How reformers (unfortunately) get captivated by experimental technology
Because teacher evaluation is such an important part of school reform and at the center of the Chicago teachers strike, I have published several pieces on the issue in the last week, here and her e and here. Below is a new historical look on the subject. It was written by Jack Schneider and Ethan Hutt.
Schneider is an assistant professor of education at the College of the Holy Cross and author of “Excellence For All: How a New Breed of Reformers Is Transforming America’s Public Schools.” Hutt is a doctoral candidate at the Stanford University School of Education and has been named “one of the world’s best emerging social entrepreneurs” by the Echoing Green Foundation. A version of this appeared on Larry Cuban’s blog on School Reform and Classroom Practice. Cuban is a former high school social studies teacher (14 years, including seven in Washington D.C.), district superintendent (seven years in Arlington,
What research really says on teacher evaluation
The Chicago teachers strike has put the issue of teacher evaluation front and center in the education debate. The popular “value added” method of using student standardized test scores to figure out how effective a teacher is highly controversial; I wrote about it here. Here is a new important look by an education expert, Richard Rothstein.
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Why people look down on teachers
The Chicago teachers strike has raised a lot of passions about teachers and their unions, the issue taken up here by Corey Robin, an associate professor of political science at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center.
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Meet Ashley, a great teacher with a bad ‘value-added’ score
How teachers are evaluated has become one of the big issues in the ongoing strike by Chicago public school teachers as well as in the many debates on school reform being conducted around the country.
Assessment experts say that the method of using student standardized scores to gauge a teacher’s effectiveness is unreliable, but reformers still insist on using this “value-added” method of evaluation. Some reformers, such as Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, want as much as half of a teacher’s evaluation to be linked to student test scores.
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Assessment experts say that the method of using student standardized scores to gauge a teacher’s effectiveness is unreliable, but reformers still insist on using this “value-added” method of evaluation. Some reformers, such as Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, want as much as half of a teacher’s evaluation to be linked to student test scores.
Read full article >>