Faulty Assumption #7: Carrot and Stick Are the Best Motivators

If a visitor from outer space with no knowledge of human culture read a typical U.S. teacher evaluation form, they'd likely conclude that teachers are a lazy group of people who would do little on the job unless compelled to. After all, why else provide a long list of tasks and grade them on how regularly they're doing them? That's not reality, but it is the basis for perhaps the most erroneous belief of all: that teachers are not motivated to improve on their own. In this worldview, teachers need an administrator to encourage their improvement through formal evaluation systems.

Education researchers Robert Dufour and Mike Mattos, in a 2013 article in Educational Leadership, made a case with striking similarities to mine. The authors attempted to uncover the logic of the teacher evaluation reforms. They noted teachers' recognition of the ineffectiveness of evaluations and ask sarcastically, "So why not make tougher evaluation of teachers a cornerstone of school improvement? Why not require principals to spend more time in classrooms supervising and evaluating teachers into better performance? (DuFour and Mattos, 2013, p. 35)."

The assumption of these reforms is that teachers are not motivated to improve student learning and must have a prize or punishment waiting for them. "We can find no research to support the assumption that educators choose to use mediocre instructional strategies and withhold effective practices until they receive increased financial incentives" (DuFour and Mattos, 2013, p. 39). This practice also confers on principals the role of enforcer—making sure teachers work as hard as they should.

This is also linked to the performance pay debate. I do not believe that teachers need to be threatened into improvement. I also do not believe that teachers are willingly refusing to incorporate the best strategies to meet students' needs. Almost all teachers come to work with the best intentions in mind and want to do well for their students. If a teacher is lacking some skill and does not seek improvement, then that teacher is in the minority. Teachers are naturally intrinsically motivated to do well at their jobs. We have placed the demand to drive teacher improvement on the administrators. It is time we place the demand for teacher improvement on the teachers themselves. I also think that teachers would rather have it that way. The erroneous belief that teachers are not motivated, and that they need a carrot or stick waved in front of their faces to improve, is not only flatly wrong, it is insulting.

The argument for teacher evaluation reform is that the public deserves to know the quality of their schools. Throughout this reform and debate, I don't recall parents pushing for high-stakes anything, let alone an evaluation system that would dehumanize and demoralize their child's teacher or see their own child's success peddled like a product.

There's one assumption we can make with confidence: that teachers, principals, students and their parents all want the same thing, effective education that helps kids grow and flourish. The energy and will to achieve this are there among teachers. If they're channeled in the right way (and not into time-wasting forms), we can achieve remarkable things. In the next chapter we will look at traditional definitions of high-quality teaching and seek to redefine the term, to be more inclusive and to move toward collective efficacy.

Tips and Talking Points

Examine the Assumptions that your Organization Holds for Evaluations

Educating children cannot happen in a vacuum. Root methods do not move a first- or second-grade student from learning to read to reading to learn. There is much to be learned from quantified, scientific methods to teaching. However, at the end of the day, we are in the human services industry. There is no prescribed method that works in every classroom, school or lab. We have methods that work in a general sense, but nothing can account for the distribution of variables that our students bring to us every day. They are human beings that must be nurtured, cared for, and known by the ones leading them. The same is true for teachers. Collaborative structures, relationships and good old-fashioned teamwork are the only methods that work 100% of the time. We need to stop standardizing and prescribing good teaching. We need to tap into teachers' inherent desire to help students learn and be part of a collaborative team. The individualistic modes of the past have come and gone, and did not anyway truly have a positive impact on student learning. Our teachers deserve better, and our kids deserve better.

Inter-Rater Reliability

Avoid systems that emphasize inter-rater reliability. A study of note from the health care industry (Chow et al., 2016) found that inter-reliability of screenings is difficult in theory and practice. The California teacher evaluation system was the subject of this study (Porter, 2010) and find interrater reliability did not exist. Zepeda & Jimenez (2019) reported mixed conclusions for inter-rater reliability finding that there was adequate overall reliability, but disagreement between high and low performers. Jordan-Quintero et al. (2019), reported their findings of video inter-rater reliability study involving autistic child patients. Here was their conclusion, inter-rater reliability was weak. They also encouraged the idea of evaluating children with serious conditions as an interdisciplinary team, to compensate for partial assessment of a patient's psychological abilities. Aoki et al. (2019), studied inter-rater reliability of assessment for the diagnosis of oral cancer. There was no inter-rater reliability amongst nurses and nurses and doctors. The list of study after study trying to find a way to establish inter-rater reliability continues. A limited number of studies have been able to establish inter-rater reliability in any field, not just education. This is a result of misusing terms, definitions and research. Measurement of teaching is not the same as evaluation. Measurement of teaching has its rightful place in professional development, but it does not have a place as the primary means for assessing a teacher's overall effectiveness. Inter-rater reliability is scarce in education as in other industries.

Value-Added Measures

Avoid systems that focus on "value-added measures." VAMs (value-added measures) are an important policy initiative to note: I do not want to spend a lot of time on the subject, because this work is about the observation of effective teaching. However, VAMs received a considerable amount of attention as a result of Race to the Top. Alongside the new observation rubrics and the requirement for principals to conduct multiple teacher observations, VAMs were also required.

Researchers Paige, Amrein-Beardsley and Close (2019) investigated VAMs in policy, practice and law. They found teachers had mixed success in fighting these measures in evaluation systems across the country. The courts, when upholding their use legally, did question the wisdom of such actions. The researchers made it a point to mention that VAMs are not valid or reliable statistically. Yet their use continues to this day in almost every state in the Union.