Survey: 83% of teachers say use of test score in their evaluations hurts their teaching

Take Part - [A] survey, released by the nonprofit Network for Public Education this month, found that a majority of teachers who responded believe that the growing popularity of test-based evaluation systems punishes teachers who work with the most vulnerable students.

At the same time, teachers also believe those evaluations—including Value Added Measures, a comparative examination of how much a student has learned from one year to the next—undermine teacher-student relationships and amplify a teach-to-the-test culture, hampering their efforts to provide a quality education for kids who need it most.

According to the survey. “Of the respondents, 83 percent indicated that the use of test scores in evaluations has had a negative impact on instruction, and 88 percent said that more time is spent on test prep than ever before.”

Meanwhile, evaluations linked to test scores is "having a disparate impact, contributing to a decline in teachers of color, veteran teachers, and those serving students in poverty,” according to the survey. Changes in evaluation practices, it continued, “have coincided with a precipitous drop in the number of black teachers in nine major cities.”