When Good Intentions Make Us Stupid
by Frederick M. Hess • Nov 16, 2011 at 9:38 am
Cross-posted from Education Week
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ShareWhile I was gone, there were any number of classic examples of well-intentioned folks promoting bad ideas under the guise of "reform."
In Tennessee, it turns out that the teacher evaluation system promised in the state's Race to the Top proposal isn't ready for prime time. Fifty percent of teacher evaluations are supposed to be based on evidence of student outcomes, but such measures are in short supply. No matter, the plan is just to plug in for teachers the growth scores for their school. Because the cutting-edge way to gauge a first-grade teacher's performance is apparently by measuring his school's grade 3-5 ELA and math gains--even though that teacher may not have even been teaching first-grade at that school when those students were first-graders.
Last week, the Senate HELP Committee held its giant "roundtable" hearing on ESEA, prior to moving Harkin-Enzi to the floor. Most of the testimony concerned wish lists of things it'd be neat for the feds to do, if they had money or the tools or the wherewithal. None of that stopped the perfectly pleasant and well-intentioned Wade