How should we rate our teachers?

[dem mba]

In light of the LA Times publication/leak of teacher evaluations I was wondering what the best metric would be to rate our teachers.

It seems absurd to rate all teachers by the same method. There is obviously a vast difference (savage inequality?) between rich and poor school districts. And of course each class is going to be different and challenging in unique ways each term.

So what if we graded each student by their individual progress? A student would be tested in each grade (yearly testing seems inevitable at this point) and we could monitor how they were developing over the years, when compared to other students at their starting level, current grade, etc. Instead of a series of meaningless Bs or Cs on a grade card, students would have year over year growth percentages, and comparisons against various means.

We could then determine which teachers are able to statistically make the biggest gains in each student's performance, year over year. Teachers wouldn't be "penalized" if they happened to have more students with learning disabilities one term, since students are only being compared against their performance the year before.

This information would be relatively useless the first 3-5 years, but over time we would start to see patterns develop. Those patterns might lead to a better allocation of resources.

I'm sure my method has some holes in it, but I think there is a decent idea in there somewhere. Any thoughts?

[Skittles]

1. the entire thing is just fucked

they've stiffed schools of money for years - had children and their parents pimping stuff out of catalogs, teachers buying supplies with their own inadequate pay, to make up only part of the difference - now they're blaming the TEACHERS? Fuck that. GO AFTER THOSE FUCKING BANKERS and WALLSTREET ASSHOLES who sent the economy off a CLIFF, and the people who STARTED FUCKED UP WARS and ENDORSED TORTURE if you're truly serious about ACCOUNTABILITY........jaysus FUCK I am sick of this garbage.

[dem mba]

2. I was thinking that since measuring teachers success

appears to be inevitable, what would be the best way to do it. That's all.

[Skittles]

5. WHY is it "inevitable"

WHO exactly is pushing this bullshit? CERTAINLY not WE THE PEOPLE

[HEyHEY]

8. Yeah, but we all are evaluated at work, why should teachers be any different?

I had some great teachers and some crappy ones who phoned it in. If I have kids, I want them to have the good teachers. That said, it is hard to rate someone when EVERY kid in a class may respond differently to their teaching style.

[Hannah Bell]

11. teachers *are* evaluated at work, & always have been.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

24. The current system is ineffective and inappropriate for professionals

The current evaluations are a bad joke when compared to other...even the US DoD does a better job.

[Smarmie Doofus]

16. We aren't different. We ARE evaluated. Where do these...

.... misconceptions come from and why do they proliferate?

[Starry Messenger]

27. These "misconceptions" are promulgated at right wing think tanks.

Heritage, Cato, and Co.

[Smarmie Doofus]

31. CATO!!? You can't possibly mean *Mr. Koch's* Cato. nt

[ProgressiveProfessor]

23. Most professional gets reviewed and rewarded for performance, teaching should be no different

The current system is tied to the industrial model used for assembly line workers. Not appropriate for professionals.

[mzteris]

28. actually, whether you llike it or not - "the people"

in general ARE calling for accountability. Maybe "you the teachers" don't want it, and yeah, there are a number of DU'ers who are against it, but then again, there are a number of teachers that I personally know who ARE "for it" and more than few DU'ers who are as well. If you read comments from "the public" on websites and not just the teacher outrage, you'll find that the vast majority are FOR accountability in some way or measure.

I don't like "the test" for kids, so I don't like "the test" for teachers, but I think there can be - and are - methods for evaluating a teacher's effectiveness in the classroom. Instead of just kicking and screaming NO NO NO NO NO NO NO - why not help brainstorm fair and reasonable ways to go about that? That's what the OP is asking for. Since it is GOING TO BE DONE anyway - why not become involved in the process?

[Hannah Bell]

10. teachers have always been evaluated. the question is why teachers' evaluations

are suddenly being published in newspapers.

i think the answer is obvious.

[City Lights]

18. !

:applause:

Thanks for saying it, Skittles!

[Skittles]

54. I CAN'T TAKE IT I TELL YOU CITY OF LIGHTS

I mean, it's BIZARRO WORLD :mad:

[JDPriestly]

3. Peer review would probably be the best way to evaluate teachers.

Encourage teachers to work together, combine classes, trade classes on occasion and visit each other's classes. Then have anonymous peer review. Teachers would be best qualified to judge the work of their fellow teachers. Supervisors should only be another peer evaluation. That is because principals and other school administrators have a lot of self-interest and ego involved in assessing classroom teachers.

Would the teachers be really brutal with each other? You bet. The majority of teachers really, really care about students. If assured anonymity and also opportunities to watch each other work, they would spot the occasional teacher who lacked the dedication, the talent, the knowledge, the personality, the character, to help students learn.

[yurbud]

9. that's what we do at college, and it seems to work since students come here from all over the world

to go to our colleges.

[Bluesbreaker]

4. parents, principals and school districts must take responsibility too

If you're going to rate teachers by student performance (individual student progress during that student's time in a particular teacher's class), you cannot simply use raw test data that shows the student's beginning and ending scores in a teacher's class. That evaluation has to be weighted by the student's attendance, behavior, percentage of assignments completed satisfactorily and parent participation/attendance in school activities, like parent-teacher conferences.

