Teacher Evaluations vs. doing what's right for kids

[noamnety]

I have a confession to make. This month a girl cursed me out and stormed out of my room, and she hasn't been back to my class since - I counseled her out of my room and advised her to just take an F in my class. And that's what my teacher evaluations will show - that I have yet another statistic getting an F in my class.

Here's what the teacher evaluation won't show: that I had a long talk with the student after her outburst, where she went from excuse to excuse as to why she wasn't working in my room, I addressed each obstacle with a solution, until it finally came down to the core issue. She was just below passing in almost all her academic subjects, and extremely stressed out about that. My class is an elective and not a required course. She can't afford the time or mental effort to do the homework in my class. Looking at her grades, I ended up agreeing with her that my class doesn't need to be a priority for her right now, but getting the extra 5 percentage points in her academics to earn her credit is important.

So during my class period, I send her to the school tutoring program now to get extra help in math and chemistry. Since the outburst and long talk, she comes in daily to check with me for attendance, and heads off to get the tutoring she needs. When I see her in the hall, we're all smiles, and sometimes she lets me know if she did particularly well on a test.

I have it relatively easy in that there are no standardized tests for my content area. But I'm seeing a big problem all the same in tying the teacher evaluations to how a student performs in our one class, as if the only impact we have on a student is what they turn in for our assignments directly, as if forcing a student to do well in my particular class is always in the student's best interest.

It's memorial weekend. I have three days off - in theory. Yesterday (Saturday) I had a student at my house 7 hours working on math (not my subject). I've had a student at my house today (Sunday) for 9 hours total so far, working on 5 subjects - only one of which is the one I teach. Tomorrow will be more of the same.

The more we tie performance and pay to test scores, the more we demotivate teachers to do this sort of thing, to help students out in other subjects just because it's the right thing to do. Even worse, we are starting to go to competitive step increases and layoffs in my state. One person's good performance rating in their subject reduces everyone else's chances to survive a layoff or get a pay raise. So if I help a student in someone else's subject area, it helps the student but indirectly penalizes me.

That won't change how I do things; I'm fairly stubborn. I'm just frustrated. It's after 9pm, which means even if we left now it would be at least 10 by the time I get back from driving her home. Last night it was 11:30pm when I got back from returning students to their houses. I actually don't mind that, except for some logistics of not being able to get shopping, laundry or dishes done. I'm mostly confused about how standardized testing as a main means of evaluation addresses anything that actually happens - or should happen - in the real world. I hate that it turns student learning into a commodity. I hate that I could have pushed the student that's here now into working with me to get an A in my class, and that would better on my personal record than what I'm actually doing, which is shooting for a C or D in my class, and doing whatever I can to make sure she gets a high school diploma.