Those Insane and Demoralizing Evaluations.
A teacher faces the state’s new evaluation with anxiety, uncertainty, fear, and confusion. She has a great idea about how to game this invalid, meaningless, absurd and punitive system:
It’s not just in LA that teachers are afraid. VA is implementing new eval requirements that must include student progress worth 40% of a teacher’s overal eval. The plan at my former school (might be at the new school I will be working for in the fall as well) was to develop pre and post tests to show growth over the year for non-tested subjects (and first year of a subject wouldn’t count, since obviously students would be starting at zero. I wasn’t really sure about the logic there). Yet, I was unable to ever get clear answers on how they would be implented for teachers of multiple levels/preps. One idea was that only one level would count. After I pointed out that this would incentivize focusing on only the level that counted to the detriment of the non-counted levels, I was met with silence. When I asked who was picking, I was also met with confusion. Moreover, it also occurred to me
It’s not just in LA that teachers are afraid. VA is implementing new eval requirements that must include student progress worth 40% of a teacher’s overal eval. The plan at my former school (might be at the new school I will be working for in the fall as well) was to develop pre and post tests to show growth over the year for non-tested subjects (and first year of a subject wouldn’t count, since obviously students would be starting at zero. I wasn’t really sure about the logic there). Yet, I was unable to ever get clear answers on how they would be implented for teachers of multiple levels/preps. One idea was that only one level would count. After I pointed out that this would incentivize focusing on only the level that counted to the detriment of the non-counted levels, I was met with silence. When I asked who was picking, I was also met with confusion. Moreover, it also occurred to me