Teachers' Opinions Of Teacher Evaluation Systems
The primary test of the new teacher evaluation systems implemented throughout the nation over the past 5-10 years is whether they improve teacher and ultimately student performance. Although the kinds of policy evaluations that will address these critical questions are just beginning to surface (e.g., Dee and Wyckoff 2015), among the most important early indicators of how well the new systems are working is their credibility among educators. Put simply, if teachers and administrators don’t believe in the systems, they are unlikely to respond productively to them.
A new report from the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) provides a useful little snapshot of teachers’ opinions of their evaluation systems using a nationally representative survey. It is important to bear in mind that the data are from the 2011-12 Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS) and the 2012-13 Teacher Follow Up Survey, a time in which most of the new evaluations in force today were either still on the drawing board, or in their first year or two of implementation. But the results reported by IES might still serve as a useful baseline going forward.
The primary outcome in this particular analysis is a survey item querying whether teachers were “satisfied” with their evaluation process. And almost four in five respondents either strongly or somewhat agreed that they were satisfied with their evaluation. Of course, satisfaction with an evaluation system does not necessarily signal anything about its potential to improve or capture teacher performance, but it certainly tells us something about teachers’ overall views of how they are evaluated.