Teachers, Can You Explain This Survey to Me? Because I’m Really Confused.

This is a guest post by my friend and colleague Lane Wright, Director of Policy Analysis at Education Post. He is focused on telling stories that help families understand how their schools are doing, how to make them better, and how policy plays a role. He’s a former journalist and former press secretary to Florida’s governor.

Dear Teachers,




When I first saw this I was kind of shocked.

I’ve seen a lot of teachers, or maybe really just teachers union spokespersons and allies, rail against pretty much any form of accountability, especially anything that links student achievement and teacher evaluations, so to see more than two-thirds of you choose student growth was kinda thrilling. Student growth is important to me too because I think teachers and schools should get credit for helping kids progress academically even if the students don’t make it to grade level by the end of the year.


Now before you tell me that a test is incomplete and doesn’t give you a full picture, let me just say that I agree. I’m guessing the people who wrote the survey agree too, because they asked teachers to pick the top three things they think go into making a good teacher evaluation. Literally nobody thinks one single measure is a good idea.


Maybe you’re thinking that a non-standardized pre-test and post-test is the answer. If that’s the case, I’d want to know how you would be able to compare students across a district, or across an entire state? Isn’t that the point of having a test that’s standardized, to measure everyone against the same standard?

I’ve heard people suggest grading student projects, but we’d run into the same problem there: How do you set a standard on something as subjective as judging a student project? With all the variety of projects, all the variations in what students might set out to do, I don’t see how you make that fair for everyone.

Now if the issue is that you’re just not a fan of the way the test is now and would like a better test, that makes sense to me. Perhaps you have a solution of how to make it better? It would be great if you do because there are a lot of legislators and state education officials who would love to stop getting complaints about their current standardized tests.



School budgets are largely based on how many students attend the school. So if a student moves to another school or district, or to a charter school or anywhere else, how should the school receiving the child pay to educate the new student?

It seems to me you’d be OK with money coming into your district or school when a student moves in, but never OK with money going out when a student goes out. I’m seriously at a loss for a more equitable system for funding schools if the budget is fixed regardless of students moving in or out. Can you enlighten me on this?

If these were easy questions to answer, I’m sure we wouldn’t be having these debates over how to evaluate teachers and schools or how to pay for great schools. But they aren’t easy questions.




What do you think?

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