The article I found this week is about a new teacher
evaluation system for New York. The article breaks down a bunch of different
techniques to evaluate a teacher. Some of the parts of this evaluation include
the common things such as student growth evaluation, and administrator
evaluation. But the things I like about this evaluation are the involvement of
students and outside observers. I think that the students have the most
valuable opinion when it comes to if the teacher is doing their job because
they are with that teacher everyday. The principle might come in and observe
but in some instances the teacher could have a lesson plan only on the days the
principle is there. The students also are the ones who have to take what the
teacher is saying and be tested on it therefore their word should be taken into
consideration when it comes to the evaluation.
Another thing that I like about this evaluation system is
the use of peer observations. This quote from Michael Loeb, special education teacher, says it best, “ As a classroom teacher, I want to be part
of a school with an open-door philosophy. I want to be able to walk into a colleague’s room
at any time and have any teacher do the same for me. The teachers at my school
are my allies - I need their help and they need mine so that we all become the
best teachers we can be for our students.” Teacher to teacher evaluations could
be very useful to make the building work as a team, which I believe is very
important.
Some of the things that the new teacher evaluation system
for New York should include are what happens when the requirements are not met.
Although teacher unions have a strict policy when it comes to this I believe
that we can learn something from Teach for America. The time spent training
every teacher could help when unions prevent schools from firing bad teachers,
the could have the option of sending them to a intense training session that
could refresh their lesson plans. If the teacher then comes back and fails
another evaluation the unions could allow the school to fire the teacher
because they have tried to make the teacher better and it still hasn’t worked.
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