All the research shows that teachers are only ten-to-thirty percent of the factors that influence student achievement.
Now, a New Jersey legislator is attempting to begin to recognize that fact in New Jersey’s convoluted teacher evaluation system by including some measurement of parent involvement for each student. In other words, if parents are less “involved,” then that would be recognized somehow in a teacher’s assessment and that teacher’s evaluation would be adjusted accordingly.
Of course, once you start identifying what elements would be measured, it creates opportunities for “gaming” the system and then parent involvement becomes more of a commodity than a partnership.
Instead, how about if New Jersey, and everywhere else, just develops a reasonable and fair system for teacher evaluation without including standardized tests that were never designed to be used for that purpose?