Every year when the Hillsborough County school district announces the winner of its “Teacher of the Year” award, I have the same reaction. When you’re choosing from among all teachers–first through twelfth grade–how do you fairly compare the relative merits of, for example, a primary-grade teacher and a secondary teacher?
Arguably, you can’t. The variables–from instructor skill sets and subject-area expertise to age-appropriate, student motivation–are too stark.
I’ve even written about it before.
But this is as far as I get this year. That’s because there’s a related issue that trumps “Teacher of the Year.”
This year’s TOTY-award winner is Patrick Boyko, by all accounts a hands-on, charismatic, highly-motivating social studies teacher at Jefferson High School. He teaches world history, wars of the 20th century and Holocaust studies.
Now we find out–via a public records lawsuit by the Florida Times-Union–that Boyko, as well as other award-winning teachers around the Tampa Bay region, had less than impressive scores, according to the state’s teacher performance data. The numbers, known as “VAM” (value-added model) scores, purport to measure how much a teacher contributes to a student’s growth.
Boyko’s VAM score, for example, was a minus 10.23. That means that his students scored 10-plus percent worse on the FCAT than typical, similar students across Florida–because of his teaching. The year before, Boyko’s VAM score was minus 19.44 percent.
This means one of two things. Boyko and other celebrated teachers in adjacent counties have been getting by on personality and charisma, or key student variables and Florida’s frenzied, standardized-testing culture account for the dumbfounding disparities.
My money’s on Boyko and cohorts rather than a standardized test-based accountability system in a state that still can’t get its educational act together.