Success Via The Presumption Of Accuracy
In our previous post, Professor David K. Cohen argued that reforms such as D.C.’s new teacher evaluation system (IMPACT) will not by themselves lead to real educational improvement, because they focus on the individual rather than systemic causes of low performance. He framed this argument in terms of the new round of IMPACT results, which were released two weeks ago. While the preliminary information was limited, it seems that the distribution of teachers across the four ratings categories (highly effective, effective, minimally effective, and ineffective) were roughly similar to last year’s – including a small group of teachers fired for receiving the lowest “ineffective” rating, and a somewhat larger group (roughly 200) fired for having received the “minimally effective” label for two consecutive years.
Cohen’s argument on the importance of infrastructure does not necessarily mean that we should abandon the