Dale Keiser: Evaluation form has teachers skipping school

Washington public schools are short full-time and substitute teachers. Let me give you just one reason why that is.

Here’s the case in point: Washington’s “Teacher and Principal Evaluation Project” (TPEP), the newest in a long line of “breakthroughs” that did exactly the opposite of what it was supposed to do: Make teachers better.

I completed my TPEP evaluations last year, taking more than 20 hours to complete the process. That’s three workdays to prove that I was suitable to keep my job. New teachers get to complete this task each year for the first three years of their career.

Think about how long your job evaluation took last year. Two hours? Three? Most likely, the boss came by, took a hard look at what you were doing (how long did they watch you? Half an hour?), examined your productivity, checked your quality of work, made a few suggestions, and you were done. Reasonable. Then compare your system with TPEP: 20-plus hours? Three days? It’s running teachers off the road.

Now, I have no complaints about being evaluated; it’s a necessary and important task. Also, I have no complaints about my building administrators who labor endlessly to keep the state happy. Nor do I mind keeping up with teacher recertification rules. On the other hand, in the world of public education, TPEP (brought to you by your local state Legislature) looms large, dark and ominous.

If TPEP was a car, it would be a 1960 Chrysler Imperial: an unwieldy colossus thundering down the freeway of education, its cast-iron frame weighing in at 4,800 pounds, lugging its own 19-foot carcass around until it eventually collapses under its own weight. That’s a pretty good picture of TEDTCPOOE (“The Evaluation Designed to Chase People Out of Education”): so massive, invasive and poorly conceived that it demoralizes seasoned teachers and frets the younger ones. Why in the world would someone slog for four years to become a teacher, only to be driven to distraction by this monstrosity?

Unfortunately, the word is getting out to those folks considering teaching careers: run, run away. It used to be that I would keep an eye out for likely students, and ask them to consider a career in the teaching world. Now? I can’t do it. Why would I ask a bright, young student to enter a system that will discourage and overwhelm the bravest and most hopeful members of our society? Educators understand that we’re often going to work with illiterate students with plummeting interest in learning. Many students may be coming in with marginal skills, but they’ve got hot new phones to distract them. No problem.

On the other hand, I’ve seen what TPEP does to teachers in their first years. They grow pale, they look down, and then they start quietly looking around for the door (“I wonder how much a blacksmith makes? Will competitive knitting pay off my student loans?”). No wonder half of the teachers in their first five years of teaching pack up and leave.

Want to find qualified folks to teach? Ask your local legislator to come up with a system that doesn’t bedevil, torment and crush the spirit of public educators. Until that happens, don’t bother to look for more substitutes, or even new teachers. They’ve been run off the road by an inefficient, gas-guzzling monstrosity designed by people who haven’t gone for a drive on a real road for a long time.

By the way: Don’t even think about asking the price of gas for this lemon. You would be horrified.

It’s time for a trade-in.

Dale Keiser teaches English and mythology at Mead High School. He has taught since 1976.