This week National Public Radio featured a news report on the changes in teacher evaluation being pioneered by the state of Colorado. It is the first state to pass such legislation, though similar legislation is under consideration in states from Maryland to Washington. The new state law will make a teacher's evaluation based at least 50% on students performance. The change will not go into place until 2014, and the intervening years will be used to craft the rules for the new evaluation process.
Where will that leave us, who are special education teachers? Those of us who work with severely disabled students have struggled with the inane alternative assessments that the states ask us to do with their students. I work with children on the autistic spectrum who all qualify for an alternative assessment. So far, I have done alternate assessments for New Jersey and New York. I imagine it is understandable that a typically developing 11th grader could name the x and y coordinates of the intersection of a line on a graph, but how reasonable is it for me to spend weeks preparing a child who does not speak in complete sentences without prompting, to teach that skill? The good news is that the Common Core Standards proposed by the Council of Chief State School Officers address assessment of children with disabilities. Whether those new standards will provide a truly level playing field for teachers of children with disabilities is hard to know. Who provides a baseline for our students? How do we appeal if we question that baseline?
There is also the question of puberty. I know that sounds strange, but one of my students regressed pretty badly in the last couple of years. He was able to write pretty fluently in complete sentences. No more. Many of the emotional or mental disorders that are co-morbid with autism accelerate with puberty, and even with appropriate medication, can interrupt or mask functional skills. I think specifically of Obsessive Compulsive and Anxiety Disorders. How do you assess a teacher who works with this most disabled population?
No doubt the Colorado experiment will be closely watched by the other states, especially those who are considering changing their teacher assessment policies. No doubt, there will be lots and lots of teaching jobs available starting in 2014, as teachers will be retiring rather than deal with the uncertainty of being judged by inadequate and poorly designed assessments (How confident do you feel in the fairness of your state's assessment plan?) The Council on Exceptional Children will no doubt be working hard to see that special educators are part of the mix when it comes to establishing state plans. I wonder if the effort to replace a tenure based system will ever truly separate the competent from the ineffectual special education teachers?
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