Evaluating Teachers is Hard Work

lather
rinse
repeat

 

Well, I saw "teachers" and "hard" and fully came here expecting to see a 6 and read tales of wow. TTIW

 

Chicago teachers want the day off tomorrow:

 

You are aware that Minnesota and Wisconsin have closed their schools for tomorrow for the same reason.

 

I don't know about Illinois, but you do know that in many states, schools are required to be open a certain number of days, don't you? If they were off tomorrow, they'd either count it as a snow day, or make it up later on in the year. So it's not like the teachers are trying to get an extra day off for nothing.

At least in my state, the schools already have extra days scheduled, and when the weather is bad, school closes and counts it as a snow day. Too many snow days used, and break times, like on spring break, is taken away to make up for the days. Too few snow days used, and spring break and Memorial Day weekend get longer.

 

Chicago schools decide to close, joining other school districts in the area ... including Notre Dame.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/chi-chicago-weather-school-closings-20140105,0,4487453.story

This would never have happened back in the day when there were orphanages.

 

Is it just me or is teaching the only "profession" where those in the field don't believe they should be evaluated?

 

Of course nobody on this thread has suggested any such thing. In fact this thread was started as a right-wing harrumph about people being paid money to do exactly that.

Remember a central theme of the right-wing conspiracy is to incessantly huff, puff and harrumph about ALL public employees. They're all slackers, they're all lazy, they're all unqualified and underperforming, they're all wasting our tax money which should be paid to benevolent profit-making corporations instead.

Of coutse the righties don't give a flying fuck about public school teacher performance or evaluation. They don't want to spend one red cent of tax money on any of it. They want to defund and dismantle public education and fob it all off on bible-flogging charter Wal-Schools. That's the end game.

 

It's truly amazing how much wrong you can fit into one sentence. It's really a gift.

First of all, what was the point of putting profession in quotes? Were you trying to say teaching isn't a profession? Or that only some people think it is? The quotes make no sense there.

More importantly, that is a strawman that is nowhere even close to the truth. It is the flawed, often lazy approaches to evaluation that most teachers have a problem with.

 

What approach to evaluation have teachers (and their unions) endorsed?

 

They aren't the ones asking for changes from the current evaluations. What they are saying is putting too much emphasis on standardized tests is inaccurate and unfair. If you actually knew anything about education, you would understand why.

 

YF, it's kind of like the baseball statheads trying to push the current defensive metrics. Anybody who is honest about it realizes that they don't really work. Sure, a better one would be useful, but it doesn't exist yet.

The same is true for teacher evaluations. The test-heavy ones being pushed now in many places are not good enough to be used in any practical way. Just because there isn't a good measure doesn't mean you use a shitty one.

Schools already use a mix of test results and classroom observations to evaluate teachers. When somebody comes up with something better, please be sure to share it with the class.