Who Evaluates Teachers, and Why?
Over at EdWeek, Stephen Sawchuk recently wrote an article about teacher evaluation and assessment, titledWanted: Ways to Assess the Majority of Teachers. The article provides an informative look at various ways that teachers, their unions, administrators and districts can join together to improve teacher evaluation. Those of us at Accomplished California Teachers welcome any focus on developing robust teacher evaluation systems that serve all teachers, and involve teachers in their design and implementation. That kind of approach represents some of the core thinking in our teacher evaluation report from last year.
In the comments section on that article, I engaged with another commentator, John Mierzwa, from Las Vegas, whose first comment began:
The answer is ridiculously simple: let their bosses (principals and vice-principals) craft and conduct performance assessments, and then hold their employees (teachers) accountable according to a district-wide progressive reward/discipline matrix. High performers will be recognized and rewarded
