In Georgia we have TKES and LKES to rate teacher performance. The systems' effectiveness are currently a point of discussion in the state legislature. These two systems are supposed to be improvements to previous systems and in some ways they are. Instead of being based on one time observations, the new system consists of multiple walk throughs and at least two formative evaluations. Teachers and leaders can also submit items to document their performance on the ten standards that are rated. The new system is time consuming on administrators, but it forces administrators into classrooms which I think is a good thing. There is also the mandate that if you rate a teacher a 2 or below in a standard then you have to provide a comment to the teacher. This is also a good thing because it makes administrators give needed feedback to struggling teachers. I make sure I tell my teachers how seriously I take these ratings, as one day it maybe tied to their pay. I have sat looking at an observation rating and toggled between a two and three for thirty minutes, but not every administrator is as conscientious or reflective in the process. Hence, the biggest flaw of the entire system-REFLECTION!
The system is flawed in that it thinks that all teachers and administrators are reflective educators. Totally ignoring the fact that the current testing demands and paperwork demands on educators do not provide time for teachers to have a restroom break, never mind the time to reflect on educating the masses. In a perfect world, we hope that teachers and administrators work together to educate the masses, hold hands and sing "We Are the World", but we work in the real world of public education and that does not happen. The system is also flawed in that it takes parents, students and in the case of administrators, non certified employees opinions on administrator performance and assumes that these raters will be reflective in their ratings.
While I applaud the state of Georgia for giving students a voice in the quality of the teachers instructing them, many have argued that students are not the most reflective people either!
If you have ever worked in a group situation, you know that not everyone responds well to constructive criticism. The same is true in regards to the TKES and LKES survey ratings. If a teacher is demanding, students tend to rate them not as well as teachers who are less demanding. Hey, its easier to give good marks to Suzy Sunshine than Task Master Tina. In my personal experience as a teacher and as a student, the Suzy Sunshine teacher does not get the performance that Task Master Tina can get. Intellectual development can be hard and students are like grown ups in that its hard to admit that your not awesome. Sit a kid down to rate a demanding teacher using a bunch of questions... well I don't know if that's helping a teacher be reflective of teaching practices, or just giving them a way to know if kids like them.
The same is true for the administrators' rating scales. There are at least 30 questions and my staff had to rank three of us. After survey three I'm not sure how reflective or engaged an educator is when they have a million other things to do! I know when I was ranking administrators as a teacher I would be very serious, but I watched several of my colleagues just click through things. My own ratings from my teachers are decent, but there was one teacher that ranked me poorly. It's not hard to figure out which teacher it was. We are encouraged to not try to figure out people who would rate us badly, but really? That struggling or unprofessional teacher that you wished would leave on their own, or that teacher that is just caustic to everything around them, can wreak havoc on an administrator's scale.
