When classroom observation becomes a policy problem
Classroom observation was designed to support teachers’ professional growth. At its best, it provides structured feedback, encourages reflection, and strengthens instructional practice. Within the Department of Education’s current performance management framework, however, classroom observation has gradually evolved into something else: a high-stakes evaluative mechanism with consequences that extend far beyond teaching improvement. This shift raises serious questions about fairness, validity and teacher welfare.
Under the Results-Based Performance Management System, classroom observation is embedded in the Individual Performance Commitment and Review Form. In practice, a teacher’s annual rating, access to incentives, and prospects for promotion are heavily influenced by performance in a limited number of observed lessons. The underlying assumption is that one or two observations can accurately represent a teacher’s effectiveness. Both policy evidence and lived classroom realities suggest otherwise.
Teaching is not a single event. It is cumulative, relational, and deeply contextual. It unfolds across months of lesson preparation, classroom interaction, assessment, remediation, and sustained engagement with students. Reducing this complex professional practice to a single observed moment privileges performance under scrutiny rather than consistency over time. Teachers who are diligent, prepared, and effective throughout the school year may receive lower ratings because of anxiety, health conditions, or the artificial nature of formal observations. At the same time, others may perform exceptionally well during scheduled observations while demonstrating weak day-to-day practice. When this happens, evaluation no longer measures teaching quality. It measures performativity.
This is not merely a technical flaw. It is a policy problem.
By assigning disproportionate weight to classroom observation, the system creates perverse incentives. Teachers are encouraged to teach for the observation rather than for student learning. Instructional decisions become aligned with rubrics instead of classroom realities. Time and energy are redirected toward rehearsing, documenting, and complying rather than responding to students’ needs. Stress intensifies, paperwork multiplies, and professional trust erodes.
These pressures do not exist in isolation. They are layered onto an already demanding work environment characterized by overcrowded classrooms, administrative overload, limited instructional resources, and insufficient institutional support. In this context, high-stakes observation does not motivate excellence. It compounds occupational strain.
There are also unresolved questions about assessment itself. Who evaluates the evaluators? Are observers adequately prepared to assess diverse teaching contexts and pedagogical approaches? Do assessors and teachers share the same understanding of what good teaching looks like? When observers prioritize visible performance over evidence of student learning, or compliance over pedagogical judgment, evaluation becomes inconsistent and misaligned with educational goals. Without shared values and safeguards, classroom observation risks becoming subjective and uneven, further undermining its credibility.
Recent events, including teacher deaths and other health-related incidents, have forced the public to confront the human cost of these policy arrangements. These cases should not be treated as isolated tragedies or reduced to individual weakness. They must be understood as warning signals. When evaluation systems generate fear rather than growth, the problem lies not with teachers but with institutional design.
Teacher well-being is not a peripheral concern. It is foundational to education quality. A system that erodes dignity, intensifies anxiety, and frames evaluation as survival undermines the professionalism it claims to promote. Teachers who operate under constant pressure to perform, comply, and impress are less likely to take instructional risks, innovate, or attend to the varied needs of their students. Over time, such conditions hollow out professional commitment and weaken the very outcomes the system seeks to improve.
Accountability, however, is not the enemy. The issue is not whether teachers should be evaluated, but how. Effective accountability systems recognize that good teaching cannot be captured in a single moment. They rely on multiple measures that reflect practice over time. These include sustained classroom performance, peer review, professional engagement, evidence of student learning progress, and recognition of contextual challenges. Classroom observation has a place in this framework, but only as one component of a broader, more balanced assessment system.
Reform therefore does not require abandoning evaluation. It requires recalibrating it. Classroom observation must return to its formative purpose, supporting growth rather than functioning as a punitive gatekeeping mechanism. Evaluation should help teachers improve, not test their capacity to endure pressure.
If the country is serious about improving education, policy must be rebuilt on a human-centered foundation. Teachers are not performers in a staged assessment. They are professionals engaged in complex, sustained work under demanding conditions. Intelligent policy design must ask a basic ethical question: does this system support teachers in doing their best work, or does it merely reward those who perform well under surveillance?
Ultimately, the measure of an education system is not how efficiently it ranks its teachers, but how well it supports them in serving learners. If classroom observation continues to function as a high-stakes instrument detached from the realities of teaching, it will remain a policy problem rather than a tool for improvement. Quality education depends not only on accountability, but on trust, dignity, and humane governance.
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Levi E. Elipane ([email protected]) is a professor and deputy dean of the College of Advanced Studies of the Philippine Normal University; Arlyne C. Marasigan ([email protected]) is a professor and fellow at the Educational Policy Research and Development Office (EPRDO); Leah Amor S. Cortez ([email protected]) is an associate professor at the Faculty of Science, Technology, and Mathematics and executive director and provost of the Philippine Normal University South Luzon; and Allen A. Espinosa ([email protected]) is a professor and fellow of EPRDO. The views expressed here are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official position of the Philippine Normal University.
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