Considering that high stakes testing results are not always released
in a timely fashion (which count for 20% of a teacher's evaluation),
this whole process will create more chaos than good. Public exposure
using these methods may tell who are ineffective but it could
potentially classify teachers as ineffective or developing when they
really are not. We only need to look at the Value-Added scores being
released in the New York Post several months ago to get an example of
how scores can be wrong (How to Demoralize Teachers).
The question that I ponder is why is this so important? It feels as
though politicians and reformers are looking to slap a scarlet letter on
teachers in an effort to shame them out of the teaching profession.
Bloomberg says "motivate", but it seems to be more of an effort to force
schools into a corner. Will schools fight back instead of making all of
these new mandates work?
Teacher evaluations are highly important. All teachers should be
observed and appropriately evaluated by competent administrators. One of
the reasons why this debate is coming up is that there are
administrators who did not do their jobs and there are teachers who are
not good at educating students. Once again, that is the exception and
not the rule.
-- Ed Week
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