“Performance vs. Popularity”
This short piece comes from a friend and Colorado teacher Veronica. She asks a great question about the role of popularity in evaluations– for too long, favoritism has influenced the kinds of ratings teachers get. Others have been dismissed despite having high ratings. And as Dr. Bruce Baker points out, value-added assessment offers a rather golden opportunity for sneaky school leaders to stack the deck against teachers they’d like to get rid of. I think one way to blunt the influence of popularity over performance would be to require several different people to be part of the evaluation process (peer teachers, an administrator, a trained outside observer, students, and parents). What do you think? How can we improve this situation?
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Performance vs. Popularity
The age-old issue of popularity – we see it in high school, middle school and even elementary school. It is not the “smart” kids, but the popular kids everyone wants to