The need for monitoring and evaluation
It follows then that if high quality instruction has such a powerful effect, establishing and maintaining good teaching must be a priority for all schools. In short, they should implement some form of quality assurance. As Murphy (2013, p.3) points out “There is now widespread acceptance among researchers within the UK and internationally that good teaching is at the heart of good schools, and must therefore be at the heart of any school improvement programme”. The effective monitoring and evaluation of teaching is central to the continuous improvement of the effectiveness of teaching in a school (OECD 2009) . In this regard there can be few more apposite quotes than the one from Lortie (1975) at the top of this paper; it is over 40 years old and still resonates today.
So far, so good. We know that good teaching (whatever that is) leads to an improvement in student achievement (however that is measured) and that because of this, schools should monitor and evaluate the quality of their teaching (however that is done). But…there is an abundance of research which supports the notion that current systems of teacher evaluation are not working well. Weisber et al (2009) state that teacher evaluation systems have traditionally failed to provide accurate and credible information about the effectiveness of individual teacher’s instructional performance. A report for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation entitled ‘Gathering Feedback for Teaching’ reported on the failings by saying:
The nation’s collective failure to invest in high-quality professional feedback to teachers is inconsistent with decades of research reporting large disparities in student learning gains in different teachers’ classrooms (even within the same school). The quality of instruction matters. And our schools pay too little attention to it.
Kane and Staiger (2012, p3)
Existing systems rarely help teachers improve or clearly distinguish those who are succeeding from those who are struggling (Darling-Hammond, 2013). Toth and Rochman (2008, p 1) said that traditional evaluation practices are “superficial, capricious and often don’t even address the quality of instruction much less measure students’ learning”. This does not sound encouraging, so what is going wrong?