The biggest public policy meme of the past decade or two has been accountability for teachers. They need more objective measures of their effectiveness! They need regular evaluations! They need close monitoring to make sure they are doing their job!
One wonders how many of those folks pushing this public policy would be willing to go through this kind of evaluation themselves.
What Teacher Evaluation Looks Like in Practice
Somehow, I think many of the commentators who routinely bash teachers would become violent if subjected to assessments like these in Palm Beach, FL (boldface mine): Five (or more) times in the scho…
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Not only do they need monitoring, they need to be monitored by multiple agencies who each demand specific things. It's absurd. And we are moving in the same direction in higher ed. Things have really changed in the past decade on this front. All for the worse. And now Obama wants a national college ratings system…. Terrible idea.
My local teachers was told that there were NO "highly effective" to be given in the first year.
Side note: These objective evaluations are potentially in lieu of seniority when cut times come. So…."Innovative and highly effective first-year teachers for $35k/year, versus a bunch of just 'effective' teachers for $85k. Sounds like a win-win to me."
Yeah, any time they start grading on a curve, it's clearly less about being objective than trying to force-rank people, for wahtever reason.
We talk about this a lot. Public education is an important part of our culture, and it's hard to say it should just be left completely un-watched; but it's hard to evaluate something like that effectively across such a broad range. Especially when, when it comes down to it, we, as a society, really haven't decided what we want it to do.
At its most basic, it's an incredibly complex problem.
On the one hand, you get exceptional school districts who only hire the very best, then tell those "best" that too many of them are above average.
On the other hand, you have consistently failing school districts, with kids graduating without a minimum of skills…and it's easy to cry out for an easy measure to grade (usually punish) those teachers for their performance.
Throw in district finances, the need to increase class sizes to make ends meet, and the lack of adequate classroom materials to make it really complicated.
Then consider the balance between "public service" and "treat it like a business", with various anti-union, anti-standardization and "public funds to pay for private schools" viewpoints, and the whole discussion becomes a true quagmire.
And unfortunately, if you tackle any one part of this, the other parts are there as challenges to any decisions or even discussions.
Add in the fact that the immediate clientele — the kids — individually have vastly different skill levels, modalities, interest and support — yet both educational consultants and other outside groups keep pretending like there is a silver bullet that will help any and every kid learn.
And add in the fact that the secondary clientele — the parents — in too many cases think they they already know the answers, that they could teach any of these subjects if given the chance (or that the ones they couldn't teach aren't worth teaching), and that their little tot needs more attention, more discipline, more love and support, and more time, and why the hell are you proposing raising my property taxes by a few dollars a year to "reduce classroom size"?
There are a variety of reasons I left the teaching profession. These are among them.