Effective classroom monitoring system

I came to scrutinize the classroom monitoring system of the primary and secondary public schools in the region. The system focused on the following: lesson plan, congruence to actual instruction, motivation, visual aids, attendance rate of pupils, mean percentage score and a lot more.

Part of my fierce disagreement over how much student test scores will weigh in a new teacher evaluation system mandated by a Deped official . That teachers should agree that student achievement should count in evaluations, and that teachers should be held accountable for student progress. Partly yes. But partly no.

Traditional teacher evaluations often consist of cursory classroom visits by principals who declare nearly every teacher good, or at least competent, even in failing schools where few if any children meet basic educational standards.

Principals conduct visitation at least twice a month, and this visitation is not regular nor can be called intensive monitoring and coaching.

As a result of this system, predictable things can happen. High-performing teachers who have an enormous impact on student achievement go unidentified, and they often leave the community. Promising, but struggling, young teachers never get the help they need to master the job. And disastrous teachers who have no feel for the profession continue as long as they wish, hurting young lives along the way.

I remember how an eight year old boy was badly hurt, taken into the school clinic unattended by the teacher. All because it was lunch time the teacher washed hands from this awful incident. The least she could have done was to take the child to a nearby hospital. With this arrangement, what more rigorous evaluation systems that have taken root in the country are intended to change that picture. Is this behavior separate from the monitoring system?

But public schools in the country follow the same norms. But depending on the circumstances, the evaluation should include scores from national tests, student projects, student and parent surveys, socio-economic status, and other data. Instead of subjecting teachers to rigorous evaluations, how about an intensive program that aims to help both novice teachers and experienced teachers who receive a “below standard” evaluation.

The system requires considerable investment of time, money and dedication. These master teachers help improve plan lessons, review student work and also arrange for them to observe other teachers on the job. In one of the states of India, the norm is: a child should not walk more than a kilometer to school, a kilo of potato a day for every attendance, free spectacles, bicycles and milk feeding program. Do you think this program is laudable than the 4Ps?

School principals Marco, Lugas and Dagoro are correct then. Frequent observations should help teachers of what they need to do to improve, and not merely punitive measures to make inexperienced teachers tremble more in their presence. Many of these new programs are better than the slipshod evaluation systems they replaced. But they are far from perfect., will need to keep working at them to ensure fairness, accuracy and transparency.

By: Dr.Nila L. Filamor

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