The Misguided and Wasteful Obsession with Teacher Evaluation
The Misguided and Wasteful Obsession with Teacher Evaluation:
Comment posted on The Answer Sheet, Washington Post, Dec 7
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/guest-bloggers/assessing-teachers-without-fet.html
We are always wise to "embrace teacher quality as a goal" in general, but the current obsession with teacher quality is misguided. The intensive focus on teacher quality, teacher evaluation, and teacher education confirms the false assumption that there is something seriously wrong with teachers in the US today. There is no evidence this is so. In fact, there is strong evidence suggesting that our teachers are doing a very good job: When we control for poverty, our students score at the top of the world on international tests.
The claim that teacher quality is the main determinant of student success is based on extrapolations from Hanushek's data, not from real teachers in real classrooms. In contrast, there is overwhelming evidence that poverty IS the problem. Our major financial efforts now should go toward protecting children from the effects of