The Widget Effect

2009

THE WIDGET EFFECT
Our National Failure to Acknowledge and Act on Differences in Teacher Effectiveness

Daniel Weisb erg • Susan Sexton • Jennifer Mulher n • Dav id Ke eling

E X E C UTIV E SUM MARY

A teacher’s effectiveness—the most important factor for schools in improving student achievement—is not measured, recorded, or used to inform decisionmaking in any meaningful way.executive summary
Suppose you are a parent determined to make sure your child gets the best possible education. You understand intuitively what an ample body of research proves: that your child’s education depends to a large extent on the quality of her teachers. Consequently, as you begin considering local public schools, you focus on a basic question: who are the best teachers, and where do theyteach? The question is simple enough. There’s just one problem—except for word of mouth from other parents, no one can tell you the answers. In fact, you would be dismayed to discover that not only can no one tell you which teachers are most effective, they also cannot say which are the least effective or which fall in between. Were you to examine the district’s teacher evaluation recordsyourself, you would find that, on paper, almost every teacher is a great teacher, even at schools where the chance of a student succeeding academically amounts to a coin toss, at best. In short, the school district would ask you to trust that it can provide your child a quality education, even though it cannot honestly tell you whether it is providing her a quality teacher. This is the reality for ourpublic school districts nationwide. Put simply, they fail to distinguish great teaching from good, good from fair, and fair from poor. A teacher’s effectiveness—the most important factor for schools in improving student achievement—is not measured, recorded, or used to inform decision-making in any meaningful way.

02
the Widget effect
This report examines our pervasive and longstanding failureto recognize and respond to variations in the effectiveness of our teachers. At the heart of the matter are teacher evaluation systems, which in theory should serve as the primary mechanism for assessing such variations, but in practice tell us little about how one teacher differs from any other, except teachers whose performance is so egregiously poor as to warrant dismissal. The failure ofevaluation systems to provide accurate and credible information about individual teachers’ instructional performance sustains and reinforces a phenomenon that we have come to call the Widget Effect. The Widget Effect describes the tendency of school districts to assume classroom effectiveness is the same from teacher to teacher. This decades-old fallacy fosters an environment in which teachers ceaseto be understood as individual professionals, but rather as interchangeable parts. In its denial of individual strengths and weaknesses, it is deeply disrespectful to teachers; in its indifference to instructional effectiveness, it gambles with the lives of students. Today, the Widget Effect is codified in a policy framework that rarely considers teacher effectiveness for key decisions, asillustrated below. Where Is Performance a Factor in Important Decisions About Teachers?*
AR CO IL OH

EXECUTI VE SUMM ARY

District U-46 (Elgin)

Springdale

Jonesboro

Little Rock

The fact that information on teacher performance is almost exclusively used for decisions related to teacher remediation and dismissal paints a stark picture: In general, our schools are indifferent toinstructional effectiveness—except when it comes time to remove a teacher.

* See “Policy Implications of the Widget Effect” for additional information

El Dorado

Cincinnati

Rockford

Chicago

Performance not taken into account

Denver

Pueblo

Toledo

Akron

Recruitment Hiring/Placement Professional Development Compensation Granting Tenure Retention Layoffs Remediation Dismissal...