Bill Gates: We’re fumbling evaluations when we rate teachers on how students skip | Get Schooled

Bill Gates: We’re fumbling evaluations when we rate teachers on how students skip | Get Schooled:

Bill Gates: We’re fumbling evaluations when we rate teachers on how students skip

by Maureen Downey

In a Washington Post op-ed, Bill Gates says there should be a fairer way to evaluate teachers. While he is all for accountability, Gates cautions against using student test scores as the primary basis for making decisions about firing, promoting and compensating teachers.
Here is an excerpt: (Please read full piece before commenting.)

Efforts are being made to define effective teaching and give teachers the support they need to be as effective as possible. But as states and districts rush to implement new teacher development and evaluation systems, there is a risk they’ll use hastily contrived, unproven measures. One glaring example is the rush to develop new assessments in grades and subjects not currently covered by state tests. Some states and districts are talking about developing tests for all subjects, including choir and gym, just so they have something to measure.
In one Midwestern state, for example, a 166-page Physical Education Evaluation Instrument holds …

In black and white: Segregated proms continue but students at Georgia school trying to make history with first integrated prom

by Maureen Downey

The concept of segregated proms in the South shocked people when the AJC and other newspapers wrote about it a few years back. The first question from readers was how this could still be happening.
It happens because the proms are not officially school events, although a great deal of promoting and planning by students occurs within schools.  Since the proms are private parties held off campus without any school funds, schools disavow any control over the events, which are organized by parents and students and reflect historic and lingering racial divides.
In the news this week is an effort by students in Wilcox County High School to finally end the tradition there of segregated proms. Homecoming dances are also segregated there.
The teens are trying to raise money for an “Integrated Prom,” which would be the first ever in the rural Georgia county.
In some places, schools have attempted to stop separate proms by hosting an official prom, but the event failed to gain traction …