Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Teacher Evaluation in K-12 and Higher Education | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Teacher Evaluation in K-12 and Higher Education | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice:


Teacher Evaluation in K-12 and Higher Education

Here is my 10-year prediction about the use of value-added measures  to evaluate K-12 teachers. Judging the effectiveness of teachers based on student test scores will get ratcheted downward in many districts’ efforts to come up with measures to determine how effective teachers are in their classrooms.  The technical objections —instability in year-to-year scores and measurement error–added to the strong and abiding perception among teachers that such a measure is inherently unfair, plus the obvious fact that a majority of teachers still do not have student test scores in math and English/reading to even be judged will shrink the use of student scores. And do not forget with the advent of Common Core standards and new tests even further delays will occur in using student test scores to judge teacher performance.
Other measures, however, will be added such as classroom observations, older elementary school and