For most of my teaching career, I did not belong to a professional organization, such as a teacher’s union. I always rationalized that with a teacher’s salary, I could not afford the dues. So for all those years, I was someone who benefitted from the strength in numbers that the teachers’ union provided, but I […]
evaluations
Posted inFeatured, How to Fix Education, Principals' Corner, Uncategorized
Shifting Our Mindset Around Teacher Evaluations
[fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”] During my first two years teaching I have to admit that I often thought of myself as a bad teacher. But fortunately I had an incredible mentor in my instructional facilitator, […]
Posted inOpinion, School Improvement, Uncategorized
Children Are Not Widgets
In an effort to improve education, many reformers suggest that we use a business approach to evaluate teachers. To do this they suggest that teachers must be rated based on what they “do” for the children that they teach. For many, this means judging the quality of a teacher based on the improvements students make […]
Posted inFeatured, Opinion, School Improvement, Uncategorized
Disproportionate Evaluative Rigor and The Three Laws of Data
[fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”] I promised in a recent post called The Tyranny of the Datum to write about some guiding standards for appropriate data usage, in the spirit of Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws of […]
Posted inUncategorized
The Data Game
By: Brittany Clark On my very first day with Memphis City Schools I was told that I would be teaching all but the 20Â honors English Ten students at my school and their Gateway scores rested on me. I was informed that if all of those students did not pass the Gateway Language Arts exam then […]