According to a study just released by The New Teacher Project (TNTP)—a nonprofit organization dedicated to ensuring that all children have excellent teachers—both teachers and students across the country are victims of what they call a “Widget Effect.”

In other words, all teachers are assumed to be interchangeable, and are treated that way. So excellent teachers are not recognized for their achievements, average trying-to-do-their-best teachers are not given the feedback they need to improve, and persistently poorly performing teachers are rarely removed from the classroom. Further, critical decisions about hiring, developing, compensating and dismissing teachers are made without considering teacher effectiveness in the classroom.

The first thing I wondered when I read about this study is: How widespread do the researchers claim this effect is? Well, their study looked at teacher evaluations in four states and 12 districts; survey responses from over 15,000 teachers and 13,000 principals; and 40,000 teacher evaluation records. They also had a panel of over 75 advisors from across the country (including 25 teachers’ union reps) weigh in on the findings. That’s pretty widespread.

I’ve often said that as far as reform strategies go, although there is no single silver bullet reform that will fix all schools and erase the achievement gap, if I had to choose one strategy that would have the most impact, I would choose to focus on teacher quality. Because when you get down to the heart of the matter, unless a particular reform actually impacts pedagogy, and changes the nature of the interaction between teacher and student in some fundamental way, it will not cause a noticeable change in student achievement.

That’s not to say that I blame teachers for all of our education system’s ills. On the contrary, I think that the vast majority of teachers do the absolute best they can for the students in their classrooms, and if they knew how to do better, and had better resources, they would certainly do better. Interestingly, this TNTP report does not put the blame on teachers’ shoulders either, saying instead that teachers suffer along with students when they are treated interchangeably, given inadequate feedback, and when the quality of their performance is ignored.

As a result of their findings, TNTP makes the following recommendations:

ADOPT a comprehensive performance evaluation system that fairly, accurately and credibly differentiates teachers based on their effectiveness in promoting student achievement and provides targeted professional development to help them improve.

TRAIN administrators and other evaluators in the teacher performance evaluation system and hold them accountable for using it fairly and effectively.

INTEGRATE the performance evaluation system with critical human capital policies and functions such as teacher assignment, professional development, compensation, retention and dismissal.

ADDRESS consistently ineffective teaching through dismissal policies that provide lower-stakes options for ineffective teachers to exit the district and a system of due process that is fair but efficient.

All good recommendations, although the trickiest part, namely how to design a “comprehensive performance evaluation system” that is both fair and accurate (not to mention the basis of all three other recommendations) is not discussed.

Perhaps we can look to Washington, D.C. for advice as School Chancellor Michelle Rhee announced in March that a new comprehensive assessment system for teachers will be unveiled in the fall. It will use standardized test scores, classroom observations by external peer evaluators, measurements of student growth during the year, and building-wide goals that teachers set for their schools to evaluate teachers on their personal, as well as on their school’s, overall success with students.

Meanwhile, the most important conclusion from TNTP’s study is that until teachers are treated like professionals who deserve to be accurately and fairly evaluated, with appropriate consequences, both teachers and students will continue to pay the price.

(Photo: tinou bao’s flickr photostream/Creative Commons)