Wow. Schools Superintendent Kathryn Matayoshi made many changes in the teacher evaluation system in response to criticism coming from teachers, principals and many others who were astounded with what the Department of Education came up with to rate teachers. Count them: 18 changes in all!
That should quiet the critics, yeah? Except that the one, single change that should have been made, the change that perhaps would have made the difference between lunacy and logic, never occurred.
Remaining unchanged was the provision that links students’ high-stakes test scores with how teachers are rated for pay, or even whether they are to remain employed. For some teachers, such as elementary fourth- and fifth-grade teachers, this linkage represents 25 percent of their rating. Other grade levels have only 5 percent of their rating linked to the test scores, and some have no student test scores factoring in their rating.
The fact that the percentage varies for ratings for other grade levels is, in itself, irrefutably inequitable.
But that isn’t all that remains wrong. Teachers who teach reading are accountable for their students’ reading scores. Yet teachers have other teachers’ students for part of the reading bloc, and are not accountable for the scores. So, what if the other teachers teaching reading are not getting the job done? Apparently, that is just too bad for the teachers who are accountable for the test scores. As one Department of Education minion put it, "trust your colleagues."
How glib is that? The DOE’s teacher evaluation system is based on competing interests, not collaboration. It’s every man/woman for their selves. So when students blow the standardized tests, those other teachers who may have had a hand in bad test scores can walk away knowing "those are your students, suckers. I won’t be held accountable!"
Beyond the obvious inequities, though, are the high-stakes tests, those ways and means for measuring every child’s learning. To maintain that every child can be reliably tested in the exact same way is to ignore what makes every child unique. To maintain that everything should be taught in exactly the same manner ignores what makes every teacher unique.
Who comes up with this stuff, anyway? That would be the multibillion-dollar corporate education industry. Get a few very wealthy entrepreneurs to say what a child needs to know to succeed, and the education bureaucrats will come running to sign off on it. Bill Gates cannot be wrong. He is a billionaire, after all.
Common Core is uncommonly bad. Standardized testing sets impractical standards.
Come November, there will be a new sheriff in town. Since the superintendent has not changed what has so obviously needed changing, let us hope that whoever is her new boss will undo what has been wrought and start the DOE down a more sensible path to appraise educational accomplishments by our children and their teachers.
Matayoshi’s downfall has been to kowtow to U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, a shill for the education industry, on standardized testing and linking it to teacher evaluations.
By doing so, Matayoshi has been chasing the white rabbit down the hole.
Disillusioned educators all over the country are coming to realize what a farce it all is.
Our "Alice" needs to understand that Wonderland is fictional. And so are the "accomplishments" of the current "education reform."
