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Saturday, May 23, 2015

New Mexico Teachers Burn Their State-Based Teacher Evaluations |

New Mexico Teachers Burn Their State-Based Teacher Evaluations |:

New Mexico Teachers Burn Their State-Based Teacher Evaluations



More than three dozen teachers,”including many who [had] just been rated “highly effective” by the New Mexico Public Education Department, working in the Albuquerque Public School District – the largest public school district in the state of New Mexico – turned to a burning bin this week, tossing their state-developed teacher evaluations into the fire in protest in front of district headquarters.
See the full article (with picture below) in The Albuquerque Journal here.
mkb050815h/metro/Marla Brose/050815 Linnea Montoya, a kindergarten teacher at Montezuma Elementary, drops her teacher evaluation into a waste basket with other burning evaluations in front of Albuquerque Public Schools headquarters, Wednesday, May 20, 2015, in Albuquerque, N.M. A group of teachers filled the entrance to APS to participate in the teacher evaluation protest. "It insulted my fellow teachers who mentored me and scored lower," Montoya said. (Marla Brose/Albuquerque Journal)
“Courtney Hinman ignited the blaze by taking a lighter to his “effective” evaluation. He was quickly followed by a “minimally effective” special education teacher from Albuquerque High School, then by a “highly effective” teacher from Monte Vista Elementary School. Wally Walstrom, also of Monte Vista Elementary, told the crowd of 60 or 70 people that his “highly effective” rating was “meaningless,” before tossing it into the fire. One after another, teachers used the words “meaningless” and “unfair” to describe the evaluations and the process used to arrive at those judgments…Another teacher said the majority of his autistic, special-needs students failed the SBA – a mandatory assessment test – yet he was judged “highly effective. ‘How can that be?’ he asked as he dropped his evaluation New Mexico Teachers Burn Their State-Based Teacher Evaluations |: