Karen Hunter Quartz: How Do You Measure a Teacher's Worth?

An op-ed by Karen Hunter Quartz on teacher evaluations at UCLA Community School has been published in Time.com. The director of research at UCLA Community School and at UCLA’s Center X, Quartz originally wrote the opinion piece for Thinking L.A., a partnership of UCLA and Zócalo Public Square.

Quartz delineates UCLA Community Schools’ multiple measures of assessing teacher performance and extols the benefits of an “evaluation process… owned by the teachers themselves” at the LAUSD K-12 pilot school. She describes how student surveys included open-ended questions that sought feedback on how the teachers could improve their classrooms. The surveys also included scores in level of academic challenge and classroom engagement.
Indeed, these teachers embrace their individual and collective responsibility to advance exemplary teaching practices and believe that collecting and using multiple measures of teaching practice will increase their professional knowledge and growth. They are tough critics of the measures under development, with a focus on making sure the measures help make teachers better at their craft.

“I met with a few teachers and was impressed to hear them reflect on how they could better reach failing students,” Quartz writes. “One teacher was moved to tears looking at her scores, remarking, “These are my students talking to me.” Throughout this feedback process, I was struck by how much teachers appreciated external, trustworthy data on their daily practice.”

Click here to read “How to Measure a Teacher’s Worth” on Time.com.

Courtesy of UCLA