four categories based on how they score on a 400-point scale.
Those who score up to 199 are rated ineffective and are subject to being fired, as are those rated minimally effective (200 to 249 points) for two years in a row. Highly effective teachers (350 to 400 points), meanwhile, are eligible for bonuses of up to $25,000.
Most teachers — about two-thirds — have been rated effective, with scores of 250 to 349. School officials said that category has been overly broad, with teachers at the low end lagging far behind those at the top.
The new “developing” category will encompass teachers at the lower end, who score from 250 to 299. They will be targeted for more help and professional development, and if they fail to earn an effective rating after three years, they will be out of a job.
Nearly half of the teachers who scored effective in 2010-11 would have been deemed “developing” under the new system, officials said. An analysis of 2011-12 data was not yet available.
Saunders said the change leaves teachers feeling vulnerable to ever-shifting expectations in which they have no say. The evaluation system is not subject to collective bargaining by the union, and the chancellor can unilaterally adjust it.
“I’ve got a problem with so much power being in the hands of one individual and the potential for damage that the masses could receive as a result of that,” he said.
Henderson said she has to expect more of teachers if the school system is going to reach ambitious achievement goals in the next five years. Although students have made gains in recent years, fewer than half are proficient in math and reading.
Under the current evaluations, teachers are observed five times a year. They’re graded on their ability to meet nine standards, including managing time, explaining information clearly and correcting students’ misunderstandings.
For some teachers — those who teach math or reading in grades 4 through 8 — half of the evaluation has depended on how students fare on yearly standardized tests.
In the coming year, there will be less weight placed on such test results. Progress on citywide test scores will count for 35 percent of a teacher’s rating. But other measures of student achievement will factor into the ratings. Measures determined by principals and teachers, such as performance on final exams or early literacy tests, will count for 15 percent of an evaluation.
Henderson said she doesn’t expect that change to make much difference in final ratings but hopes it will help calm the anxieties that teachers have when so much of their future rides on test scores.
Several education reform watchers said reducing the reliance on test scores will bring the District more in line with other states and school systems.
“With all the concerns about the reliability and the validity of the scores, with them bouncing around from year to year, it makes sense for them to be a third rather than a half,” said Michael J. Petrilli of the Thomas J. Fordham Institute, a Washington think tank.
“This is exactly how you would want public policy to work — that they make improvements every few years.”
There are a number of other tinkers. For example, only four of five classroom observations will count in an evaluation. The fifth will be informal and strictly for feedback. Also, teachers who are consistently rated effective or highly effective will have only three formal observations.
If one observation yields a much lower score than the others, it won’t count — a recognition that it’s possible for any teacher to have a bad day.
Saunders said teachers will appreciate those changes.
Finally, the school system has changed the way it doles out performance-based bonus pay and salary increases.
The maximum annual bonus for a highly effective teacher will remain $25,000. But now salary increases, previously available to the highest-performing teachers in all schools, will be limited to those working in high-poverty schools — about three-quarters of the total teaching force.
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Many New York City Teachers Denied Tenure in Policy Shift
By AL BAKER
Published: The New York Times, August 17, 2012
Nearly half of New York City teachers reaching the end of their probations were denied tenure this year, the Education Department said on Friday, marking the culmination of years of efforts toward Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s goal to end “tenure as we know it.”
Only 55 percent of eligible teachers, having worked for at least three years, earned tenure in 2012, compared with 97 percent in 2007.
An additional 42 percent this year were kept on probation for another year, and 3 percent were denied tenure and fired. Of those whose probations were extended last year, fewer than half won tenure this year, a third were given yet another year to prove themselves, and 16 percent were denied tenure or resigned.
The totals reflect a reversal in the way tenure is granted not only in New York City but around the country. While tenure was once considered nearly automatic, it has now become something teachers have to earn.
A combination of factors — the education reform movement, slow economies that have pinched spending for new teachers, and federal grant competitions like Race to the Topthat encourage states to change their policies — have led lawmakers to tighten the requirements not only for earning tenure, but for keeping it.
Idaho last year did away with tenure entirely by passing a law giving newly hired teachers no expectation of a contract renewal from one year to the next. In Florida, all newly hired teachers now must earn an annual contract, with renewals based upon their performance.
