The Educated Guess � Smart report on teacher evaluations

The Educated Guess � Smart report on teacher evaluations

Smart report on teacher evaluations

Posted in Teacher Development

An insightful report by an independent group of experienced teachers can provide needed middle ground on the polarized issue of how to evaluate — and ultimately pay — teachers.
“A Quality Teacher in Every Classroom: Creating a Teacher Evaluation System That Works in California” indicts the current system of drive-by teacher evaluations that are often perfunctory and usually unhelpful. It lays out a more intensive alternative that would take into account the full range of teachers’ practice and performance while setting clear goals for improvement.

The timing is right for Accomplished California Teachers (ACT), an organization affiliated with the Stanford-based National Board Resource Center, to jump into the fray. There has been pressure nationwide, partly in response to the federal Race to the Top Competition, to tie teacher evaluations and higher pay to results on standardized tests. Teachers unions have resisted changes to an evaluation system grounded in compliance-based due-process rights.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is pushing for legislation, chiefly SB 955, that would require decisions involving layoffs, transfers and rehiring of teachers be based on their performance, not seniority. But he would leave it largely to local districts and unions to rewrite the current evaluation system, though he’s insisting that student test results be a factor.

‘Worst’ schools have 1 week to seek $416 million

Posted in A to G Curriculum, Turning around failing schools

California finally heard this week that it will indeed receive $416 million in federal money over three years to help turn around 188 schools identified as the state’s lowest performing.
But districts won’t learn until late next month how much they’ll be entitled to, leaving virtually no time to prepare teachers and parents for the massive changes the schools will be forced to undergo this fall. .
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