Maryland’s school districts are revamping their teacher evaluation guidelines as required by the Maryland State Department of Education. The new standards were required to finish receiving $250 million in federal Race to the Top Funds, which call for greater teacher accountability.
At the same time, the state is implementing a new curriculum – Common Core, a state-led effort to make curriculum across the United States more uniform. (See separate story) It has been controversial in some states because of objections to a national curriculum, but Maryland educators seem to be embracing the new curriculum.
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6 comments:
They really need to decouple the union contracts from tenure and the ability to get rid of poor performers.
That's primarily what got us into this mess in the first place!
Common core is what they want nationwide because it how they intend on brainwashing all American children into liberalism and marxism from a very early age.
Common core is what they want nationwide to brainwash and endoctrinate our kids in liberalism marxism communism from an early age. That is also why they want your kids to start school as young as possible like prekindergarten a nd such.
In this county, this evaluation process has become very much an "us versus them" mentality (administration versus staff), instead of an opportunity for professional growth. There's already a lot of, "you can no longer do this or that, or you'll get penalized on your evaluation and possibly get fired". As a teacher, the intensity of teaching well and being responsible for ensuring students learn the curriculum is challenging, let alone developing a passion in students for the content area you re teaching. We do not need to feel as if there is a noose around our necks while attempting to do so, Most of us have a master's degree as far as education, and many have taken classes above and beyond that for certificate renewal and just for looking for better ways to teach the children of this county. iIt should not be us versus them.... it should be all of us working together,--teachers AND administration for the good of the students. And quite frankly, the community needs to step it up as well. I've lived in Wicomico county for over 10 years now, and I have yet to see more than a handful of parents get involved in education. There is a tremendous amount of finger pointing going on, but so few volunteering to come into our classrooms.
We are in a county where the suspension rate for the last school year was 11.2% versus 6.2% for the state of Maryland (kidscountmobiledatacenter). The students attitudes as far as those who are suspended echo the majority of the county... Who cares? As long as we as a county have such an attitude and create such a climate, a climate where education is not valued, our county will not flourish. We will continue to be the county with one of the highest teen birth rates, the city with one of the highest crime rates, and the school system with one of the highest suspension rates.
Just the latest SNAFU; teachers are on the receiving end and are correctly pointing out the mismatch at the starting point.
NCLB was a fine concept but 100% student proficiency is unobtainable. It got scrapped just as the due date came, to be replaced by 'longer, lower, wider' in the form of Common Core which is accurately described as Federal control of curriculum under the guise of state and local buy-in and concurrence. States and locals will forfeit Uncle Sugar's cash if they don't voluntarily comply with it.
The linkage of test results from outmoded tests that are not even aligned with the new standard is just a symptom of the mass confusion underway.
If teachers are to lose their jobs because their students don't do well on a test they are absolutely entitled to argue for a fair assessment. This plan may injure all teachers, regardless of how well they actually teach.
I'm not directly affected by this debacle in the making but have a number of excellent educators as friends.
Thanks 12:02! Finally some support!
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