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There is a broad consensus on “if” student achievement should be used in teacher evaluations. It should – and a majority of states include it as the main factor in evaluating educators. 24 states, in fact, require student achievement to inform accountability for teachers, and 12 more include it with a number of other factors. The debate centers on the “how”. How large of a role should it play? Should student achievement be the main decider of teacher pay, school funding, and teacher re-licensure? Should consequences and rewards for teachers be tied to how they are evaluated? Well, let me ask you this – should the quality of food at a restaurant be the main decider of you returning to eat there?

There is a disconnect between student outcomes and teacher’s evaluations. Students are not proficient at unimaginably high levels yet teachers “meet competency”. Master teachers in high performing schools also just “meet competency”. As New Mexico’s Secretary of Education, Hanna Skandera, explained, teacher evaluations should be tied to their student’s achievement and have distinctions. A great teacher should be rewarded, and shown on an evaluation that they are exceptional, not just competent. A mediocre teacher should get tips and strategies on improvement from his or her evaluation results. And chronically poor-performing teachers should be identified based on their students’ academic outcomes and removed.

I agree with Ms. Skandera. We need to champion great educators, from superintendents to principals to teachers, and we can identify who they are by assessing their student’s achievement. We must advance the profession of teaching by investing in teacher quality and providing much needed feedback to our educators from outcome-based evaluations. And tough staffing decisions must be made by the same criteria.

Often those in the reform movement who are pro-accountability are labeled as “out to fire teachers”. This is simply untrue. We support rewarding great teachers, professionally developing others, and removing ineffective educators. This improves the entire profession of educating aggregately and ultimately, provides the best preparation for our kids’ lives after K-12 education. Talk from the other side often proposes getting rid of high stakes assessments and evaluations. Our children only have one chance to get a stellar education; I’d say the stakes are pretty high anyway.