Anna Kuperman: SLOs are Unfair to Teachers and Students

Anna Kuperman: SLOs are Unfair to Teachers and Students

Student Learning Objective (SLOs) measure how much a student improves over a period of time in a particular class based on an assessment given at the beginning, middle and end of the year. SLOs count for the majority of a teacher’s evaluation. If a teacher does not show that her student’s have improved, then she is deemed ineffective. The use of SLOs is unfair, inequitable and unproven and therefore a false measurement of a teacher’s effectiveness.

Connecting SLOs with punitive measures in the teacher evaluation model creates enormous amounts of stress for teachers. It demoralizes teachers by forcing us to spend inordinate amounts of unpaid time on a task that has not been proven to improve student performance.

SLOs take away from instructional time with students. Writing SLOs takes away from proven methods that raise student achievement: planning time, grading, writing recommendations, meeting with parents, and professional development (to mention a few of the after hours tasks that teachers complete because we know that these tasks improve our students’ learning and our teaching).

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Teacher effectiveness should not be based on student’s ability to learn. Teachers cannot be held accountable for the injustices that students face—poverty resulting in not enough to eat, basic physical and mental health needs not being met, children taking on parental roles, educational budget cuts resulting in fewer services and programs for children. A myriad of issues outside a teacher’s control shape student results on assessments.

SLOs shift the focus from teaching and learning to data collection and evaluation. Principal and teacher time is disproportionately focused on SLOs. Students lose instructional time and are forced to take more tests that are not meaningful.

Administrators, teachers, and students deserve a fair, reliable evaluation system that provides teachers with meaningful feedback. SLOs should be removed from the teacher evaluation model. They have potential as a means of measuring student progress, but should not be used with punitive consequences for teachers.

Anna Kuperman has been an educator for 17 years, currently teaching English at Classical High School in Providence. She is a National Board Certified Teacher, and is an active member of the Providence Teachers Union.