Anyone familiar with education would not be surprised that 5,000 Boston Public School teachers haven’t been evaluated. Anyone familiar with the Boston Globe shouldn’t be surprised with a Globe headline giving the BPS a failing grade. And anyone familiar with the Massachusetts educational establishment (the network of think tanks, interest groups, policy-makers, and the Globe Editors) shouldn’t be surprised that the Globe gets first dibs on a report commissioned by the Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education and carried out by the controversial, anti-union Nation Council for Teacher Quality.
It’s a well-established tactic: give the Globe the opportunity to spin a report before the rest of the public gets to see it. The untitled report (embargoed until Thursday for us mere mortals) mentioned in today’s paper provides grist for the Globe. The real newflash in this article is that this isn’t a newsflash:
A new state law that bolsters a superintendent’s ability to fire teachers at underperforming schools could be undermined in Boston because administrators routinely neglect a basic task: evaluating teachers.
About half the city’s approximately 5,000 teachers have not received an evaluation in the past two years, and a quarter of the city’s 135 schools have not conducted evaluations during that period, according to a report commissioned by the Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education that was provided to the Globe yesterday.
Under the law, superintendents can terminate teachers at a failing school only for “good cause,” elevating the importance of job evaluations to provide evidence for dismissal or as a way for teachers to challenge their firings.
The findings could also affect the debate in Boston on merit pay for outstanding teachers. Without regular evaluations, Boston leaders could face accusations of favoritism when determining which teachers should be rewarded.
You’d think all of those folks calling for merit pay would have some idea of how teacher evaluations work and why it is so difficult just to put in place an effective system to evaluate teachers.
You’d think that lawmakers might have had a better handle on the evaluation systems in the Commonwealth’s schools before passing a law to fire teachers who needed it.
But no, that would mean someone besides educators would have to actually know something about education.
I look forward to the release of the NCTQ report.
Mark
nicely done Mark. This line really hits home to me.
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p>Actually the Legislature’s recent debate on education reform,including the informal briefings and the formal hearings was deep, wide, intense and highly charged with sometimes conflicting information coming from the administration, special task forces, parent groups, teacher’s unions, charter school advocates and opponents and literally dozens of other stakeholders (even kids)who blanketed the State House with piles and piles of fact sheets, briefing papers, petitions and personal notes.
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p>And I’m sure they heard a lot about the difficulties with professional evaluations of teachers which they had to integrate with their own personal experiences with good and bad teachers. I heard about it around the building and I wasn’t even involved.
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p>Him:”I mean what’s the big deal. I must have had 50 teachers from kindergarten to law school, and I know who was good and who was bad. Good ones should get paid more. Bad ones should be fired.”
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p>Me: sigh……………
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p>I remember leaving the State House on the day of the vote on education reform and being very grateful I didn’t have to vote on an issue with the reformers from my district on one side and the front line teachers from my district on the other.
…instead of the letter in today’s paper, which follows the supposedly impartial article’s lead and blames teachers for the shortcomings of school administrators. The letter also illogically suggests the BTU was obligated to “work with” the Mass. Business Alliance for Education.
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p>I’m glad I get to read something logical and well-reasoned here, but I do wish this kind of writing and thinking was available to a wider audience.
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p>And I agree with Judy. You hit the nail on the head about craziness of passing a law making it easier to fire teachers who might not be getting the feedback and/or support they need.
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p>Our throwaway society is unsustainable, whether we’re throwing away too much paper and plastic, or throwing away people who might be able to do a better job with some thoughtful mentoring, training and support and yes, evaluation!
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p>And just where are all the replacement teachers waiting to swoop in and take the places of the throwaways?
has as much experience with education as a lot of policy-makers: he appears to have gone to college; and my googling suggests he is attending Suffolk University Law School.
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p>I give the kid credit for writing to the Globe. I’m not sure I expect much more than spouting the party line when the writer is 23 or so.
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p>Mark
Here’s a doozy in today’s lead Globe editorial
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p>I wonder whose estimates those would be? Must be nice to be able to pull stuff like that out of thin air to justify your preconceived solution: merit pay.
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p>Will the next Boston Foundation-promoted solution be a businesslike proposal to periodically eliminate the bottom 10-15% based on test scores?