Klein: ratings are useful for the worst and best teachers
For parents of students in the “average” city teacher’s class, learning the teacher’s rating may not tell them very much, Chancellor Joel Klein wrote in a letter to principals today.
In his email, Klein explained the city’s decision to release release teachers’ effectiveness ratings and the teachers union’s move to block this from happening. He noted that the ratings, which measure teachers against estimations of how much their students’ test scores ought to rise, would be most useful in identifying very high and low performing teachers. He wrote:
One indication will never tell the whole story, and sometimes it is hard to discern definitive
