It might be summer, but the education know-nothings are clearly not at the beach. The latest case-in-point is former CNN correspondent Campbell Brown’s incredibly uninformed comments on teacher tenure that, unfortunately, millions of people saw and didn’t stick around for the fact-checking. Her musings come on the heels of a California decision in which a… Continue reading The Education Reform Silly Season
Category: teacher evaluation
Damn the Teachers, Full Testing Ahead!
So let’s see where we stand at this moment with the brand spanking new teacher evaluation system in New Jersey. This is the law that is going to revolutionize teaching and learning by making sure that students are mastering content and skills and teachers are doing their jobs to ensure learning in the classroom. For… Continue reading Damn the Teachers, Full Testing Ahead!
Hurry Up and Wait: Putting the Brakes on Teacher Evaluation
As if educators, including me, several times, haven’t been clear enough that rushing into an untested teacher evaluation system is a terrible idea, along comes our esteemed Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan to finally get the message: schools need more time to implement, experiment and, yes, evaluate the new system before it becomes operative and… Continue reading Hurry Up and Wait: Putting the Brakes on Teacher Evaluation
The Lesson We Never Learn
After 29 years in the classroom, and with a pretty savvy political sense, if I may be so bold, I consider myself a keen observer of most things educational, but this story about Philadelphia’s schools made me shiver with anger from the first paragraph: Andrew Jackson School too agitated to eat breakfast on Friday, an… Continue reading The Lesson We Never Learn
The Final NJ Teacher Evaluation Rules. Until They Change.
When my colleagues and I met with New Jersey Commissioner of Education Christopher Cerf and his staff in January, he alluded to March 6 as the date when the State Board of Education would be issuing its final rules on teacher evaluation. He reminded us that final rules meant that because of public comments the… Continue reading The Final NJ Teacher Evaluation Rules. Until They Change.