How to measure a teacher's effectiveness

A funny thing happened to me when I spotted a blog posting this a.m.:

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2010/08/what-makes-for-an-effective-teacher/61565/

In this posting, the author describes in colorful language the upcoming "outing" of bad teachers in LA by the LA Times. What's in store is a public posting of standardized test scores and how teachers rank. Ouch! I found this development disturbing. So I answered this guy as follows:

"Wow! I am a future educator being schooled in the midwest, and I'm taking in all the wild changes around me. Hard for me to believe that we are posting teachers's "effectiveness" publicly, as if this were part of a crime-watch series.

How students fare on standardized tests is often a reflection on their socioeconomic status, and perhaps how diligently their state, district, or school reinforces test-taking. Must we resort to this "got ya" mentality to produce world class American workers? I hope not, or we may force more great people to leave the teaching profession (or not enter it at all).

I'm all for accountability - and perhaps standardized tests should make up one component of assessing teacher effectiveness - but this big stick approach creates a culture of fear and resentment. Trust me, I just left the working world, where "perfect execution" was the mantra. The result: low morale, fear of making mistakes, mediocrity.

We all want high motivation, innovation and fast results in our schools. How about we set aside the politics and posturing and focus on solutions that we can all celebrate? It's our future we're playing Russian Roulette with."

I rest my case.

--Joe

P.S. Technology suggestion: Let's plant a chip in every teacher's brain to measure their time spent on cognitive activities. We can plot that on an x/y axis against time. This will measure both efficacy and efficiency.

What are you doing for your summer vacation?

Thanks for asking.

I've been very busy writing papers which are due this month. I'm trying to get ahead so I can actually relax for a week or two this month. I finally have time to read real live books too, so I am relishing some Faulkner now: As I Lay Dying. Wow, what a whiz he was with dialogue and interior dialogue.

On the sidelines I've been watching the political battles over funding of public jobs such as teachers, firemen, policemen, etc. I am grateful that at least some of our representatives have the courage to do the right thing for this country. The dollars allocated to Michigan are woefully inadequate ($319 MM), but at least there is some relief on the way.

Since our last class on Friday, July 30, I've been giving a lot of thought to what the former MAC'ers were saying about the job market, their advice on getting our portfolios together early, and of course, their use of creativity and technology to keep their students engaged. To me that was a perfect way to end the summer session. It gets us out of the forest, so we can think big picture about how we will use this amazing program to launch our careers as teachers.

In the meantime I'm checking out blogs on technology when I can find them. The latest I saw documents an inner city teacher's frustration with trying to execute a great unit in English using laptops. Unfortunately, he was thwarted by numerous obstacles such as broken laptops, restricted internet access, inconsistency of software loaded onto the machines, and so on. I will definitely take the oft-mentioned advice to connect with the media resource person. Lucky that I will have one where I'm headed. I'll keep my fingers crossed that they have all kinds of under-utilized devices that I can make use of.

Otherwise, thank God for A/C. I melt in this humidity and heat. I am very excited about getting into the classrooms in less than a month!

Rest up, folks.

--Joe