Group gives W.Va. D+ for teacher quality laws
By Amy Julia Harris
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- West Virginia has one of the worst education systems in the nation when it comes to its public school teachers, according to a new report by the National Council on Teacher Quality.
The nonpartisan research and education policy group ranked West Virginia 41st worst in the country for its education laws and gave the state a grade of D+.
The 159-page report published last week, which emphasized a lack of teacher accountability, found that West Virginia's rule-laden system insulated bad teachers, failed to retain good teachers, and had no systemic way to monitor whether educators have actually mastered the subjects they are paid to teach.
"Disregard for performance in education has bred massive dysfunction with disastrous consequences for the health of the teaching profession and for student achievement, especially for students most in need of effective teachers," researchers said in the report.
The report said the big problems with West Virginia's system are:
· Tenure is awarded virtually automatically.
· Student learning is not the main factor in a teacher's evaluation.
· It is inefficient and almost impossible to fire bad teachers.
· There is no system to determine whether a teacher has mastered the subject he or she teaches.
Researchers said in the report that West Virginia's structural education woes begin before a teacher enters the classroom and extends throughout his or her time at a school.
While the state has beefed up expectations for students by adopting a set of standards called the Common Core, no move was made to ensure that teachers were properly prepared to teach the more rigorous content, according to the report.
If someone wants to become a third-grade teacher, they must pass an "elementary education" test called Praxis II, which is designed to evaluate a teacher's knowledge in basic subjects such as math, reading and science.
But the test averages scores on content questions about math and science with instructional questions -- and never publishes how teachers rank in basic knowledge questions in each core subject.
"This commercial test lacks a specific mathematics sub-score, so one can likely fail the mathematics portion and still pass the test [to become a math teacher]," the report said.
The National Council on Teacher Quality recommended that West Virginia require teachers to pass rigorous math and science assessment tests to ensure they have the minimum amount of knowledge to teach in the classroom. State education officials say they are working to change the elementary education test to include a teacher's sub-scores in reading, math, social sciences and science.
The report also revisited a familiar criticism launched against the Mountain State: The lack of a strong teacher evaluation system.
It recommended that West Virginia teachers be evaluated annually and that student learning becomes the main factor in a teacher's evaluation.
Under current state law, teachers in West Virginia are evaluated at least two times a year in their first two years of teaching and do not have to be evaluated once they've been on the job for five years. In the state's nearly four pages of law about how to evaluate teachers, student performance is never taken into account.
The report's criticisms of West Virginia's education code come at a time when the education system has already come under scrutiny.
Earlier this month, an external audit of West Virginia's education system said the system was saddled with too much bureaucracy and suggested, among other things, that the state revamp its teacher evaluation system.
In his State of the State address, Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin said he would introduce legislation that incorporates student achievement into every teacher performance evaluation, expanding on a teacher evaluation pilot program spearheaded in 2009 and in place in 25 schools throughout the state.