Dean Vogel / commentary
Baronial 28, 2012

Dean Vogel

Dean Vogel

As professionals, educators practice their vocation with seriousness and dedication with the single purpose of helping students. The California Teachers Association believes it is a primary office of our mission to improve the conditions of teaching and learning and to accelerate the cause of costless, universal, and quality public education.

CTA supports awaiting legislation, AB 5 by Assemblymember Felipe Fuentes, that has refocused attention on teacher evaluation. Some take expressed criticism that requiring school districts to bargain over this topic is an "expansion" of bargaining rights. This criticism is incorrect, unwarranted, and contrary to making meaningful changes to an evaluation system aimed at improving the quality of teaching and learning. To have a fair and comprehensive arrangement you must include the professionals who are in California classrooms every day.

Current law, as well as administrative and court decisions interpreting information technology, already supports bargaining over evaluation procedures and matters relating to them, including the criteria for evaluations and providing assistance to educators who need information technology.

Common accountability and responsibility for the effectiveness and operation of our education arrangement require that managers and professional educators participate in the design, operation, and evaluation of that system. A successful example of this has existed in California since 1999. Assembly Bill 1X (Villaraigosa) established the California Peer Assistance and Review (PAR) Program for teachers and obliged local districts and unions to bargain over its implementation. This plan was developed to help teachers whose biannual personnel reviews were not satisfactory. Assistance and support are provided by exemplary teachers and include subject matter knowledge, teaching strategies, or both. Local school districts and teachers unions quickly embraced bargaining over this issue and incorporated PAR into their collective bargaining agreements.

A proficient evaluation system must reflect the complexity of teaching and learning and focus on instruction practices that best support pupil learning. Teachers are certainly important to the success of their students, just pupil learning is not influenced by just one teacher. There are many factors within and outside of the school walls that affect pupil learning.

Students learn at different paces and have different needs and learning modalities. Adequate resource, school climate, condom, and time are significant to a educatee'due south learning. Schools also have unique cultural routines and learning environments that shape instruction and students' learning opportunities in the classroom. What is best for students is providing them with opportunities to acquire that are tied to high standards, rigorous curricula, and effective teaching strategies. All of these factors need to exist considered in developing a useful and fair teacher evaluation system. Local commonage bargaining volition insure that this complexity is recognized and meaningfully incorporated into teacher evaluations.

A path to objectivity

The right to collectively bargain provides the means for both local districts and unions to advocate for and accomplish agreement over atmospheric condition that brand the evaluation process more objective, including how to:

  • Keep the focus on professional practice;
  • Crave that evaluations exist based on valid and reliable data equally well equally observable show of practice in relation to standards, curriculum goals, and student needs;
  • Maintain referral of educators who do non meet standards to receive help to improve their instruction (and opportunities for students to learn);
  • Be smart near defining the terms that are used in the evaluation procedure, such every bit "expected pupil achievement," "progress of pupils," "pupil growth" or "student accomplishment";
  • Crave that evaluators be certified and go through almanac "calibration" to assure objectivity and reliability;
  • Clearly state that all measures (including progress of pupils) may be used merely in terms of how they reasonably chronicle to an employee's operation;
  • Enforce the requirement that the evaluation must include recommendations for the improvement of functioning. For an employee who is not performing satisfactorily, specific recommendations for improvement must be made and the district must assist the employee in improving performance.

The values and goals of a 21st-century education should transcend the transmission and repetition of basic knowledge and skills, and include collaborative conclusion making, innovation, and problem solving. Collective bargaining over how educators fulfill those values and goals is a means for adults to model behaviors to deal with challenges and differences through dialogue, reason, and understanding rather than the hierarchical exercise of authorization. Every bit such, it is an invaluable lesson that nosotros should all be prepared to teach and larn.

A teacher and school counselor for 39 years at the elementary and high school pedagogy levels, Dean Eastward. Vogel is president of the 325,000-member California Teachers Clan. He has also taught extended education courses at California Country University campuses in Sacramento, Sonoma, and Hayward, and at the University of California at Davis. He is a resident of Davis.

To get more than reports like this ane, click here to sign up for EdSource's no-cost daily electronic mail on latest developments in education.