The Use Of Student Achievement Data In Teacher Evaluation: How Should It Be Used?

Abstract

Student achievement data is widely recognized as a predictor of student success in education. The student achievement data is often used to determine if students are learning, understanding, processing, and retaining information. However, teachers are often unfairly evaluated based on student data, and little attention is given to student achievement outside of the classroom as well as how students without fair access to equitable resources perform. The student achievement data is also used to determine if schools are underperforming, and the data is also tied to whether or not students are proficient in subject content. These evaluations can often be tied to a teacher’s career path. This article looks to explore if teachers were more involved in the design of these evaluations, whether or not they would be a more fair assessment of teacher and student achievement. As teachers are experts in classroom environment, would teachers not be more qualified to develop fair evaluation tools to understand student and teacher achievement? Keywords: Teacher Evaluation, Student Achievement, Achievement Data