A Rather Interesting Story

The following story appeared in the Orlando (FL) Sentinel newspaper today. I thought you might like to read it as it deals with merit pay. I'll weigh in on this in tomorrow's blog.

A 15-hour workday is not uncommon for Vince Santo when he's directing the busy East Ridge High School theater program. Sets must be painted, parents enlisted, brightly colored costumes pieced together and acting skills honed.

But at the end of the year, Santo's own performance will be measured in a way much different from the one used to evaluate him in the past.

Because of Florida's controversial new teacher merit-pay law, nearly half of Santo's evaluation will be based not on how well his theater students can act, but how they perform in reading and math on their Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test.

"There has to be a better way to show how effective we are," Santo said.

School districts are working on that — in the form of student tests that would be tailored to disciplines such as theater, art and physical education. But until educators come up with those measuring sticks, thousands of teachers such as Santo will be judged this year on student FCAT scores in core courses, even though they don't teach those classes.

A Chinese-language teacher, for instance, will be evaluated on how her students read in English on their FCAT. And because the test doesn't start until third grade, first-grade teachers could be judged on how well third-graders perform on the FCAT.

The new focus on linking student-test results to teacher performance has school districts rallying to create standardized tests for every class in the coming years and paying for it with federal money. Districts are boosting staff with Race to the Top grant money and mustering teams of test-builders and data analysts.

Lake County Schools and other districts even hired psychometricians, test-creation specialists.

"We're going to have to build from the ground up on these assessments," said Heather Wright, the psychometrician for Lake County Schools.

For Wright and others, finding a way to evaluate a teacher's impact in core subjects such as civics and geometry will be challenging enough. But the job will become much harder — and more clouded — when trying to come up with a fair evaluation system for those teaching theater, music or art.

Across Florida, school districts are using more than $20 million in federal Race to the Top grants to create student tests that could be used to grade teachers in these noncore subjects. They have until 2014 to do so.

In Polk County, administrators are working on ways to create standardized tests for performing-arts subjects. The goal is to objectively measure students' performance and creativity.

"In the past, these had been assessed in some manner — you either like it or you don't like it — and so you have to have something that's less subjective," said Beth Cummings, senior music coordinator for the district.

Thanks to technology, some approaches to measuring progress might be a little easier, at least in music. Cummings said one approach the team might use is a software program that measures pitch and how accurately a student plays musical notes on page.

"That's a measurable thing," Cummings said.

In some Florida counties, standardized fine-arts tests are nothing new. In Hillsborough County, where the tests have been used for decades, students are graded on factors such as identifying major beats in pop music or determining whether an actor is dominating a scene.

But many fine-arts teachers worry the focus on testing will drain the creativity from their subjects.

"My biggest fear is we create nothing but test-takers — and creativity is gone out the window — because that's what everything's going to be based on," said Mike Cahill, Orange County Classroom Teachers Association president.

Santo, meanwhile, is encouraging other drama teachers to get involved in the process that could eventually impact the outcome of their professional evaluations. His biggest fear is the new testing push won't encourage students to learn performance.

"Anybody can memorize and write something down on a piece of paper," he said. "But can they get up and do it?"

ericarodriguez@tribune.com or 352-455-8046