The Wheels of Change Spin Elsewhere

With New York now evaluating teachers based on four benchmarks, highly effective, effective, developing, ineffective, the state lines up as perhaps the biggest state ready to receive Race to the Top funds. I just don't see these same conversations about evaluations happening in Maryland, which is disconcerting. Instead its just a lot of bickering and blaming, which is not a win for anyone. A new evaluation system will allow us to dismiss ineffective tenured teachers more expeditiously, and put in place merit based incentives for the most effective teachers. From An Editorial from the New York Daily News:

A teacher rated ineffective would be entitled to coaching. After two ineffective ratings in a row, a district could seek termination before an arbitrator mandated to accept the rating as significant grounds for firing and to decide within 60 days.

Such sureness and speed would be a marked break from the near impossibility of letting an incompetent teacher go today... Only instructors who wound up on the lowest rung for two straight years would face a swift ax.

Dan Brown, a teacher in New York, remarked that this is actually a win for teachers. I cannot agree with his logic more emphatically. As he puts it in his opinion piece from the same paper:

Teacher evaluations were long overdue for an overhaul. Last year, fewer than 2% of New York City teachers were rated "unsatisfactory." You can practically count on one hand the number of city teachers fired for incompetence over the past two years. That's crazy, and it reflects poorly on all teachers to have such a softball system in place.

Maybe what Maryland needs is an article about rubber rooms or some other travesty of our educational system for more people to hop on board the reform train. Colorado's aboard. I have intentions to write the Montgomery County Board of Education on this matter when things slow down at school (at the local level, the Board of Education must initiate evaluation changes). When I do write, I'll be sure to report what I find.

Another Progressive Union

This one in Washington. Or wait, this other one in Indiana. Young teachers going again before the tenured ones. Do you know that as a teacher, the only thing you can do to "earn" more money is to do something besides teach? That's right, do something besides focus on the quality of your teaching, and you can earn more money. Be a baseball coach (everyday after school) and you can earn more money. Stay and work on a killer lesson, and you get nothing. Now that's progressive.

From the Seattle News Tribune:

Gordon, 27, teaches English - including Advanced Placement English. He's the faculty adviser for the school's Key Club, Latino Club and the junior class. He mentors students at First Creek Middle School.

On this particular week, he also is helping students organize a blood drive. And he will end the week as an emcee at the school's spring sports pep rally, where he will also be named most inspirational male teacher.

In his four years on the Mount Tahoma staff - first as a student teacher, then three years as a full-fledged faculty member Gordon has become a fixture at the school that is also his alma mater.

But his days as a Thunderbird are numbered, because of declining student enrollment and seniority rules that govern how teachers are moved within the school district.

"A lot of our teachers are getting displaced for next year, and they're doing it by seniority," said Mount Tahoma junior Addison Sandoval. "Younger teachers are going to have to leave. Those are the teachers that are active in the school community."