One can get lost in the sea of editorials and commentaries on education and educational reform. It seems that nearly everybody, no matter what walk of life, has an opinion on how our nation's schools and teachers are performing. So when I came across the Top 10 Opinion Essays of 2012 published by Education Week I figured they were worth a look (some of them for my second time).
The most frequently read article was titled Value Added Evaluation Hurts Teaching. This immediately captured my attention because of my passion for improving teacher quality and my experience with performance based compensation. In this article, Linda Darling-Hammond, author and Professor of Education at Stanford University, lays out her case against teachers being evaluated and rewarded based on student test scores. Instead she makes a case for a teacher evaluation system that is designed on the premise of rigorous, on-going assessment of classroom practice by "teaching experts."
Based on my experience, I can't help but believe that there is an effective way to combine both into an evaluation system that supports teachers in improving their practice as well as measures student achievement growth based on those practices.
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2012/03/05/24darlinghammond_ep.h31.html?tkn=WSMFkBB1JZ4QAr9lABQIX42ND5MtaGVfNBk5&cmp=clp-edweek
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