Evaluating Teachers Based On Student Test Scores is Bullshit

Former professor and education expert David Berliner doesn't say it in that way, but he says basically it is b.s., but with a ton of evidence to back up his assertions.

From August:

The Education Wars: Evaluating Teachers, Students, and Schools

David Berliner, who was written extensively on the issue of public education, looks at the sheer stupidity of NCLB and "evaluations" of test taking by students as keys to get teachers and schools to "shape up" or be fired or closed. It takes an idiot like Arne Duncan to not understand that kids are evaluated all the time, but formal testing really doesn't accomplish anything, especially given the reality kids don't take the tests seriously.

The Education Wars II

Perhaps Teach for America isn't very good preparation for classroom teaching, but it's pretty good preparation for being a dipshit administrator. Case in point: the horrid Michelle Rhee, head of D.C. schools.

As Berliner notes, "To become expert at teaching requires five to seven years." However, at "five to seven years," teachers receive tenure, or, even more important, retirement benefits after five years with a district (assuming the teacher doesn't have service credit from other statewide agencies, including other school districts). School administrators increasingly are tossing teachers out for petty excuses covering up the fact they want to save on retirement costs. New teachers are being denied tenure, and senior teachers are being cheated out of their full retirement benefits when administrators create false cases against them in order to toss them out.

In short, Teach for America is the present and future of public education in America. Once again, the students are being screwed over.