Marie Corfield: Data does not a great teacher make

Marie Corfield: Data does not a great teacher make:

Data does not a great teacher make

And so the data reporting begins. 

The Star Ledger reported yesterday:

For the first time, New Jersey's Department of Education will publish a centralized database with the aggregate teacher evaluation results for each school across the state. 

The 2013-14 data, to be released next week, will not include performance ratings for specific teachers. But parents will be able to see how many teachers in a school received each of the four possible ratings, according to the state....Before 2013-14, teachers were essentially graded on a thumbs up or thumbs down system, based on a century-old law that required evaluations. Nearly 100 percent of teachers were deemed acceptable....More than 97 percent of New Jersey teachers received positive evaluation scores for 2013-14, the state announced in June (Hmmm... 97% isn't that 'nearly 100%'? Just sayin'.) But unlike previous years, the new system creates more distinction between perforance levels and allows the state to further analyze the data for useful trends. 

For example, teachers in their first or second year were twice as likely to receive a "partially effective" review as more expereinced teachers. 

Meanwhile, experienced teachers were twice as likely to get the highest rating. (emphasis mine)

Ah, ya gotta love the irony. Nothing screams, "We need excellent educators in every classroom!" like underfunding public education, piling enormous amounts of data collection and test prep on top of all the mountains of work classroom teachers already have, blaming, shaming, disrespecting, devaluing, under-paying, slashing and burning, VAM-ing and scaming us into thinking all of this is good 'for the children'. No wonder 40-50% of educators leave the profession within the first 5 years.

Education 'reformers' from coast to coast beat the war drums against seniority and bow to the Holy Grail of data, but will they have the guts to face the data that shows that, as in every other profession, experience matters?

Ask any veteran educator and they will tell you that if they could go back and re-do their first 5 years teaching, they would do things much differently. Experience builds competence; practice makes progress. It's a no brainer—except in 'reformy land'. I hope they have 'some fava beans and a nice chianti' on hand to wash down those words they have to eat. You know... the ones that say we're all just a bunch of lazy oafs, waiting to collect our pensions.

Which brings me to this:

Last week I attended the National Education Association Representative Assembly in Marie Corfield: Data does not a great teacher make: