From the CNN article “Commission urges tracking of teacher progress,” notes about a “special commission” involved in the revision of NCLB:

Teachers should be evaluated annually based on progress in the test scores of their students, the panel said. Reviews by colleagues or school principals also would be part of the equation for determining teacher quality.

My first problem is that I don’t know who the members of this “special commission” are. Anyone? Any actual teachers involved?

At any rate, I do think teachers should be individually evaluated, and that their job security should be directly connected to that ongoing evaluation. The problem is that the evaluation would rest on (multiple-choice) test scores–tests that the students are taking, not the teachers.

In both cases, the tool we use to evaluate–both student progress and teacher effectiveness–isn’t appropriate given the weight attached to the results. If you’re going to withdraw federal funds and pull teachers from their jobs, then the methods you use to justify such actions should be comprehensive and accurate. A few high-stakes, multiple-choice tests don’t meet that standard.

The report also recommends closing a loophole under the law that has allowed states to set aside the scores of specific groups of students.

Again, some good and bad. Schools should be responsible for all students, but the method of assessment needs to be appropriate to what’s being assessed. A student who enters the system in 6th grade speaking little English should not be expected to reach the same level as a native English speaking student who has been in the system all six years. However, there should be ways to monitor the progress of that new student, and the school should be responsible for helping him/her improve. Will the revised law take factors like this into consideration?

Added as a bullet at the end of the article:

The federal government should create national standards and national tests and create an incentive for states to use those.

Removing more and more local control. The problem with this approach is the same problem with the way NCLB has been implemented so far: the assumption that there is one right way to “do” education, and therefore only one necessary way to assess it.

Individualized instruction, local control and community concerns, multi-modal learning and assessment, and an awareness of the importance of understanding, application, context, and relevance or of anything beyond “facts” and a shallow accumulation of knowledge all seem to be in great jeopardy.

The intent behind all of this seems right: accountability of schools and teachers to ensure they are doing their best to prepare students for a successful future. Who would argue with that? The methods, however, are simplistic, ill-informed, and counter-productive. In a word: incompetent.

Coyote would never stand for any of this …

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