OTES: The Future of Evaluation?

As we sat through the video today about the new Ohio Teacher Evaluation System, I was slightly panicking in the back of the room. I had never realized that these new changes were going to be so harsh and so limited in their scope in their judgment of my future teaching skills. Already, I am wondering exactly how theoretical teachers would feel if they were rated as one of the lower levels of teacher. Would they use the experience as a motivator to do better the next year or would they be so disappointed in themselves that they would lose confidence in their abilities? We mentioned motivation as one of the key psychological reasons that drive most of our work as humans; how would they be able to motivate their students to intrinsically learn when their extrinsic motivation is to keep themselves in a job. These limited evaluations, in my opinion, do not grasp the whole learning experience of a classroom and of a student. While I’m sure we all had great ideas about how we would like teachers to be evaluated, the truth is that we are probably going to start teaching under these types of regulations. In our most vulnerable years (the first couple), we will be graded with an unrealistic and questionable rubric that will decide our fates.

I began researching this new program and came across an interesting article that looked at the OTES and how it has been supported or not supported by academic research. [http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/11/15/1161894/-Ohio-Teacher-Evaluation-System-Dishonest-Unrealistic-and-Not-Fully-Supported-by-Academic-Researc#]. Throughout the article, there were many points bolded that argues claims made by OTES have not been supported through academic research or are completely unrealistic for teachers to attain.  To me, the most startling idea was that between 0-2% of teachers would be rated at the top level. Really? Only 2% of teachers are good teachers in the state of Ohio? That is just not right. The standards that these lawmakers are about to force upon teachers are just not reasonable, humiliating for teachers and would never be forced upon other professions. I don’t know how current teachers are going to react to this new system but I hope that they do not let this be forced upon them without some discussion about its accuracy at evaluating their profession.