Using Teacher Evaluation to Build Great Teachers

Richard, I'm not repeating a Marxist claim. I'm repeating a trusim that is accepted across all spectrum's of thought. Is there a natural, predictable, and inherent conflict between labor and management? Of course! Where in life is that not the default? Gosh, how many examples to you have of good management creating good economics? It happens, of course. But come on, that's the exception. Mostly, evaluations are just a part of life, like paying the electricity bill or washing dishes. I wouldn't assume that they could be turned into something productive. Evaluations CAN be about good management, but usually they are about a panoply of other things. I, personally, have never been in a workplace where evaluations where useful but that doesn't mean they can't happen. Wouldn't you say that most of the business literature agrees with my statements? In my experience, and in my reading of history and social science, evaluations typically are about power. Richard, if you question my positions - which I don't believe are controversial - it makes curious about whether you've been amazingly lucky in bosses. During my bluecollar career, the bosses' behavior was more dangerous. Trusting management could be fatal. When I think of the things that my bosses used to make us do on the job, I still shudder. And when I read about British Petroleum's abuses in the Gulf and the coal companies' neglect of safety, I see that those deceased workers knew that management was doing the same thing to them as my bosses were doing to us. I was just lucky. In my white collar and academic career, control was asserted nonviolently, but it was passive aggressive. Of course, academia produces incredible excellence, but you are not saying that the excellence comes from evaluations are you? White collar professions produce excellence, as well as deceit. But the greatness is not caused by coercion. In fact, academia is an example of my point. Our achievements are based on peer review. And what I'm now seeing, and reading about, is abusive evaluations of teachers driving teachers out in droves. That being said, evaluations using peer review make a lot of sense. it is extremely important that the bottom 5 to 10% be removed. And if the administrators would not just listen to consultants, but collaborate with pracitioners, we could perhaps improve schools using them.

You had it right at first. For the most part, great teachers are born not made. But they are born/made of a variety of life experiences. We can develop better teachers, but not until we repeal the "reforms" foisted by the NCTQ. The idea of combining evaluations and pd holds promise, but not if either are controlled by management. After all management is born of social patterns as old as the Scriptures and durable as the mountains. Come to think of it, we haven't had much success in training better managers, have we? That's because "Power corrupts .." trumps training. Have you ever heard of examples to the contrary? That being said, combine peer review with evaluations and pd, and maybe we can pull it off. Otherwise, your ideas are far too dangerous. Here's another way of putting it. You are proposing an incredibly risky expedition to a place where humans have not gone. Its like you want to explore Antarctica or climb Everest. But you all are like the old gentlemen explorers who didn't take proper precautions. You all need to rethink your attitude of explore now, plan later.