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Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Jersey Jazzman: "Mrs. Smith, If You Want Johnny To Get an "A'..."

Jersey Jazzman: "Mrs. Smith, If You Want Johnny To Get an "A'...":


"Mrs. Smith, If You Want Johnny To Get an "A'..."

Reforminess is making us all more stupiderish:
TWIN FALLS, Idaho (AP) — Teacher bonuses will hinge on how well they engage parents in some south-central Idaho schools.

Districts in the rural farming communities of Wendell, Jerome and Gooding have adopted merit pay plans for some employees that tie bonuses to the level of participation in parent-teacher conferences, the The Time-News reports .

[...]

The Wendell district decided to base merit pay bonuses on parental involvement at high school conferences because participation has been a problem in the past, Superintende


"Who Cares If Good Teachers Are Fired?"

Stop your whining, already:
Jacobs listed what the NCTQ considers the key "early lessons" for states embarking on these sorts of policy changes. Among other things, she said:
• "Teacher effectiveness measures don't have to be perfect to be useful. Some people are concerned that not every i is dotted and they're rolling out these systems. But keep in mind how unsatisfactory the [previous] systems have been." She added that an evaluation system "doesn't have to grind to a halt to be fine-tuned." (See my recent story on Tennessee's teacher-evaluation system, which is causing an uproar among teachers