Teachers turn out in force for AirTalk's value-added debate

11-22-2010

By Katrina Schwartz & Karen Fritsche/KPCC

Educators, it turns out, don’t mind doing homework. At least the ones who showed up, outside of school hours, for AirTalk’s recent discussion about grading teacher performance. The November 11 event, held in KPCC’s Crawford Family Forum, drew a packed crowd mostly composed of teachers, past and present. In conversation with Larry Mantle, education experts Erik Hanushek and Richard Rothstein explored the pros and cons of various methods used to judge teacher performance, including the hotly debated “value-added” approach, which relies on student test scores. Rothstein, a research associate for the Economic Policy Institute, was firm in his opposition. “We should not publish a partial truth, which, when published alone becomes a falsehood,” he said, drawing cheers and whistles from the crowd at KPCC. “Until we are prepared to do the kind of holistic evaluation that everyone pays lip service to, we shouldn't be publishing part of the story because that has the effect of distorting not only the evaluation of teachers but ... it puts inordinate emphasis on the test scores and distorts the entire curriculum,” Rothstein added. (more…)

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Teachers turn out in force for AirTalk's value-added debate

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