It’s time to (re)evaluate evaluation

My career trajectory has often involved backroads. I quit teaching in 2012 to pursue a doctorate in educational policy until family circumstances led me to return to the classroom in 2019 — right in time for a global pandemic. This year, I am shifting back to higher education.

As a policy researcher, I have always been fascinated with the way policies interact with the work of teachers. As a teacher, I had to work hard reconciling what policy asked me to do with what I felt was good practice. Now that I am moving back to research, my past three years in K-12 remain on my mind, even as my former students and colleagues are going through this school year without me.

This past August, as I was preparing for my new role, my email lit up with an announcement that my Tennessee Value-Added Assessment System (TVAAS) scores for my U.S. History End of Course exams (EOCs) were in. I could not help myself, so I logged in to see the proclamation that psychometric formulas had determined that I was, indeed, an effective teacher. And then I did something that surprised me and would likely surprise anyone who knows my personal feelings about test-based accountability policies: I smiled.