History of IDEA
Jeannie Oakes, Founder and Former Director
Youth Voice in School Finance
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Without Dollars and Sense Powerpoint
Past Educational Opportunity Reports
Needed: Fresh thinking on teacher accountability
- 06-08-2010
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By James W. Stigler/Education Week (subscription required)
James W. Stigler is a professor of psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles, and a senior partner at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.
U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Bill Gates have both thrown their support behind a new accountability system for teachers. Based on research showing significant variability in teachers’ effectiveness (as measured by their students’ learning), Duncan and Gates propose developing measures of effectiveness to get rid of bad teachers and increase the pay of good ones. It sounds like common sense. Or does it? This approach was called the “inspection” method by W. Edwards Deming, known as the father of the science of quality improvement. Inspection, he wrote, is not an effective way to improve quality because it has no effect on the process that caused suboptimal results in the first place. (more...)
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