In my recent paper, The Evergreen Effect, I show that nearly every employee in Washington school districts—including all teachers, principals, superintendents, and school support staff like janitors and librarians—is given a satisfactory performance evaluation. The problems with this seem self-evident to me and, as I articulate in the piece, if an employer can’t differentiate between their emplContinue Reading »

In a new Education Sector Chart You Can Trust, I show that Washington’s motto as “The Evergreen State” applies not just to an abundance of evergreen coniferous trees, but also to the state’s school districts, which almost never identify low-performing employees. Across all districts statewide, only a minuscule number of employees were deemed unsatisfactory: 0.92 percent of teachers, 1.42 percenContinue Reading »

Poor grades. StudentsFirst, Michelle Rhee’s organization, has ranked states based on education policy. Not one state got an A, and 11 received Fs. (StudentsFirst.org)

Getting evaluation right. Georgia officials aren’t happy with the results from its new teacher evaluation pilot, saying ratings are “skewed to the positive.” Principals and teachers will receive more training. (Get SchooledContinue Reading »

Questioning the validity of value-added. A new study, to be presented next month, argues that “a teacher could, in effect, boost his or her value-added score simply by teaching all higher-level courses.” (Education Week)

The value of strong school leaders. A highly effective principal can raise student achievement by 2-7 months of learning in one school year, according to this study. (EdContinue Reading »

“I would love to have the students grade the teachers at the end of the year as opposed to just the other way around so that teachers get feedback,” Mitt Romney told an audience at the NBC News “Education Nation” Summit in New York a few weeks ago. To a lot of education policy insiders, that seemed to be reference to the increasing use of student surveys as an additional measure for evaluating Continue Reading »

Education in Election 2012. The Obama and Romney campaigns are debating this week at eduwonk.com. Just as many polls show the race as essentially even, so are the Eduwonk postings, with one apiece.

Teaming up. Fourteen school districts in one New Jersey county get together to split costs and training for a new teacher evaluation system. (Hunterdon Democrat)

“This is no time for huContinue Reading »

Last week, Education Nation closed the summit with interviews from President Obama and Governor Romney. The candidates seemed to agree more than they disagreed—in fact, Brian Williams asked Governor Romney if he would retain Arne Duncan as Secretary of Education for a Romney presidency. Performance pay was one area where President Obama and Governor Romney were closely aligned. “There should beContinue Reading »

What does it take to get teachers so angry that they are willing to let more than 350,000 public school students go uneducated for days? In Chicago, where striking public school teachers have done just that, it took more than money, although the teachers want more of that, too. What Chicago’s 25,000 teachers are really up in arms about, along with demands to work a longer school day, is a new sContinue Reading »

Like many policy issues, using student test scores in teacher evaluation is an iceberg—reasonably easy to understand on the surface, but incredibly complex once you dive deeper. The challenge starts with writing an individual test item and ends with the statistical quagmire of value-added models. The 44th annual PDK/Gallup poll on how Americans view public education asked whether they would supContinue Reading »

In Trending Toward Reform, we highlighted how teachers’ opinions have changed since 2007. Teachers are more open to some differentiated pay proposals, believe that tenure is becoming more meaningful, and see evaluation as improving. But sometimes what has not changed is just as important.

What’s stayed the same since 2007? How teachers believe their principal would act if faced with a peContinue Reading »