Montgomery County Board of Education Response- Karen Smith- District 3

While some candidates have referred me to previously published questions, Karen Smith is the first candidate to answer the difficult questions I posed to the candidates running for the Board of Education three days ago.  Kudos for her bravery- especially so in tackling the question about Michelle Rhee.    And thank you.   Her responses and website: http://www.karensmith4boe.org/

1. What would you consider the biggest weakness of the current teacher evaluation system in Montgomery County? What should be done to address this weakness?

Overall, I think that the Peer-Assisted Review (PAR) system used within MCPS is pretty good, less cumbersome, more fair, and more substantive than most. Both principals and teachers themselves can call for a PAR review out of cycle (i.e., not just in preparation for a tenure decision or during a periodic review). More principals should avail themselves of this option to help struggling teachers, as it is my understanding that the resources brought to bear in the PAR review process can really turn a teacher around (or help someone to realize that teaching may not be for them).


The biggest weakness of this system is that there is no mechanism by which parents can trigger a review of a teacher’s performance. Year after year, parents pass down the information to each other about which teachers are strong, which are better with girls than boys (or vice-versa), and which teachers are to be avoided at all costs. Why not figure out a system to make intelligent use of this feedback?


There should be a way for thoughtful parental critique to trigger a PAR review out of cycle. It’s possible that such feedback, as an institutionalized practice, could help teachers improve even outside a formal PAR process.




2. Pay for MCPS teachers is currently decided by a seniority system. If consensus could be reached on a new evaluation system, would you support a merit based pay scale to reward the highest performing teachers?

Yes, though what constitutes “highest performing” would need to be carefully thought out. The data I have seen supports the idea that while a teacher’s effectiveness can be difficult to predict or define, it does not correlate very well to years of experience (though all teachers appear to improve most sharply during the first 3 years – hence MCPS’ decision to provide more PAR supports to all new teachers in the first 3 years makes a great deal of sense).

I am a supporter of a “value-added” evaluation system, which takes into account the initial academic preparedness of each student (relatively easy to measure), the degree of academic support available to each student in the home (reasonably easy to gauge in practice), and any unusual abilities and/or disabilities which would tend to accelerate or slow down the pace of learning for each individual student (more difficult and somewhat controversial to ascertain). None of these three factors are "excuses" for a systemic failure to educate, which is why it is important to remember that no single "fix" is going to get us to where we all want to go - it is important to pair changes in teacher evaluation systems with changes to the support systems for catching students up, supporting learning more fully at school, and improving education geared towards learning disabilities and hyper-abilities.

That said, the appeal of a value-added accountability system is that it gets more to the heart of what it is a teacher actually does than simple grade-by-grade testing against a somewhat arbitrary standard. An accountability system should not reward one teacher for having had the good luck to have 3 kindergartners walk in reading at a 2nd grade level, any more than it should punish a different teacher for having had 3 (untreated) dyslexics walk in to the 5th grade reading at that same 2nd grade level (and yes, Virginia, there are scientifically proven “treatments” for dyslexia, we just haven’t been using them as often or as well as we might). Also, decisions affecting a teacher’s employment should only be made on the basis of several year’s worth of data (a Center for American Progress paper addressing this issue recommended a minimum of 3 years (http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2009/12/value_added.html)).

These are difficult and complex matters, but I believe that working out a sensible solution along these lines is the direction in which we should be moving. Not coincidentally, The Race to the Top funding secured by the state of Maryland pushes us in this same direction.





3. What are your reflections on Michelle Rhee? Should the search committee consider interviewing her for the Superintendent position?

I wouldn’t discount her out of hand, though her reputation for high-handed, non-collaborative decision-making would need to be carefully examined. I would want to find out the extent to which this reputation is actually deserved. It may well be that this reputation derives more from Rhee’s common-sense notion that DCPS is not a jobs program for the District of Columbia, but should instead be about the business of educating DC’s children. Montgomery County is a very different place from DC, and MCPS is a vastly different (and dramatically more functional) bureaucracy from DCPS, and I think we would need to look carefully at how Rhee's skills would translate into this very different setting.

I believe that the search committee should be looking for an effective, collaborative, decisive reformer, not one who looks to run things in secret or behind closed doors. Whether Rhee would turn out to be collaborative and transparent in Montgomery County is an open question.