It's mostly a peeing contest between Rahm Emanuel and Karin Lewis; two people who are entirely too similar in personality. In a bad way.
Yeah, I'm sure he'll find time between fund raising and doing The Letterman Show to meet with one of our biggest allies..............or not.
My 2 cents on that issue: Teacher evaluations is one of those things seems sensible on paper and fails spectacularly real life. You think it would encourage teachers to do better, because their jobs are on the line, but what it'll really do is encourage them to cheat the system at whatever cost to keep their jobs. Softer grading, teaching test answers directly... whatever it takes to stay above the cutoff. Numbers will be fudged and no children will be any smarter because of it. There are good and bad teachers in schools, and administrators have to fill the positions and can't be picky about who gets the job. It's a big problem, and I don't know what the solution is. But it's not teacher evals.
I agree, teacher evals are tricky. I don't see a fair way to base teacher compensation on student performance. There are just too many things that are outside of the teachers control (shitty parents being the largest IMO). That said, I'd rather see teacher evals based on workshop attendance, continuing education, etc. Things that are directly in the teachers control.
You start by not letting the fox guard the henhouse. Namely, independent student progress evaluations, teachers can't be trusted to grade themselves or have any control over the evaluations of them or students. Any monkeying with the system would become very evident and diciplinary actions should be warranted. the problem is that there are now no consequences for poor teacher perfomance and they really do like it that way. But....................you guys are probably right, kids will get dumber each year and there's absolutely nothing that we can do about it. Just build more prisons, society is going to need them when you guys reach my age. Then, you'all can retire in peace. I really don't care which party decides it's a worthy issue. Someone needs to step up to the plate and try something a little harder and different than what's been tried thus far.
I'll add my 2 cents Teacher evaluations should be based on the following year. If you teach 3rd grade and did your job right then that should be reflected at the next grade level. Of course the whole system would be more complex than that and it wouldn't just be the student getting an A and the teacher gets a raise. It would also require a national tracking system and a set of standards that don't cater to the lowest denominator.
Coming from several generations of educators and based on what I hear from them this is pretty much the only sensible way to do it. There's a reason we don't let minors vote or do all sorts of things they can't mentally handle, why on earth would we tie teacher evaluations to the unpredictability and inconsistency that are children.
It's also a bad idea to base doctor's evaluations/pay off patient health. My doctor shouldn't be punished because I'm a horrible diabetic and regularly forget to take my injections. He prescribes the correct treatment, I just am horrible at following it.
So, base evaluations on how the teacher is teaching/doing and not how the kid is doing. I'm not sure how that'd be accomplished, but Shabaz has a valid point. It really does seem like there may be nothing that can be done. My problem with it is, that nobody seems to be trying on the national level or at least, putting adequate priority on it.
I'm with the "some standard is better than no standard" crowd supporting evaluations. We can improve them as we find what's wrong, and the End Of The World has not fallen upon the teachers in all the other areas where this has been instituted. Of course the teachers were bribed to accept evaluations in all other instances... My problem with this is that teachers will cheat the system, just like their kids cheat on tests. For the same reason.
