The federal education department gave Maryland a $250 million grant Tuesday to implement school reforms designed to improve the performance of both students and teachers.
But a testy exchange between school superintendents and representatives of the teachers union on Saturday showed that actually putting the changes in place may be contentious and difficult to achieve, particularly new standards for evaluating teachers.
“I worry that teachers will be evaluated for factors beyond their control,” said Betty Weller, vice president of the Maryland State Education Association. Once a new measure is developed for judging how teachers perform, “let’s make sure it’s not used in a punitive manner. … I don’t think it should be held as a sledgehammer over teachers.”
6 comments:
I have a work evaluation every year so why would this be any different?
Teachers must be evaluated in terms of student classroom performance. Educating students in the classroom is their job.
Yes teachers should be evaluated, but only on there jobs performance not on who they know or who they are married too .
The child's socioeconomic status and culture are the greatest determiners of academic performance. Between the ages of birth to eighteen, the child spends 8% of their time in school, and 92% of their time somewhere else.
The successes of the KIP Academy and the Harlem Project are dependent on controlling the 92% with 50 wk/year, 6 days/week school and contracts the child and parent must abide by or face removal.
Your teacher evaluations are not the answer, but because they come from business they are part of the conservative ideology.
How many major businesses just got bailed out by the Feds, but still got bonuses for a job well done?
Quoted in the post is the VP of the State teachers union. Of course she will say that!
I am a teacher (strangely enough a conservative republican) - here is just one example of the difficulties in making a fair assessment:
For many years, I have agreed to teach the more academically challenged students. Though we work very hard, these students do not do as well as average or gifted students on standardized exams. If my salary becomes dependent upon my students scores it would be folish of me to continue to work with that student population. I like this group of students and we make great progress but let's be realistic - who would volunteer for such duty?!
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