Teachers Walk Out On Strike!
The emotions of a strike are sure to supersede the rational negotiations. However, this struck me as interesting:
Lewis said among the issues of concern was a new evaluation that she said would be unfair to teachers because it relied too heavily on students’ standardized test scores and does not take into account external factors that affect performance, including poverty, violence and homelessness.
I’ve often encountered this line of reasoning when discussing teacher evaluations. First, I find it unfathomable that an educated group of experts who routinely adjudicate proficiency of very subjective materials find it completely out of the realm of possibility to measure the effectiveness of teachers themselves. Second, if they are unwilling to allow themselves to be measured on their effectiveness based on poverty, violence and homelessness, can we expect them to adjust grades so that such impacts are taken into account?
For example, I’ve heard that teachers won’t accept performance based measurements because, “a dog may be barking during the test.” Yet, are these same teachers willing to change the test scores of those kids subjected to the barking dog?
Utter nonsense.