Teachers Work To Remove Other Incompetent Teachers

 

The Washington Post (6/23, Mathews) reports on movements in the Greater Washington DC area for teachers to rate and evaluate their peers. The move has been adopted by teachers unions in the area and has garnered little opposition. Other areas of the country are also reportedly adopting policies that reduce emphasis on seniority by age and focus more on teacher quality and removing poor performers from instructional areas via evaluations. According to one former union leader who remarked on how a poor teacher’s presence had hurt many students, “Why shouldn’t our union be willing to negotiate a more streamlined dismissal process or some kind of tenure review that will make it easier to dismiss this teacher without denying others’ rights?”

Study: No Research Backs Up Using Common Core Tests For Teacher Evaluations

Catherine Gewertz writes in the Education Week (4/18) “Curriculum Matters” blog that a new study released Thursday by the Center for American Progress “cautions that more research is needed before new common-core assessments can be used as valid and reliable measures of teacher effectiveness.” Gewertz notes that the study acknowledges the “intuitive appeal” to using tests from the Common Core consortia in teacher evaluations, but argues that they were not designed for this purpose. She writes that several states are planning to use the tests in that manner and notes that ED “had exactly these kinds of uses in mind in 2010 when it invited groups of states” to seek funding for designing Common Core-aligned tests.

Common Core Drives Education Programs To Raise Standards

The US News & World Report (3/31) reports that the implementation of the Common Core standards has driven teacher prep programs to create new standards for incoming candidates. The Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation changed accreditation requirements for teaching programs last summer, “raising the bar for admission and mandating substantive clinical work.” Schools will also be required to “report annually on teacher effectiveness” by 2016. Additionally, 34 states and the District of Columbia worked with Stanford University and the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education to develop edTPA, a teacher assessment tool that some states are using for accreditation. The article notes that some teaching programs are following medical school models by creating residency programs.

California Teachers Unions Fighting Waiver Accountability Measures

The Sacramento (CA) Bee (3/30, Kalb) reports that the Sacramento City Unified School District, which is one of the California CORE districts granted a NCLB waiver, “has begun ranking campuses and sending educators to other schools to coach their colleagues” at low-performing schools. However, the Sacramento City Teachers Association “objects to a promise that Sacramento City Unified and seven other districts made to link student test scores to teacher evaluations” and is fighting the accountability plan. The piece notes that the California Teachers Association “has been providing support to the SCTA,” and quotes state union President Dean Vogel saying, “We have been really, really clear in California ever since (federal grant competition) Race to the Top that we did not believe using student test scores to evaluate teachers was a good idea.”

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Profiled

Education Week (11/6, Sawchuk) profiles the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which “has spent nearly $700 million on its teacher-quality agenda,” including “the development of teacher-evaluation systems, district initiatives experimenting with new ways of training and paying teachers, and related research projects,” as well as advocacy groups backing increasing instructional quality as “the key to erasing achievement gaps.” The foundation is “widely seen as the most influential independent actor in a period of nationwide—and deeply contested—experimentation with the fundamentals of the teaching profession,” and many of the ideas it backs, “such as the use of test-score algorithms as part of teachers’ ratings, have become a mainstream part of K-12 education policy.”

Poll: Opinion Shifting Away From Test-Based Teacher Evaluations

Neon Tommy (10/3) reports that according to a new American Policy Makers/Gallup poll, “the majority of Americans now oppose using test scores to evaluate teachers,” even as most respondents “think increased testing has hurt public schools.” The article presents this as a “sea change” from views over the past decade.