We do indeed owe Sec. Duncan a debt of gratitude
We owe Secretary of Education Arne Duncan a debt of gratitude. Thanks to his "Race to the Top" program, teacher evaluation has finally moved out of the 19th Century. Thanks to him, the outmoded and unfair approach–an administrator sitting in the back of the room once or twice a year–is history. And it's about time, because that approach was susceptible to favoritism, laziness and sexual harassment.
My first school principal at Paul D. Schreiber High School in Port Washington, New York, evaluated us that way. Mr. Henderson, who was approaching retirement the year I began teaching, was known for playing favorites. He liked coaches who also taught, and he loved teachers who kept their classrooms quiet; those folks received glowing reports. Noise, even if it was a lively classroom discussion, was a bad thing in Mr. Henderson's book, and those teachers received a talking-to. (I was one of those.)
Secretary Duncan has effectively replaced that outmoded approach with a performance-based, data-driven system where teachers are evaluated based on the scores of students on standardized tests. He did this with "Race to the Top," the competition for scarce resources at the height of the Great Recession. To qualify for funds, states and districts had to commit to judging teachers by test scores.
Although most states didn't get the money, nearly all of them fell into line in their efforts to qualify. In some states, 50% of a teacher's rating is now based on test scores.
March MADNESS
We owe Secretary of Education Arne Duncan a debt of gratitude. Thanks to his "Race to the Top" program, teacher evaluation has finally moved out of the 19th Century. Thanks to him, the outmoded and unfair approach–an administrator sitting in the back of the room once or twice a year–is history. And it's about time, because that approach was susceptible to favoritism, laziness and sexual harassment.
posted by Whitney Tilson at 12:28 PM
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