State takes a step toward providing the evaluations teachers want and need

Minnesotans would probably be surprised to learn many of our public school teachers go years without an evaluation. That's a disservice to students and the teachers themselves, and it's about to change.

One important and positive element of the newly passed education law is that Minnesota will now require annual evaluations of all public school teachers.

By their very nature, teachers -- whose life's work is built around daily judgments of their students' progress -- want fair and honest feedback about their own abilities. Every person in every profession, no matter how skilled, needs feedback to improve.

That's why the organization I serve, Education Minnesota, supports annual evaluations of teachers. Throughout the regular legislative session, we favored a bill authored by Rep. Kathy Brynaert, DFL-Mankato. That bill is the foundation of Minnesota's new teacher evaluation law.

If this new measure is implemented thoughtfully, it will support the many great teachers already in Minnesota classrooms. It will do so by stressing what really matters in a well-rounded education, and give teachers the training and tools to help them improve as educators. Those few teachers who don't make the grade will be given the opportunity to get better, and those who can't or don't will be removed from the classroom.

The law will require reviews by trained evaluators, including school administrators and experienced teachers already in the districts. Those reviews will take a wide variety of factors into account, including multiple measurements of student learning.

The new law is not perfect. It mandates that 35 percent of a teacher's evaluation be tied to student growth as measured by tests. That is an arbitrary figure and we disagree with using it; research into the issue strongly warns that student test scores are not a reliable indicator of teacher effectiveness.

But rather than issue a rigid mandate, the new Minnesota law provides that local communities, their educators and school administrators will get together to determine what tests to use. This is a big step in the right direction, and it's a welcome step away from proposals that would have directly linked a much larger part of teacher evaluations primarily to scores on standardized tests.

Albert Einstein said it well when he observed that "not everything that can be counted, counts. And not everything that counts can be counted."

When considered in isolation, scores on a standardized test are some of the most irrelevant data teachers use to judge a student's progress. Test scores are among many mileposts on the journey to a good education, not ends unto themselves. All parents know test scores are not a complete measure of their child's abilities. And they certainly should not be the primary way to evaluate teachers or their students.

It's critical to keep this issue in perspective. Parents and educators agree that the vast majority of Minnesota teachers do a tremendous job. Our best-in-the-nation ACT scores and third-in-the-nation graduation rates are among the many elements that prove it.

Every student deserves a great teacher. And every teacher deserves the feedback necessary to be great. For the most part, the teacher evaluation portion of the new education law concentrates our efforts on making a good thing better, and spreading the excellence found in our public schools to every student in the state.

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Tom Dooher is president of Education Minnesota, the teachers' union.

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