By Paul Restivo.

There’s one particular sticky aspect of teaching journalism and especially advising publications: the evaluation or appraisal process.

After all, what is there to evaluate? The most obvious sign of a journalism adviser’s job performance is to look at the students’ product: the newspaper and yearbook. Isn’t it funny how unions and teachers have become so up-in-arms the last couple of years as they debate with Washington on whether student test scores should be tied to teacher evaluations? Journalism teachers have been held to this scrutiny for years. And here’s where I think journalism teachers can get ahead of the curve.

There is a new policy brief by University of Chicago economics professor Derek Neal that has circled through policy-makers’ hands and has gained national attention. He asserts that standardized tests should help “rank” students — particularly by percentile. And he does agree that teachers should be held accountable for those scores. But what is more interesting is that he thinks teachers should be held accountable as “teams,” not as individuals.

Speaking at a conference in September, Neal said he was adamantly opposed to ever using standardized test scores to evaluate individual teachers, particularly since these scores have played a bigger role in some schools’ hiring and firing practices for teachers. So far 26 states have jumped on the bandwagon of tying student scores to teacher evaluations. Here is how Neal’s proposal would work, though: 1. Take each individual student in, say, the junior English classes, and place each in a “percentile” of student scores statewide. 2. Average the percentile of those junior English classes. 3. That junior English team of teachers has a “score” that can help identify a performance curve on how they perform against the junior English team in other schools. The debate on whether “percentiles” are better than proficiency scores is beside the point here. Notice how the teachers are held accountable as a team.

The former school chief in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg public school system in North Carolina noted how he made a “horrible mistake” when he tied student scores to individual teachers. He scrapped that system when he found out that student achievement improved at a much higher rate when teachers collaborated in teams. The teams, rather than individual teachers, in his district are now held accountable.

JEA’s initiative to institute PLCs throughout the country by connecting teachers online can provide the evidence you need to show yourself and your evaluator what works in your classroom. More so, it shows how your instruction and student achievement is being compared and correlated with those of other journalism teachers. Suddenly, our journalism classrooms become research-based, tested, and accountable. And it’s happening on the teachers’ terms using meaningful SMART goals and data the teachers can actually use to enhance teaching and learning. The journalism teacher has been absent from the national standardized testing scene. While this has had its blessings, it has also made it more difficult to prove how meaningful the learning is in those classrooms. The collaborative PLC approach is a game changer. It shows others what journalism teachers have known for decades: that powerful instruction and high student achievement can and does occur in these classrooms. And when it comes time for that appraisal, there’s nothing more valuable than that.