Demystifying Performance Documentation

School Administrator, March, 1997 by Richard A. Schwartz

How to Get Rid of the Excuses and Tell It Like It Is

"There is nothing I can do about it--she's got tenure."

Have you ever spoken these words? Or, alternatively, "My hands are tied by the union contract."

If you have ever uttered such nonsense or agreed with someone else who has, then you are part of the problem in public education today. By repeating or actually believing in these traditional and lame excuses, you are allowing a poorly performing teacher to provide a less-than-adequate education in some cases to an entire generation of students from which more will be expected than ever before.

Too often we elevate form over substance in public education today. In my experience as a school attorney working with thousands of school administrators over the years, I have found that, for the most part, they can be expert at filling out the required forms and processing the paperwork necessary to a teacher evaluation process. But does that solve the problems relating to a subpar teacher? Far more often than not, the answer is no.

Most teacher evaluation processes have not been designed to deal with the minority of teachers who have serious performance problems. Rather, they are designed to foster and promote continued growth among the vast majority of teachers already performing at an acceptable level. With the restrictions and requirements relating to classroom observations, improvement plans, and year-end evaluations, we tend to lose sight of the place where the evaluation process is most likely to have a significant impact on students. We need to focus more of our efforts on our poorest teachers.

Basic Understanding

The whole process of performance documentation has become more complicated and clouded with myths than it needs to be. So let's start by demystifying the entire process and getting back to basics with some fundamental beliefs.

* No. 1: At some level, a relationship must exist between student performance and the instructional competence of classroom teachers. If you agree, then move on to the next basic belief.

* No. 2: We should be able to improve student achievement by improving or removing teachers whose instructional skills are less than adequate. If that is the case, then the third basic belief logically follows.

* No. 3: The performance evaluation or appraisal system should be used as a tool to help improve instruction. If it is not, then we are negatively impacting student achievement.

Can we allow an expected or acceptable level of poor teachers in our classrooms? Fifteen percent? Ten percent? Five percent? Your answer may vary, as long as one of them is not teaching your own child. But if the teacher instructing your child is doing poorly, the existence of even one such inadequate teacher is clearly unacceptable. If it would be unacceptable for your own child, then whose child would you place with that teacher?

Ask yourself what you think is the percentage of poorly performing teachers in your own school district. Even if that percentage is as low as live percent, what impact do these poorly performing teachers have on your school system?

A Credibility Gap

If you have a school system with 300 teachers, a mere five percent of whom are performing at a less than adequate level, then you have 15 teachers delivering inadequate instruction. Assuming those 15 teachers represent a mix of elementary, middle, and high school teachers, each may teach anywhere from 25 to 125 students per day. Assuming a relatively conservative estimate of 50 students per day being taught by these 15 teachers, we can safely predict that approximately 750 of the students being taught daily in this school system are receiving inadequate instruction from a poorly performing teacher. The fact that we allow this problem to persist is an indictment of school administrators and, in some cases, represents an abandonment of professional, moral, and ethical responsibilities. Beyond that, it represents perhaps the greatest public relations problem we face in the schools today.

By tolerating or offering excuses for poor teaching in our classrooms, we add to the credibility problems facing public schools. Just as bad, we damage the credibility and reputation of the teaching profession in general by allowing poor teachers to taint the reputations of all teachers and make their challenging jobs more difficult.

I often conduct training programs for administrators in which I invite them to play a game. I ask them to close their eyes and concentrate on their school, or the school with which they are most familiar. Then I ask them to raise their hands just as soon as they get a picture in their mind of a person they believe to be the worst teacher in that school. It is a rare audience that takes more than five seconds before everyone raises a hand. Try it yourself sometime.

What does this exercise tell us? Well, for one thing, it tells us that principals and superintendents already know who the weak teachers are. And they are not done. If you were to conduct the same exercise at a faculty meeting, chances are overwhelming the faculty members would identify the same teacher(s) as their principal. If you really want to have some fun, try conducting this exercise at a PTA meeting. (Don't forget your armor!)