The Controversies Of Evaluating Teachers

Based on the Georgia Department of Education, Georgia has a new way of evaluating all of its teachers. Beginners teachers are held with the same standards as tenured teachers. The evaluation is through Teacher Keys Effectiveness System (TKES) which is consist of three components which gives to an overall Teacher Effectiveness Measure (TEM). First component is Teacher Assessment on Performance Standards (TAPS). The second component is Surveys of Instructional Practice (student perception surveys). Lastly Student Growth Percentile and Student Learning Objective. (SGP and SLO).

As schools across the nation look for a uniform method to evaluate teachers’ performances, concerns about both methods are highlighted. NYC is using the Danielson Framework to evaluate teachers this year; some concerns have been brought up by administrators and the teachers union. In the piliot program it was noted by one administrator that “some of her teachers are not scoring as high on the rubric as she would expect — precisely because the rubric expects the same general characteristics in all grades” (Cromidas, 2012). This is because in the Danielson Framework the observer is looking for weather a teacher is doing the behavior or not. Check mark - there is no distinction between a new teacher and a veteran teacher. The other thing that administrators are noting that the “practicing observing teachers using Danielson had proved to be time-consuming” (Cromidas, 2012). It is recommend that they observer spends a number of informal observations lasting at least 15 minutes in the classroom before the official observation and that the report be turned around in 48 hours to the teacher.

Elizabeth Public Schools (Union County) is the fourth largest by enrollment district in the State of New Jersey. Approximately, there are 23.000 students enrolled in the school system. There are 31 schools in the district.

Educational policies guide professional practice. By developing policies, agencies determine appropriate courses of action to aid individuals in applying a set of procedures in a systematic and equitable manner. My essay describes the Spotsylvania County Public School’s (SCPS) policy on Teacher Evaluation and traces its roots through the various levels of regulatory entities. In order to provide a rich context, pertinent case law and applicable literature in terms of the topic is also presented within the essay.

Just like this week’s content, my school is a “mixed bag” of evaluations. First, we have our Head Start Program, which is federally funded, so they have their own evaluations. These evaluations consist of “board members” coming in to evaluate/assess the teacher and classroom as well as meetings that the teacher and her paraprofessional have to attend every other month. These meetings help them focus on the current curriculum that their program has in place to ensure that the program is doing what it is meant to do.

School districts should have mentors that continue to support new and intermediate teachers. Educators are the people who are responsible for so many facets of a child’s success, and generally spend more time with them than parents Monday- Friday. Standards should be set at a national level, set high so that our children at no longer graduating from High school with subpar knowledge as compared to our global society. Our children and our teachers deserve a restructuring of the educational system that will support effective teachers and weed out non- effective ones. Lowering our academic outcomes to appease standardized testing that is required is not producing well rounded, well spoken, critical thinking graduates, our kids are not ready for higher learning or real life scenarios because the emphasis of a quality education has fallen waist side. Once, we were the nation to whom others compared their systems to, as of today this is no longer the case. We are no longer the baseline of measurement as we have fallen below the global

This second protest, regarding women’s rights and equality, was named “A Day Without Women”. In an article about pay equity and discrimination published by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, it became apparent that women make up about half of the workforce and receive more college and graduate degrees than men, yet, a full-time year round female worker made 20% less than a male working in the same position. This is the case in almost every occupation in existence. According the research on the gender wage gap performed by IWPR, it will take until 2059 for White women to reach equal pay, 2124 for Black women, and until 2248 for Hispanic women. Women are continuously undermined in society and seen as the more emotional, irrational, and weaker species of humans, when women are the driving force of nation in

According to standardized tests, Brookside Elementary School in Norwalk, Conn. was one of thousands of schools labeled as "failing" during the 2010-11 school year (Berger). As thousands of schools such as this one struggle to “meet the demands of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001”, educators began to wonder what they should teach their students. Since the NCLB's passage, standardized tests have been used to evaluate public schools across the U.S. Unfortunately, the flaws in standardized tests have become apparent after 14 years, particularly how it limits the ability to measure student achievement, how it unfairly evaluates teachers, how it narrows the curriculum, and how it places stress on students.

