Yesterday I attended the presentation by State Supt. of Public Instruction in Columbia City. The most interesting part (to me), on school and teacher evaluation and accountability, was given by a member of his staff (impressive), who came out of "Teach America". She descibed a model based on student growth as well as their achievement level. Each student's growth would be compared to students at the same level across the state. So district, school and teacher effectiveness would be rated on how much improvement they could generate starting from the same baseline.
They're still working on the exact formula. But Dr. Bennett did point out that with the current checklist systems, 99% of teachers' performances are rated as satisfactory. In other words the current evaluations are subjective and meaningless. He claims 97% of Indiana teachers said they would prefer an objective evaluation.
They also proposed rating high schools' performance according to their ability to prepare students for work and college. That part is also a work in progress. They just changed from using the Graduating Qualifying Exam in the fall to the End of Course Exam in the spring, so high school evaluation is already in a state of flux. The three FWCS high schools now in trouble with the state could be in limbo until this gets sorted out. That may be exactly what they were hoping for to take the pressure off for a while.
Whether Dr. Bennett can get his program past the ISTA (Indiana StatusQuo Teachers' Association) remains to be seen. They wasn't a lot of applause in the room.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment