"Marni Barron, an innovative educator, shares my discomfort with many Washington area school districts that rate nearly 100 percent of their teachers as satisfactory. (I'm not kidding: Alexandria says 99 percent, Fairfax County, 99.1 percent, Montgomery County, 95, Loudoun County, 99, Prince George's County, 95.6, and so on.)
But we disagree over the region's most daring effort to assess educators honestly, the D.C. schools' IMPACT program. I think it is a worthy experiment. Barron thinks it needs to do much more than it is designed to do to train teachers in its intricacies and demands.
Barron, 38, has been teaching, or coaching teachers, for 15 years. She works with the IMPACT system daily as the instructional coach assigned to help 15 teachers achieve and maintain excellence at Phoebe Hearst Elementary School in Northwest Washington. I (age withheld) have never taught a day of school in my life, and know no more about IMPACT than what I have read and heard from teachers."
But we disagree over the region's most daring effort to assess educators honestly, the D.C. schools' IMPACT program. I think it is a worthy experiment. Barron thinks it needs to do much more than it is designed to do to train teachers in its intricacies and demands.
Barron, 38, has been teaching, or coaching teachers, for 15 years. She works with the IMPACT system daily as the instructional coach assigned to help 15 teachers achieve and maintain excellence at Phoebe Hearst Elementary School in Northwest Washington. I (age withheld) have never taught a day of school in my life, and know no more about IMPACT than what I have read and heard from teachers."
