Judging teachers

Keith Noel, Contributor

'Ars Longa, vita Brevis' (art is long, life is short). A medieval poet, speaking of the craft of writing poetry, translated it, "Life is so short, the craft (takes) so long to learn."

To a political leader in Jamaica, this statement should have a more immediate reverberation. Very few have a 'life' as a Cabinet minister that extends beyond 10 years, and the 'craft' needed to lead and set policy for a ministry is indeed something that takes time to acquire. So it is advisable for a minister to consider the rest of the famous quotation as well: 'Opportunity (is) fleeting, experiment dangerous, judgment difficult'. In an economically poor country like ours, we cannot afford to waste time or money, and we cannot afford to come to decisions without prior examination of their possible implications.

Politicians in opposition are not kept in the know about the details of important policy decisions, but they form ideas as to how best things should be done. When they come into power, they hasten to implement these ideas, unaware of the pitfalls that may exist. The sensible approach of understanding the reasons for the decisions made by their predecessors and building on them is not adopted. They set about 'proving' that their ideas are "what the country needs" and that the persons who were voted out of office were either inefficient, uncreative or corrupt (or all of the above).

To make matters worse, a recent statement by a prominent political figure would lead us to believe that when a party comes into power, it is thought advisable for a new minister to remove many of the top civil servants in his/her ministry and replace them with supporters of the governing party. This, supposedly, would prevent these career civil servants attempting to sabotage the minister.

In the Ministry of Education, there have been statements of plans to improve the education system, which sound excellent, but which are going to be difficult to implement.

For example, the idea of targeting 'non-performing' schools and teachers does sound laudable. So does the idea of performance-based pay. But when one speaks of more money for some teachers and of 'separation' from non-performing teachers, one is treading a dangerous path. I say this because every teacher knows how difficult it can be to truly determine which teacher is doing a better job than the other. First of all, we have not yet agreed on what are the priorities in a teacher's job-description. We have also not been told what outcomes a teacher is expected to achieve in all of the myriad of variables that surround him/her.

For example, is a teacher whose students all gain mastery at English in grade 4 a better teacher than one who only gets 50 per cent of her students to do so?

Possible variables

Maybe, except that the second teacher may repeatedly get students who were badly taught at grades 2 and 3; or whose students attended school poorly, especially on Fridays; or who had an uninspiring and even demotivating principal; or whose school had little or no e-learning equipment (and maybe lacked simple things like electrical outlets in the classroom); or whose class was grossly overcrowded; or had to teach two grades at once, each with children with a wide range of abilities and prior achievement; or who spent a great deal of time doing activities which were geared towards saving a few students in her class who were poorly parented and who were on the way to becoming young criminals - and in that way giving them the love and attention that was needed for them to become useful citizens; or who had spent time helping to develop the 4-H club and so fostered a love for agriculture and for the environment and an awareness in the children of the need to protect it.

I could list another dozen or so more variables. What is important is that it seems important for the ministry to find ways to develop truly efficient instruments to measure teacher performance, based on agreed priorities, and also to level the playing field, before we can speak of performance pay and the removal of poor teachers - desirable as these goals may be.

Keith Noel is an educator. Feedback may be sent to columns@gleanerjm.com