Letter of the Day: How to Get Past the "Widget Effect"

A New York Times feature article last weed, "Curious Grade for Teachers: Nearly All Pass," notes that in spite of the implementation of new value-added teacher evaluation systems, teachers are still almost always rated above-average: 98% in Michigan and Tennessee and 97% in Florida.  This is partly a a result of slow culture shifts, tweaks to administrative and technical processes, and, says the Times, the impact of “teachers’ unions [that] have fought to make sure evaluations do not rely too heavily on testing data, contending that the data are prone to errors.”

Timothy Daly, president of TNTP, which produced “The Widget Effect,” responds to the article  in this Letter to the Editor in today’s issue of Times:
Re “Curious Grade for Teachers: Nearly All Pass” (front page, March 31):  
What your article calls “curious” is, sadly, not very surprising.  
A new generation of teacher evaluation systems has emerged since we published our 2009 report “The Widget Effect,” which documented how the old systems labeled nearly all teachers “satisfactory” and encouraged school districts to treat them like interchangeable parts. But while policy can change overnight, changing the culture of schools and districts is more complex. 
America’s schools have been largely inattentive to differences in teacher effectiveness for decades. Today, most teachers remain unaccustomed to receiving anything less than above-average evaluation ratings.  
Most principals have never before been asked to assess teacher effectiveness so rigorously. Many education leaders continue to resist the very notion that some teachers perform better than others. So it should come as no surprise that many districts and states are struggling against rating inflation and other challenges as they begin instituting better systems.  
The answer is not to throw up our hands but to acknowledge that eradicating the widget effect requires a shift in perspective and everyday practice — one that demands not just smarter policies but also strong training, effective oversight and, critically, courage and resolve.

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