I can explain in my own words what the median is and I will be able to find the median for a set of class-created data.

Across the United States, policymakers determine evaluation systems for public school educators. Used as a tool for increasing teacher effectiveness and accountability, teacher evaluation systems vary from state to state as determined by individual state departments of Education. According to Sergiovanni & Starrat (2002), the role of the evaluation process is important in developing teachers’ instruction, which should contribute to academic achievement of students. Evaluation should provide meaningful feedback to teachers, to improve instructional practices and support learning (Kelley and Maslow, 2012).

Mrs. Campbell states “ I was not scoring where I wanted to with questions like “ I feel comfortable with asking my teacher for help”, or “My teacher really cares about me” I was below average, I don't want to be below average”. This shows how it can change the connection between students and teachers , like Ms. Campbell stated she was below average and didn't want to be, that gives her a chance to change. Although, teachers might get their feelings hurt when they get a bad grade. However, they could benefit from it as well because it can help them see where they need to improve in their teaching. According to Eric S. Taylor and John H. Tyler schools who have completed the evaluation are seeing results, “A student instructed by a teacher after that teacher has been through the Cincinnati evaluation will score about 11 percent of a standard deviation higher in math than a similar student taught by the same teacher before the teacher was evaluated”. For instance if more schools around the world were to complete these evaluations we would see rapid improvement everywhere. Finally, I believe that we should grade/evaluate teachers too. If we do start grading teachers around the the world some changes we would see are improvement it the teachers skills, when a teacher can not help a struggling student, and the connection between teachers and students. This is a very important topic

I believe the author makes a valid argument when he makes the claim that teachers can learn more from peer coaches than administrative evaluators. In the last year my principal observed my teaching twice. A couple of other administrators came into my room, but most left without giving me any feedback. In order for teachers to grow, they must be giving information that will take their teaching to the next level. On my campus, I think that the administrators do not value the observation process. It has become more of a chore. They are required to visiting several classrooms each week and try to do so as quickly as possible. When feedback is giving, it is merely checkmarks or one word responses such as: engaged, in zone, whole group. In previous years, I was giving a question to ponder after an observation. One such question was, “How do help your team create open-ended high-order thinking questions?” Although this was a thoughtful question, it was not related to any of my annual goals, nor was ever brought up during my summative conference. It seemed like no one cared about the reflection I had done or the plans I made to address the issue. Teachers are turned off by experiences such as this which are disrespectful.

Initially, education was not recognized as a professional discipline or field of study. Teachers were considered community servants instead of professional educators. Local government officials and members of the clergy were responsible for hiring teachers and making judgments about their teaching abilities. It was believed that clergymen were the best choices for this role due to their extensive levels of education and their alleged ability to guide religious instruction in schools (Tracy, 1995). “Individual supervisors or supervisory committees were responsible for overseeing the quality of instruction. These supervisors had nearly unlimited power to establish criteria for effective instruction and to hire and fire teachers” (Burke & Krey, 2005). Since there was no consensus on the importance or qualifications of educational expertise, the type and quality of feedback that teachers received varied significantly.

“There is an unequivocal correlation between student achievement and teacher quality.” Direct supervision and evaluation of teachers should effectively address teacher quality, and thereby effect student learning and achievement. Bret Range, an associate professor of educational leadership at the University of Wyoming has written two papers and maintains a blog related to teacher supervision. His research indicates, “the key to teacher development lies within well-planned teacher supervisory activities.”

QUESTION 2: “THE NOBLE PROFESSION” – THE PURPOSE AND IMPORTANCE OF ASSESSMENT IN THE SOUTH AFRICAN CURRICULUM