Houston's teacher evaluation policy
National Journal
Despite fierce opposition from the local teachers union, the Houston Independent School District approved a policy last week to use value-added test scores, a statistical method used to measure teachers' and schools' impact on students' academic progress rates from year to year, as one of the criteria for teacher evaluation and teacher dismissal (some details about the policy are available here and here). This means that roughly 400 of the district's 13,000 teachers may be eligible for dismissal as a result of their students' poor performance on tests. (more...)