A reply

My wife recently accused me of having the emotional IQ of an ant.  She is so generous.  David Cohen of InterACT, a group blog from Accomplished California Teachers, left this comment worthy of its own post.   He has more tact than my wife.   My response coming soon.

Hi Mike, On the broad strokes I agree with you. We need a change in those personnel practices in schools. However, my approach might be different. I'd suggest that the quest for a system that helps us fire bad teachers is the wrong approach. Instead, I'd ask what changes in evaluation practices will improve teaching and learning across the board. My answers are contained in the ACT report on teacher evaluation, which can be found at our website. (Not to suggest that I am the originator of those ideas, but rather that my opinions are reflected in the work that a large team of teachers put into that report). We want an evaluation system that is flexible, ongoing, and growth-oriented, one that helps each teacher identify and address aspects of their practice that need to improve. For schools currently evaluating most of their teachers on the "drive-by" model - an annual observation by an administrator who may or may not know your content area - this would represent an improvement that I submit would improve teaching and learning across the board. So you need to sell that step on its own merits. If you present the new system as the means of finding bad teachers, you inhibit the use of evaluation as an honest tool for improvement for all, because you encourage teachers to cover up or minimize any weakness. Okay - once you have a better evaluation system, then you can open negotiations on a number of matters of hiring and firing. Again, I wouldn't bill it as the new way to fire bad teachers, but rather, open up a spectrum. The teachers who excel in these evaluations and demonstrate other professional accomplishments should be in line for different types of jobs as "master teachers" (coaches, mentors, evaluators, teacher-administrator hybrid positions, curriculum development, training, etc.). Instead of "performance pay" that rests on test results, you'd have a chance to pay more for teachers who have a demonstrable ability to add more genuine educational "value" to the work of their schools or districts. Then, as a last step in the discussion, you're in a reasonable position to say that if we have a system that can do all of this, it should be fair game to negotiate the use of poor evaluation results for personnel decisions. I won't speak for John Norton individually, but as a member of Teacher Leaders Network, I feel comfortable stating as generality that many of us would agree with your long term goals, so I hope no one reads your blog as having posited us as your foils in this debate. I just don't think I'd open the conversation with "let's get rid of seniority" because a fair alternative must be in place. If the alternative is using state test scores in any way, no thank you. I welcome scrutiny of my teaching effectiveness by other means; they must address a more complete spectrum of my teaching, and do so in a way that effectively identifies my unique contributions to student learning. State tests earn an F on both of those criteria.