Teacher Ratings

Kliphnote: How long have I been saying "tenure has no place in public schools"? You want tenure teach at a private school or collage.

They already have a union to protect them. 

Remember, tax payers( me and you) are paying the bill.

Any worker, (teacher, tool & die maker, laborer, etc) who can't do 

their job should be fired. BTW that means most politicians.

IBD Editorials

 

Unions Detest Them, But Teacher Ratings Here To Stay

 Posted 06:30 PM ET

Education: Unions rail against releasing performance data on teachers, but the trend in reform is not on their side. Ability can be measured, and parents should know the results.

What makes a good teacher, seniority and credentials or the ability to impart knowledge and skills? The answer should be obvious, but only recently has it made its way into public policy.

Rating teachers by how well they actually teach, which strikes us as nothing more than common sense, has turned out to be hugely controversial. And if anyone dares reveal this data to parents, the unions go nuclear.

Union leaders had fought in court for a year to stop last week's release of ratings on some 18,000 New York City public school teachers and about 200 teachers at charter schools. They finally lost to news organizations, but the big winners were parents. They now have data showing how well many (though not all) of the city's teachers fare in a so-called "value-added" ranking.

This is just one tool used to assess teachers, but it may be the most objective. It rates teachers based on their students' test scores, correcting for factors such as race, class size, absenteeism and family income.

The idea is to focus on what difference the teacher makes, amid all those other forces that influence a student's learning.

Is this an exact science? Not yet, but it's getting there. Its main problem is inadequate data, not flaws in its method. Testing at this point covers too few subjects and too few students. The New York ratings were based only on reading and math scores in fourth through eighth grades — which is why they covered only about 20% of the city's teachers.

But data gaps like these can be filled with new technologies and more sophisticated methods of tracking students' progress. The tools for measuring teacher effectiveness are not bad now and are bound to get much better. The bottom line for unions is that teacher rating of some kind is here to stay, and that it will — sooner or later — be a factor in teacher pay.

The furious reactions to last week's release of the New York City ratings suggest that unions have some way to go before they adapt to this unfamiliar new world. Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers, lashed out at Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who backed release of the teacher data and has rankled the union by trying to close low-performing schools and promoting charters.

"What I'm going to do now," Mulgrew told the New York Times, "is to stop the mayor from doing any further damage to the children of New York City."

Time will tell if teachers are mad enough to strike over this issue, but if they do, they may not get much sympathy from the public, even in union-friendly New York. Most occupations, of course, link pay and promotions to performance. In this respect, teaching is just starting to catch up with the rest of the working world.

Unions have a choice to make here. They can embrace the teacher evaluation effort in good faith — that is, not paying mere lip service to the concept while rejecting any serious application of it. That would put them on the side of quality.

Or they can dig in their heels and stick to their long-held belief that it's unfair to tie pay to performance. This will help cement their reputation as guardians of the incompetent. If that's their choice, we wish them the best of luck with a grateful public.