Rick Hess is one of education policy’s most original thinkers. But, every once in a while, perhaps after too long a lunch in AEI’s dining room, he veers chaotically off-course, venturing into sky-is-falling conspiracy land. This seems to be one of those weeks.
First there was Wednesday’s DC’s Mayor Gray Throws Schools Chief Under Bus (Andy Rotherham, aka Eduwonk, responds), then a two-part focus on the common core assessments. In each, Rick seeks to “raise warning flags” around important issues. But in doing so, he takes the easy way out, picking at flaws without exploring the dilemmas inherent in the policy choices. And, by only discussing the dangers of proposed actions, without acknowledging these dilemmas, he reinforces a simplistic and cynical view towards any change (just read his comments).
Today, I’ll touch on the dilemma behind DC’s IMPACT teacher evaluation process. Next week, I’ll hit on the dilemmas for the common core assessments. First, here’s Hess on DC IMPACT:
Well, Gray’s hand-picked education transition team yesterday made it clear that reformers can pretty much pack it in. Gray’s transition team, headed by Michael Lomax of the United Negro College Fund and Katherine Bradley of CityBridge, unfurled the threadbare tapestry of “can’t-we-all-just-get-along?” reform. They called for remaking DC’s nationally regarded evaluation instrument into one more professional development tool. Lomax and Bradley deemed it problematic that DC’s pioneering IMPACT system for teacher evaluation “is seen by many teachers as a sorting and terminating tool.” (That suggests DC teachers to be perceptive, because all serious evaluation systems are conceived in part as tools for sorting and terminating personnel. It’s kind of management 1A, and all.)
Yes, of course, evaluation always has a critical role in sorting and terminating. And, there’s no doubt that allowing districts to identify and remove ineffective teachers is a critical step for reform. But, in high-performing workplaces, where there are strong recruitment and selection practices and cultures of excellence, the termination component loses its power. Employees crave feedback and want to understand how they can improve. The culture permits honest conversations around performance. And given the general culture of high-performance, managers focus the evaluation process as much, if not more, on developmental feedback. (A little further in management 1A you’ll find “situational leadership.”)
So, here’s the dilemma: Most observers would not yet characterize DC schools as high-performing workplaces. So, identifying/terminating poor performers is the essential piece of the evaluation process. But, at the same time, since we aspire to recruit/retain high-performing teachers and want DC schools to be high performing workplaces, we need to create systems that can accommodate this shift.
It’s part of the larger dilemma that was identified in the recent McKinsey worldwide study of school systems that had made significant, sustained improvements. The study found that the systems that moved from poor to fair did very different things than those that moved from good to great. The implication: systems need to adopt actions that match their specific stage of development, but at the same time realize that those changes may have diminishing returns for improvement over time.
Understanding this dilemma begins to put the challenge in context. DC needs effective evaluation systems to take the first step and move what is an overall poor performing system to the fair level. And, you can’t create a high-performing workplace if you ignore poor performance. Yet, at the same time, it’s understandable that teachers want signals that DCPS aspires beyond just the first rung of improvement. Recognizing this dilemma, along with the lack of trust and diversity of schools and situations across DCPS, helps to illuminate the challenge.
