Very interrresssting.
Remember the smoking Nazi guy from “Laugh-In” who used to say,
“Very interesting”
That was my reaction as I read this article in the Daily Herald yesterday.
It is so typical of Illinois school politics.
The Federal government is trying to bribe states to improve teacher evaluations.
So, states like Illinois are rushing to pass laws that might put them in the Winner’s Circle.
Last week Illinois passed a law to impose tougher evaluations for school teachers and administrators. These standards will evaluate how their students perform.
BUT, parents and taxpayers won’t be able to see the evaluations.
The General Assembly and Governor Pat Quinn have exempted the evaluations from Freedom of Information requests.
Isn't that special?
How typical?
And how symptomatic of how powerful the Illinois Education Association and the Illinois Federation of Teachers are.
Perhaps the Church Lady from “Saturday Night Live” had a more appropriate comment:
“Isn’t that special?”
“Public employees first” ought to be the new slogan for the State of Illinos.
One commenting reader suggested the Bell Curve would look funny with 85% of the teachers being rated “excellent.”
As a teacher, this is a difficult situation. My co teacher did a very good job her first year in getting her upper level students to pass the state tests. So..to reward her, they gave her the worst students the next year–3 of whom came in wearing ankle bracelets. This year, we have some students who care, and whose parents care, and others who are absent most of the time and try to sleep when they are there. If one was to look at my co teacher’s scores, one would have to assume that she had become a poor teacher. Some schools zero base their teacher populations if many students do not pass the tests. My suggestion is to zero base the parents. I think there would be a better correlation. I teach special ed. If I were to be given raises on the basis of my student’s scores on the state tests, I would never get a raise. People would soon learn that being a special ed teacher is a sure bet to stay at the bottom of the totem pole salary wise. This is a difficult problem and my feeling is that judging teachers by the scores their students get is a poor, at best, way of doing so.