By Michael Hill
Correspondent
The New Jersey Education Department operates on this motto: all students can show growth.
“Growth matters. Growth really matters,” said Assistant Education Commissioner Pete Shulman.
Teachers agree. But the disagreement starts in how to measure that growth, not proficiency. And, in doing so, how to ultimately evaluate teacher performance.
By federal law, states must show how they measure student growth. New Jersey does it by using at a student’s standardized test scores — putting that student in a group with similar scores and then comparing how well that student does to the group’s overall performance. It’s called student growth percentile.
The state says SGP changes the classroom dynamic.
“Every child becomes the focus because even the best performing kids in the class need to be challenged to continue to grow,” said Bari Erickson.
And here’s an example of how the state will use the median student growth percentile to judge teachers.
“When I’m speaking to superintendents and they’re trying to make sense of this the question that I pose to them is ‘you have your data, are your eighth grade language arts teachers more effective than your seventh?'” Erickson said.
“What MSGP really lets us know is teachers that are really struggling — how can we provide them with additional support where their kids aren’t growing. And the teachers that are really doing really well how do we expand their reach,” Shulman said.
The New Jersey Education Association says judging teachers based on SGP is flawed.
“If I was going to run a mile and I timed myself I would use the time that I could do a mile in six minutes, which would be a push now. Then the next time I would know that I am growing in endurance and maturity by measuring myself against that same clock if I run five minutes and 50 seconds or so on. I wouldn’t put it against all the other people — I could run against different people each time and have a different result. So these are the things that what are you really measuring,” said NJEA President Wendell Steinhauer.
The American Statistical Association says, “Most VAM (value added measurement) studies find that teachers account for about 1 percent to 14 percent of the variability in test scores, and that the majority of opportunities for quality improvement are found in the system-level conditions.”
And the dean of education at The College of New Jersey agrees, saying as much as certain individuals would love to have a comprehensive single measure of teacher effectiveness, it has yet to be created.
“It’s not going to punish anybody. It’s about helping everybody and that’s our role at the department,” said Education Commissioner David Hespe.
While a commission decides what kind of way to give to these SGPs in terms of teacher performance and evaluation it raises the prospect of teachers getting a gold star for this — or a pink slip.
“Do I think that there could be abuse? There won’t be an abuse of gold stars, I think it will be the other way,” Steinhauer said.
As states strive to measure student growth, their scores and the debate over what they mean will become the norm.