After evaluating students, principals, and schools, test scores to rate teachers, too

Posted by Philissa at 11:52 AM

Since the DOE has demonstrated that it will do whatever it wants, a good way to predict future DOE initiatives is to pay attention to what DOE officials say ought to be done. So when DOE bigwig Christopher Cerf participates on a panel about the "dismal" state of teacher evaluations and decries teachers' "deep antipathy" to being evaluated in a meaningful way, we can assume that somewhere inside Tweed, someone is thinking about new ways to rate teachers. Unfortunately for those of us who think the influence of test scores should be limited, Cerf also said he is "unapologetic that test scores must be a central component of evaluation,"
Education Week reports from the panel.

In fact, Cerf said at the panel that DOE leaders are working on an evaluation system that will look at how far teachers raise their students' test scores. As I recall, one of the papers presented at the Research Partnership conference in October drew on data that showed how far individual students progressed within each classroom, so evidently the bones for such a system must already exist. I imagine the larger obstacle for the DOE will be getting the UFT to agree to use a new evaluation system that relies on hard data instead of observation by other teachers. Of course, the UFT hasn't been much of an impediment to any of the DOE's other initiatives, even when those initiatives appeared not to be in the best interest of teachers.