By Ashleigh Costello
EAGnews.org

CHULA VISTA, Calif. – Across the nation a debate is raging about the fairness of linking teacher evaluations to student standardized test scores.

Teacher union officials say the tests are not an accurate measure of student learning, and even if they were, it’s not fair to hold teachers accountable. They say kids have too many distractions in their lives that keep them from learning.

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But the staff at one Southern California school district doesn’t bother with excuses.

The Chula Vista Elementary School District, the largest elementary district in California, has utilized student test score data to evaluate teachers for the past six years, reports the North County Times.

District officials say test scores and the accompanying data are useful tools that help identify areas where students and teachers need to improve.

And the students, despite numerous socio-economic challenges, have performed very well.

Living in a school district just 15 minutes from the Mexican border, more than one-third of Chula Vista students are English-language learners and nearly 50 percent qualify for subsidized lunches. Yet Chula Vista students are outperforming their peers in many more affluent districts throughout the state.

Chula Vista spokesman Anthony Millican did not mince words when talking about the importance of good test scores.

“For parents, test scores do matter,” Millican told EAGnews. “They choose to live in communities based on those testing outcomes. They look at these things. Real estate agents look at these things. They do matter and in our case, we celebrate success.”

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Although teacher salaries are independent of the test results, Millican said teachers with the highest scores receive a congratulatory letter and an invitation to a reception celebrating their success.  Moreover, only the teachers with the highest scores can lead after-hours tutorials, which pay extra.

Educators must have at least 75 percent of their students score “proficient” or “advanced” in math and English language arts to be a part of the elite club. Teachers who have at least half of their students score below proficient are offered professional development support.

“There’s definitely a lot of attention on the test scores here,” Carla Mendoza, a 6^th grade teacher at McMillin Elementary School, told the Times.  “It’s nice to be recognized for the hard work we do.”

Not all teachers are supportive of the heavy emphasis placed on test scores.  Jim Groth, a longtime Chula Vista teacher and trustee for the California Teachers Association, believes the district has gone too far.

“The culture of the district has been test scores, test scores, test scores,” said Groth.  “I’m proud of my district. But we have to ask, ‘Are we creating a well-rounded child or are we creating a child who can fill in bubbles?’”

The point is that Chula Vista kids fill in the bubbles with the correct answers. That’s solid evidence that they’re learning something in the classroom, which means their teachers are doing their jobs correctly. Isn’t that something any district would want to know?

Celebrating Success

While Chula Vista’s test-based evaluation system may have been met with skepticism at first, Millican said it’s now embraced by the majority of teachers who understand the goal is improving educational outcomes for students.

“It takes courageous conversations (with staff),” said Millican. “But those conversations are easier to have if they’re rooted in data.  If you see a poor performing school, chances are they’ve had several years of students ending the year worse than where they began, and you see that there is a problem there.

“Every year counts and we want to make sure that we have all the data at our disposal to help teachers and administrators make informed decisions.”

Since 2006, the Chula Vista Elementary School District has outperformed the county and state on standardized tests. The district most recently scored 870 on the state’s Academic Performance Index (API).

The Index measures the academic performance and growth of schools in California. Districts are rated on a scale of 200 to 1,000, with 800 set as the state goal.  Overall, California has an API average score of 788.

“When you talk about the use of data, frequent assessments, it’s not simply looking at how students do at one time of the year when it’s standardized testing,” Millican said. “It’s frequently assessing your students so that it’s not a surprise when they’re struggling on a certain standard.”

That data is also used to identify the most effective teaching practices and to assist those teachers who may be struggling.

“Many of what we call these ‘75 percent teachers’ participated in an ongoing project to identify common behaviors,” said Millican. “And we’ve seen these highly successful teachers identify five common practices:  effective instructional delivery, differentiation for individual student needs, high expectations and rigor, frequent assessments, and family engagement.”

Chula Vista’s success in recent years is clear. There is no doubt the important role test scores play in highlighting the district’s strengths and weaknesses, so they can be properly celebrated or addressed.

“Using data has helped us tremendously on a number of levels, so we’ve always been surprised (by other schools) where this is not in place,” said Millican.

Controversy in other districts

Linking student achievement to teacher evaluations has proven to be a difficult challenge for many districts.

Teachers unions have typically resisted any reforms that would meaningfully change current evaluations systems, which really don’t amount to any sort of evaluation at all.

Union leaders often argue that teachers shouldn’t be held accountable for student performance, which they say can be affected by factors outside the classroom.

Last September, nearly 26,000 Chicago teachers went on strike over a new evaluation system that would have relied heavily on test scores.

“This is no way to measure the effectiveness of an educator,” said Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis. “Further, there are too many factors beyond our control which impact how well some students perform on standardized tests such as poverty, exposure to violence, homelessness, hunger and other social issues beyond our control.”

While those factors may put a child more at risk, there is no evidence that low-income students can’t rise to the same high-performing level of other, more affluent children, given an effective educator.

Kate Walsh, president of the National Council on Teacher Quality, said teachers simply aren’t accustomed to being held accountable for student learning in any sort of rigorous manner.

“Teachers aren’t used to being evaluated in an honest way,” Walsh told National Public Radio. “This is a system (nationwide) where 99 percent of all teachers were being found to be satisfactory. You know, it’s [like], everyone gets a trophy.”

Millican believes it’s about putting students first, even if teachers are offended for a time by higher demands and standards.

“I think if you ask any parent, they want their child to do better at the end of the year than what they came in at,” he said. “It’s really simply, who do we work for? The parents and the students. I think intuitively, especially those who’ve been outside education, you know that performance is always evaluated.”

Twenty-four states now require teacher evaluations based on some measure of student growth.