The Train Has Left the Station: More on Teacher Pay-4-Performance
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Knowledge, someone said, is knowing a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not making a fruit salad out of it.
And that difference between knowledge and wisdom is how I feel about those state- and district-approved schemes that lean heavily upon “value-added” measures for a substantial portion of the judgment that a teacher is highly effective, marginally effective, or ineffective. Sure, I know that eager policymakers push value-added measures, flawed as they are, to evaluate and pay teachers; but it is unwise, even foolish, to make it the central measurement. Tomatoes in a fruit salad? Better in a pasta sauce.
I say that even though that policy train filled with tomatoes has left the station. But down the track, the train