Department of Sleeping with the Enemy

[HiPointDem]

Six Steps to Effective Teacher Development and Evaluation Sponsored by Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and American Federation of Teachers

BY VICKI PHILLIPS AND RANDI WEINGARTEN

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/112746/gates-foundation-sponsored-effective-teaching

[Smarmie Doofus]

1. "Sponsored Content"? I don't believe I've heard that one before.

Does that mean he *pays* them to run the article?

"Sponsored content." Sheeezz.

I would have assumed the article was paid for anyway, frankly. Maybe it speaks well of TNR that it feels it has acknowledge the remuneration.

It appears other Gates collaborators feel no such compunction.

[duffyduff]

2. Is there any doubt at all Randi Weingarten is a mole for the reformers

to infiltrate and destroy a major teachers' union from within?

She's totally unqualified to head it anyway. She is a lawyer by trade, not an educator. Her sole contracted teaching experience was for five or six months some twenty years ago. What other classroom experience she had was as a substitute teacher, which isn't the same thing as being a regular, contracted teacher.

[Ka hrnt]

3. My brief take...

1. Match high expectations with high levels of support.

Duh. A bunch of empty business words/bromides.

2. Include evidence of teaching and student learning from multiple sources.

Again, Duh. At least they are admitting that test scores don't help much. (And of course, they are relying on "gains" being the sole result of the teacher. The largest influences (parents and the students themselves) are still left out of the equation.)

3. Use information to provide constructive feedback to teachers, as befits a profession, not to shame them.

I support this.

4. Create confidence in the quality of teacher development and evaluation systems and the school’s ability to implement them reliably.

Ugh. No system will ever work well because you're trying to measure something that is next to impossible to measure. And it's far too variable to measure with any repeatability. There are two paths: a generic system that isn't particularly useful or a very specific system that also isn't useful. If you want a "system" that works, you need to recognize that someone teaching 2nd grade reading is going to have to do things very differently than a high school chemistry teacher. But since they want a standard evaluation, you need to go with the generic system. Instead, we get ridiculous garbage like the Marzano system.

5. Align teacher development and evaluation to the Common Core State Standards.

Why? How is this going to improve education? Is there ANY evidence it will significantly change things (other than making it easier to sell standardized tests) for the better?

6. Adjust the system over time based on new evidence, innovations, and feedback.

I agree, because we'll need to throw away all these current useless fads (see #4 and #5 above, for examples).