The Need to Redesign Accountability Systems for Florida's Schools and Teachers

February 2016  W. L. Doromal

Orange County Public Schools Superintendent Barbara Jenkins wrote an editorial that was published today in The Orlando Sentinel, Florida must redesign school accountability.

She announced that grades for our state's public schools will be released within days and warned, "They hold little value."

While the superintendent appears to have a clear understanding of the flaws and unfairness in the methods our state uses to determine the grades of districts' schools, it seems that she has a total disconnect in comprehending the flaws and unfairness in the methods by which OCPS grades its own teachers. 

In referring to school grades, Jenkins stated, "These grades hold little value for school districts and should be viewed as such by the public."

One might say the same thing about the evaluation grades of OCPS teachers. They have little value since they are not credible, fair or objective. 

Was it not OCPS District-level administrators who directed school-based evaluating administrators to intentionally lower teachers' evaluation scores?  In 2013 Michael Toth, CEO of Marzano's Learning Sciences International, prepared a presentation for OCPS, Achieving District-wide Inter-Rater Reliability. A version of Toth's presentation was shown to teachers at preplanning meetings across the District. It defended the concept of lowering teachers' evaluation scores and laid out the plan that would ensure OCPS teachers would receive lower evaluation scores. 

A slide from the Toth presentation encouraged observers to lower scores. It stated, "Some low scores will not harm teachers. No low scores will harm teachers." 

Of course low scores harm teachers. Teachers' scores determine their pay! When scores are artificially lowered, self-esteem plummets too. Because of this scheme teachers have been demoralized, stressed and have left the District, citing the evaluation system as the cause of their exit.

The LSI presentation contained even more faulty logic. Toth used the standard bell curve or normal distribution model to defend the notion that teachers' scores need to be lowered. However, recent research has shown that human performance cannot be accurately rated using this model. An article from Forbes Magazine, The Myth of the Bell Curve, describes that research dismisses the accuracy of the bell curve and details how the bell curve model hurts performance.  Put Away the Bell Curve: Most of us aren't average, a broadcast by NPR also argued that research has shown that "lots of people are actually outliers." 

Another slide from Toth's presentation questions in huge bolded, capital letters, "CAN MOST OF YOUR TEACHERS BE ABOVE AVERAGE?"

Of course they can! The majority of the District's teachers have taught for many years, participated in numerous professional development trainings and perfected their skills continually from year to year.  Many of the District's teachers, including some annual contract teachers, have more experience in the classroom than the administrators who observe and evaluate them. The vast majority of OCPS teachers have far more teaching experience than educational consultant Dr. Robert Marzano, who was in the classroom many years ago teaching for a short time.

LSI implies that before teachers were immersed in the so-called research-based Marzano system they were performing at a low level. The suggestion is that until teachers can demonstrate that they have successfully implemented all of the 60 Marzano elements they are 'developing' teachers. 

In reality, the Marzano elements were borrowed from decades old strategies that teachers have been applying successfully in their classroom for years. To any experienced educator it is obvious that Marzano took recognized best practices and strategies, relabeled them 'elements' and packaged them all into four neat domains to sell to school districts around the country. 

LSI and all of the Marzano companies are first and foremost businesses that are focused on increasing their profits by selling their evaluation system, workshops, consulting services and related products to school districts and teachers. Doesn't it benefit the company to have teachers scored at lower levels? In school districts where teachers have lower evaluation scores, these businesses can better justify the need to purchase their services and products that they claim advance teachers' growth and expertise.  

Since its implementation in 2011, the Marzano system has been continually tweaked and revised in order to promote and sell even more new training materials, updated soft-ware, books and related products.How many millions of tax-funded dollars has OCPS spent on this evaluation system?

In her editorial Superintendent Jenkins stated,  "A high-performing teacher may be tempted to leave a school with large numbers of students scoring low on the state assessment for the sake of her professional reputation and future."

High performing teachers most likely would not consider a school's grade as a primary factor in decisions related to leaving a school. However, high performing teachers may be tempted to leave a school because of the unfair teacher evaluation system, low salary, poor benefits, and burdensome workload that spills over into their personal lives and robs them of family and leisure time. High performing teachers may be tempted to leave because high stakes standardized testing is adversely affecting their students, teaching and learning.  

As far as teachers' professional reputations, it was not the state, but OCPS District-level administrators that damaged their teachers' reputations by calling for a calculated, undeserved lowering of their evaluation scores. These scores were so out of step with other districts that OCPS teachers have been held up for humiliation. As a result of the low scores, 97.6% of OCPS teachers are also disqualified from any state bonus plan, such as the Best and Brightest Scholarship Program.

It is not just accountability for Florida's schools that must be redesigned, but also the broken evaluation system, which serves as the accountability tool for OCPS teachers.