Schools Test a New Tool for Improving Evaluation of Teachers

[tonysam]

Principals are very often the LEAST qualified people to "evaluate" teachers having often been failed teachers themselves, and they also have ungodly amounts of power to ruin teachers they don't want. THIS is why attempts to reform teacher evaluations will fail miserably. Teachers' careers are literally in the hands of ONE PERSON who can do whatever the hell he or she wants:

In a Chicago Public Schools system where half the schools are on probation yet 93 percent of teachers are rated “excellent” or “superior,” administrators are testing an evaluation process to more accurately measure a teacher’s classroom performance — with an eye toward closing the huge gap.



A pilot program called Excellence in Teaching, now being tested in 100 Chicago schools, seeks to produce an honest conversation about performance, useful feedback to teachers from principals and more realistic evaluations of performance in the classroom. Instead of a vague checklist that principals use to rate teacher effectiveness, the new program aims to define good and bad teaching, gives principals and teachers a common language to discuss frankly how to make improvements, and requires evidence that teachers meet certain criteria.

The Chicago Teachers Union has indicated support for the concept behind Excellence in Teaching, but specifics of any new evaluation system will have to be negotiated with the district.

Does it ever occur to this teacher-bashing "reporter" that maybe 93 percent of the teachers in Chicago ARE good at their jobs, but high poverty and other outside factors make it harder for students to "achieve"? Of course not; the NYT continues with its teacher-bashing propaganda campaign.

NYT


For some reason the link is broken. Here is what the URL on the top of the page says:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/09/education/09cncevaluate.html

This seems to work.

[FLyellowdog]

1. Thank you. Forwarded to Charlie Crist. nt