{"id":4386,"date":"2014-06-21T19:14:00","date_gmt":"2014-06-21T23:14:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.coreeducationllc.com\/blog2\/?p=4386"},"modified":"2014-06-21T19:14:00","modified_gmt":"2014-06-21T23:14:00","slug":"the-bias-inherent-in-principal-observation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.coreeducationllc.com\/blog2\/the-bias-inherent-in-principal-observation\/","title":{"rendered":"The Bias Inherent in Principal Observation"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Brown<\/a>In the ongoing dispute concerning teacher evaluation, most of the furor has concerned value-added teacher evaluations\u2014those based on student test scores. The many problems with these, such as teachers being evaluated based on entire schools\u2019 test scores or on test scores of students they have never taught, have been identified. Because of this research, good work has begun to correct these errors.<\/p>\n

But what about in-person observation by principals? Observations have been a cornerstone of teacher evaluation for years, and assessment by principals has gone largely unquestioned. A new report from the Brown Center on Education Policy<\/a> at the Brookings Institution, \u201cEvaluating Teachers with Classroom Observations: Lessons Learned in Four Districts,\u201d however, has uncovered an inherent bias in principal observations. It turns out that there is an inherent tendency for observers to give higher marks to those teachers with higher performing students and to give lower marks to those teachers with already lower performing students.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s very worrisome. It\u2019s a huge bias,\u201d said Grover J. \u201cRuss\u201d Whitehurst, the director of the Brown Center. \u201cThe criticism about value-added is certainly something we need to attend to, but a lot of work has helped reduce or eliminate that bias. None of that\u2019s being done for observation scores.\u201d<\/p>\n

Key findings and resulting recommendations include:<\/p>\n