Let's unleash all data on teachers: U.S. secretary of education asks, What's there to hide?

08-30-2010

Opinion by Arne Duncan/New York Daily News Arne Duncan is the current U.S. Secretary of Education

Everyone agrees that our teacher evaluation system is broken. In many districts, 99% of teachers are rated satisfactory and most evaluations ignore the most important measure of a teacher's success - which is how much their students have learned. That's a tragedy. Teachers want - and need - this information. Teachers also worry that their job security and salaries will be tied to the results of a bubble test that is largely disconnected from the material they are teaching. No one thinks test scores should be the only factor in teacher evaluations, and no one wants to evaluate teachers based on a single test on a single day. But looking at student progress over time, in combination with other factors like peer review and principal observation, can lead to a culture shift in our schools where we finally take good teaching as seriously as the profession deserves. This is a complicated and emotional issue for teachers, and it just got more emotional in the past 10 days with a series of articles on teacher quality published by the Los Angeles Times. (more…)

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Let's unleash all data on teachers: U.S. secretary of education asks, What's there to hide?

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