This plan not making the grade
The best teacher I ever had probably would have flunked Seattle's proposed new system for grading its teachers.
 |
Seattle Times staff columnist
The best teacher I ever had probably would have flunked Seattle's proposed new system for grading its teachers.
Check that: She was too smart to flunk. She probably would have just refused to go along with it.
Seattle Public Schools suddenly is at the forefront of the new wave in education: grading the graders. The district has proposed a way to pay, promote and perhaps fire its teachers, based on where they rate on a five-level effectiveness chart.
The impulse to do this is understandable. Everyone knows teachers are the most important cogs in the school machine. Yet currently they are paid and retained almost entirely on seniority and their advanced degrees.
But what's got everybody worked up is the way Seattle's teachers would be judged.
Some parts aren't all that controversial. Teachers have to meet traditional workplace goals