Last month in New Jersey, Gov. Chris Christie signed legislation overhauling the nation’s oldest tenure law and making it easier for teachers to be fired for poor performance.
“There has been a sea change in what’s been happening with the teacher tenure laws,” said Kathy Christie, a senior official with the Education Commission of the States, a policy organization funded by state fees and grants. “In 2011 there were 18 state legislatures that addressed some component of teacher tenure and many of them in a significant way, and that is enormous.”
In New York City and many other districts, tenure decisions are increasingly based on how the teachers’ students score on standardized tests, as well as mandatory classroom observations by principals or other administrators.
“It is an important movement because what we know is that when schools improve, a lot of the improvement relates back to having really strong teachers organized around a common vision,” said Shael Polakow-Suransky, the city Education Department’s chief academic officer. “I think New York City has some of the best teachers in the country. It is a good place. People want to be here. So we are very fortunate. But we also want to keep pushing them, just like we want to keep pushing our kids.”
Tenure does not afford any advantages in pay or job assignments, or guarantee permanent employment. Its most important benefit is to grant teachers certain protections against dismissal without justification, including the right to a hearing before an arbitrator. Teachers and their unions embrace tenure as an important defense against indiscriminate or politically tinged hiring and firing.
Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers, the city teacher’s union, said that he had always supported a “rigorous but fair” process of granting tenure. But, he said, large numbers of teachers were quitting the profession early in their careers, a sign that the city had not yet figured out how to help them succeed.
According to the union, of the 5,231 teachers hired in the 2008-9 school year, nearly 30 percent had quit by the end of their third years. There are roughly 75,000 teachers in New York City schools, the nation’s largest public school system.
“If New York City hopes to have a great school system, it will need to come up with better methods of helping teachers develop, not only at the beginning but throughout their careers,” Mr. Mulgrew said.
Mr. Polakow-Suransky said it was not uncommon in the United States for teachers to leave the profession in the first few years, when things are the toughest. Every new teacher in New York receives mentoring in the first year, as a “support system,” he said. “But if someone is not making it, and not happy, or the principal says, ‘You are not cut out for this,’ it is likely that they move on to something else, and that is not a bad thing,” he said.
Joel I. Klein, the former schools chancellor, began nudging principals several years ago to judge teachers more critically when deciding on tenure, and the percentage of denials slowly rose. But in 2010, whenthe mayor set about “ending tenure as we know it so that tenure is awarded for performance, not taken for granted,” 89 percent of teachers were still receiving it after their three-year probations ended.
The city’s Education Department now has a team that trains principals in gathering the kind of evidence needed to assess a teacher’s skills. It also developed a rubric in which teachers were rated on a four-point scale in each of three categories: the teacher’s practice, based in part on classroom observations; students’ learning, which is judged largely on test score improvement; and the contributions the teacher makes to the school community.
In each of those, teachers receive a rating of highly effective, effective, developing or ineffective, officials said. There is no hard rule on how many “effectives” or “highly effectives” are needed to gain tenure, which 2,186 teachers earned this year.
The new system began to take full effect last year, when only 58 percent of teachers gained tenure after three years, and an additional 39 percent had their probations extended. There is no limit to the number of years the city can extend a teacher’s probation, though officials of the Education Department and the union said they had not heard of any teacher receiving more than three extensions.
One special education teacher in Queens who was given a second one-year extension this year said that school officials cited improvements she needed to make but were short on details of what criticisms her principal had. “No specifics were ever given,” said the teacher, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.
Also, she said, the new tenure evaluations were dividing teachers and lowering morale, with some newer teachers feeling punished for the smattering of more experienced ones they saw as using tenure as a “safety net,” but putting forth less effort in the profession.“The bigger picture is that they are trying to end tenure,” the teacher said.
The nationwide shift on tenure has been remarkable for its speed and breadth, said Sandi Jacobs, vice president of the National Council on Teacher Quality. It was awarded “virtually automatically” in most states as recently as 2009, she said.
“Tenure was looked at as much more of a sacred cow,” Ms. Jacobs said. “Once states started to move on it, then the dominoes started to fall in other states.”