Does More Paperwork Really Improve Student Achievement?

At last Wednesday's school committee meeting, the members discussed a set of model resolutions to be considered at the upcoming MASC conference (the Massachusetts Association of School Committees).  One of the resolutions, with which I heartily agree, called for the formation of a special commission to review the government-mandated reports and data required of school districts in order to determine the extent to which the reports and data benefit student achievement or simply take time that could otherwise be used in the service of teaching and learning.

In the same set of resolutions, it was noted, with respect to the new educator evaluation system, that "the formal regulations, guidelines, rubrics and resource advisory materials produced by DESE [the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education] to ensure compliance by educators and policymakers as they implement [the new evaluation system] are comprised of more than 375 pages of instructions and over 110,000 words."  I believe that at this point I have read all these pages (!!!), and I personally find the complexity of the new educator evaluation system, and the paperwork required by it, rather amazing.  There are four overall standards of performance for teachers.  Under the standards are 16 "indicators," and under the "indicators" are 33 "elements," with four defined levels for each "element."  To make a determination of performance under each element, there are 3 categories of evidence to be used and an evidence tracking form to be completed.  Overall, there is a defined 5 step evaluation cycle, 4 different types of plans, and 10 different forms to be completed and used throughout the process.  The whole thing is amazingly complex and requires a large amount of paperwork.  In general, in the corporate world, adequately supervising more than 10 direct reports is considered very difficult to do, but in schools principals generally are responsible for supervising 50 or more people, a task that is challenging enough already without adding more paperwork. There is nothing in the new law and regulations to provide schools with more resources to do this work, other than a provision for providing a "subsidy" to consultants who can be hired by school systems to "train" everyone in how to implement the system. (Perhaps in another post I'll discuss the topic of government regulations that are so complex that schools don't have the resources to figure out how to comply with them and thus have to hire consultants to develop forms and programs -- there are better uses for district funds, such as purchasing materials and supplies for classroom use, or funding useful professional development for teachers.)  In any event, I believe that the level of paperwork required by the new evaluation system will actually make it more difficult to provide good supervision by taking time away from actually meeting with, observing, and working with teachers and students.

Overall, my prediction is that the new system will focus everyone on the onerous task of just completing the paperwork,  and that it will decrease the time that can actually be spent in observing instruction and discussing it with teachers.  It makes me wonder -- are there really people who believe that requiring more paperwork of school administrators is going to contribute positively to student achievement, and how did they come to that conclusion?