how do your test scores grow?

Wow. The Sunday LA Times article on teacher effectiveness using a value-added analysis (consisting of LAUSD 3rd-5th grade teachers' math and language arts standardized test scores over the last seven years) has caused a gigantic ruckus among education policy folks. My ed policy twitter feed has been in flames over this since Sunday morning. Anything about teacher evaluation is guaranteed to provoke these reactions.

But the most interesting part of the article had nothing to do with test scores, it had to do with the reporters' following observations: Teachers who hold their students' attention and push their students to think critically claim higher results than those who don't.

According to the article, teacher Karen Caruso is loved by her principal, students, and parents. They consider her an outstanding teacher who goes above and beyond. However:

During recent classes observed by a reporter, Caruso set clear expectations for her students but seemed reluctant to challenge them. In reviewing new vocabulary, for instance, Caruso asked her third-graders to find the sentence where the word "route" appeared in a story.

"Copy it just like it's written," she instructed the class, most of whom started the year advanced for their grade.

"Some teachers have kids use new words in their own sentences," Caruso explained. "I think that's too difficult."

She dismissed the weekly vocabulary quizzes that other teachers give as "old school."

Of course everyone loved her: She's an easy teacher!! Not surprisingly, her value-added scores were quite low (she ranked in the bottom 10% in boosting student scores). I cannot imagine a more fruitless exercise than copying a sentence out of a text just because it includes a new vocabulary word. When teaching, I had only four hours of instruction time per day. Certainly not enough time to waste on copying. And of course third graders can use a new word in a sentence. If you really think it's too difficult, you follow the basic pattern of teaching: I do, we do, you do. Scaffolding really does work. As do bonus points on essays for using new vocabulary words when writing, team points for noticing said words in other texts and pointing them out to the teacher, or behavior tickets for getting caught using them in everyday conversation. None of those examples are "old school" methods, yet each one tests understanding without using a quiz.

So why don't we start the teacher evaluation conversation with two simple questions: Can you hold students' attention? Can you push them to think critically? As a classroom teacher, those are fair questions to ask. But I can tell you neither of them was on my yearly evaluation (however being on-time and working well with colleagues was!)