Do happy teachers deliver higher student achievement? Or is it the other way around?
In Austin, Texas, an internal study shows teachers’ opinions of their school’s environment and student behavior were “the two most important factors in predicting state standardized test scores,” reports the Austin American-Statesman.
Other factors such as the percentage of students from low-income families, teachers’ years of experience and parents’ opinions of a school showed some correlation with Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills performance. But teachers’ ratings of school environment and of student behavior seemed to be the strongest indicators of high scores.
“Knowing that those two variables are closely related to student performance, we know that those are two areas where we need to push,” Claudia Tousek, the district’s interim chief academic officer told the paper, which notes that researchers cannot say whether high TAKS scores are caused by good campus environments and well-behaved students.
Perhaps not, but every high-functioning school I’ve ever set foot in has a warm, calm, purposeful environment. Perhaps it is possible to deliver good scores in schools marked by chaos and student discipline problems.
Know any?
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Some Texas schools and districts have raised their academic rankings without actually improving student scores on the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills, according to the Dallas Morning News, which files a terrific piece of reporting on the problem.
For example, TAKS reading scores slipped this year at Medrano Elementary School in Dallas. But under a new procedure granted by the Texas Education Agency, Dallas school officials expect Medrano to rise from “acceptable” to the more impressive “recognized” when 2008 rankings come out in August….Critics say this bureaucratic sleight-of-hand can make schools look good on paper when many students still need help. Why, those critics ask, would school leaders strive to improve learning when they can use automatic loopholes as a means to elevate or maintain their ratings?
The paper quotes a Dallas associate superintendent who says, “There are so many measures in an urban district that we have to deal with. When a school gets rated lower because of one group, that is really demoralizing. It condemns the whole school because of one group.”
Am I missing something here? Isn’t the entire point of accountability to guarantee good outcomes for every group of students? Say what you will about NCLB, but redefining failure as success is most certainly not the way to go, as Ed Trust’s Daria Hall points out.
It’s this whole set of decisions that are being made in the interest of adults and not kids. It’s to make schools look better than they are, rather than confronting the fact that far too few students are doing reading or math or science at the level they should be.
A Texas middle-school principal is accused of threatening to kill his science teachers and himself if their test scores didn’t improve. New Braunfels Middle School Principal John Burks allegedly made the threat in a Jan. 21 meeting with eighth-grade science teachers, according to the San Antonio Express News.
Science teacher Anita White, an 18-year veteran, said Burks was angry that scores on benchmark tests were not better, and the scores on the upcoming Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills tests must show improvement. “He said if the TAKS scores were not as expected he would kill the teachers,” White told the paper. “He said ‘I will kill you all and kill myself.’ He finished the meeting that way and we were in shock. Obviously, we talked about it among ourselves. He just threatened our lives. After he threatened to kill us, he said, ‘You don’t know how ruthless I can be.’ We walked out of the meeting just totally dumbfounded because it was not a joke,” White said.
Never happened, said Burks. Police are investigating the incident as “a terroristic threat.”
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