New Teacher Evaluation Systems are not Trustworthy Without Better Assessments
It seems that the biggest issue these days in education “reform” is the attempt to change how teachers are evaluated. Locally in New York, the state legislature passed a new evaluation system last year and the Board of Regents more recently released their guidelines for the implementation of that law, though much of the details remain to be negotiated between local districts and unions. Nationally, the Gates-funded Measure of Effective Teaching Project is starting to share some conclusions from the first two years of their study, and a recent reportfrom the Center for Teaching Quality’s New Millenium Initiative by a group of Denver teachers has garnered some positive attention in the blogosphere from Renee Moore, Ariel Sachs, Dan Brown, and others.
Like nearly all issues in education, this one is complex. I have gotten to see just how complex it is from two vantage points within the NYC discourse: I have been working for the past semester to support the social studies teachers in NYC’s transformation schools who were subject to the pilot of new assessments that are to be part of the new teacher evaluation system. I am also on the UFT negotiating committee for the new system. Unfortunately, I am under non-disclosure obligations for both sides, and can’t yet write
