The Education Wars: More Anti-Teacher Bullshit [Updated]

from the New York Times, which thinks turncoat "union" head Randi Weingarten's proposed sellout for teachers is just what is needed to "reform" education:

The shortcomings of evaluations were laid out last year in an eye-opening study by a New York research group, the New Teacher Project. Where they can be said to exist at all, evaluations are typically short, pro forma and almost universally positive. Poorly trained evaluators visit the classroom once or twice for observations that last for a total of an hour or less. Nearly every teacher passes and the overwhelming majority of teachers receive top ratings. Yet more than half the teachers surveyed said they knew a tenured teacher who deserved to be dismissed for poor performance.

The process shortchanges students, who are saddled with ineffective teachers. It also hurts the careers of the talented beginners who rarely get the help and guidance they need to become master teachers.

WHO is to determine who is "ineffective"? And what about the assholes who are running the schools, the principals? Of course they can do whatever they want, which they do anyway, with the full support of the district, the taxpayers, and the court system.

And WHO founded the "New Teacher Project"? Why it is none other than D.C. chancellor and tyrant Michelle Rhee. Consider the source, which the paper did not.

Update: But Diane Ravitch says Weingarten didn't say what the media said she said, whatever it was she said:

First, states should set out clear professional standards that describe clearly what teachers should know and be able to do. Then, to determine whether teachers meet these standards, districts should use "multiple means of evaluation," including classroom observations, self-evaluations, portfolio reviews, appraisal of lesson plans," and a variety of other tools, including student test scores. But the scores should be based on "valid and reliable assessments" and they should not be derived "by comparing the scores of last year's students with the scores of this year's students, but by assessing whether a teacher's students show real growth while in his classroom."

What this means is that districts would have to test students when they enter a specific classroom in the fall and again at the end of the school year to see how much progress they have made in that teacher's class. Hardly any district does this now. Most do exactly what Randi said was inappropriate: They test students in the spring and compare this year's students to last year's students. This is not a reasonable way to measure the teacher's effectiveness, since the groups will vary considerably from year to year.

Randi also said, as part of her package of prescriptions, that the goal of evaluation was not merely to identify teachers who were good or bad, but to help teachers get better at their work throughout their careers. So she proposed that every district should offer "solid induction, mentoring, ongoing professional development, and career opportunities that keep great teachers in the classroom."

Of course a lot of districts are doing that now. It's not going to stop the privatizers from continuing their dirty work.

Here is her speech:



It fucking pisses me off though that most AFT members according to a survey she mentions in her speech don't seem to understand that you HAVE to have protections from wrongful dismissal and that is MORE important than namby-pamby courses to make them more professional in their teaching. Do these teachers REALLY believe that if they take all of this "professional development," that it is going to stop asshole principals from coming after them?

If asshole administrators are after you, no amount of teacher development classes is going to save you. You are fucked, completely and totally fucked because of the way the public school system is set up, which goes out of their way to help administrators.