Teacher evaluations should definitely not be based on where a particular student stands in relation to an arbitrary measure, like an NCLB test score. These metrics should be the first to be thrown out.

[dem mba]

32. yes

I agree that more variables would need to be added in the equation. And my idea was simply one thing that would be looked at out of many.

But with my concept, a teacher wouldn't be judged because one or two students didn't test well in a given year. You would be able to look at test scores for the all of their students for that year and hopefully the statistics would tell a story.

Ideally, common sense would prevail, like in cases where natural disasters or god forbid a classmate suicide or homicide or something disrupted the school year. I'm not sure how to put that into an equation, and it seems kind of messed up to even think about doing that, but it should certainly be taken into account somehow.

[sabrina 1]

6. Are doctors, lawyers, politicians, bankers, private Health Insurance

providers, police officers rated? Why are teachers being singled out for this witchhunt?

My advice to teachers is to go on strike until Arne Duncan is fired.

[trayfoot]

19. Thank you, Sabrina! You said it!

[AngryAmish]

21. Are doctors rated? Yes.

Peer review mostly. Bad docs are let go, quietly. Dance of the lemons and whatnot. They lose privileges in hospitals if they suck. The science-based review, statistics on mortality and whatnot are being adopted. Same screams as the teachers.

Lawyers. Well, the legal profession has a lot of different roles so it is hard to classify. Almost every civil verdict in my area is published. But that is a small percentage. Big firms rate their lawyers on two (maybe three) criteria. 1. Billable hours. 2. Ability to bring in business 3. Political connections ()this is Chicago).

Politicians are rated at the ballot box.

Bankers. Define bankers. But they are rated internally on % of bad loans and things like that. Traders are ruthlessly rated.

No idea about health insurers.

Most professions are rated, with varying rates of rigor.

This bellyaching about teacher ratings strikes me as lacking rigor. If someone can show how this is unfair then the debate can be had to improve the system. For example, do teachers go from bad to great and back again in concurrent years? If so then that may show why the system is unfair. But just saying it could be unfair based on how bright or motivated the kids are is just blather. Show me the stats, please.

It took more than 20 years for Bill James' work to be recognized for what is was. THis is a painful learning curve but like most statistical analysis it will bear fruit. Assuming teaching is normalistan, as Nick Taleb calls it.

[sabrina 1]

37. It's not just unfair, it is stupid because of the premise on which

it is being done. The only fruit it will bear is that the best teachers will quit, in fact that has already been happening. No other profession has been attacked the way the teaching profession has first under Bush and now even more so under this administration.

You cannot rate professionals when you prevent them from the job they were trained to do. NCLB is one of the worst educational programs ever. In fact calling it an educational program is too kind.

This is a transparent attempt to privatize Public schools. The worst and saddest thing, to anyone who knows anything at all about education, is that when the results come in for the students victimized by what is going on now, they will be the worst we have ever seen as far as producing people who are educated. In fact it's already happening.

NCLB was created by businessmen for business. There were no educators involved and teachers and students both are simply victims of it.

Arne Duncan should be targeting the program itself, indeed that was the promise made airc, that the education system would be 'improved'. Instead we are getting even more and worse than what was already bad.

A doctor cannot treat his/her patients if he is prevented from using the proper methods of doing os.

Lawyers cannot represent their clients if they are not allowed access to the tools of their profession. And so on.

Teachers to day cannot teach, all they can do is test. Testing is NOT learning, it is a stultifying, cruel and totally ineffective method of importing information especially when it is applied across the board with no consideration for the different kinds of learning abilities, environments etc of the students. This will eventually be discarded, although many will become rich while it lasts. And it will always be considered one of the worst periods of time for the system of education in this country.

And no other profession has been attacked the way teachers are being attacked by this administration. Even the Bush administration apologized after the SOE called teachers unions 'terrorists'. This one makes no apologies, they are stacking Charter Schools with unqualified teachers, many of which have already failed. And Arne Duncan's own record in Chicago is pretty abysmal.

[AngryAmish]

39. Again, show how there is no statistical correlation between a high rated teacher and

student outcome. Lacking that there is no evidence of your position.

If the tests don't show student achievement then show that. Do students who score high on the tests of student achievement end up in college at a higher rate? Do they graduate at a higher rate? If not then the testing is useless.

THis is the metric for student achievement: getting into college and graduation. Nothing else counts. Sure kids need to learn some other things along the way - health, gym, music. But teaching children to read and do math is the most important.

[sabrina 1]

44. Testing is not a method of teaching. It is clear from your post

that you know little about education. Lots of children score high on tests but fail socially and in other ways. Tests are a tool to see where a student needs to focus on certain skills, that is all, they are not and should not be used a learning tool.

The standards for what is considered an eductated student have been so lowered over the past decade that it's likely to be easier for the least educated students to get into college today. After all who is there to compete against them?

But if American students who are products of this abhorrent system were to compete against Eurpean students eg, they would not stand a chance against them. That is the metric to use, how do U.S. students compare today to students from other developed countries? In a few years, if this 'race to the top' continues, the comparisons will be disastrous.

Tests are NOT a metric for student achievement as you say. Students in fact who are subjected to the least amount of testing, when tested later on, fare far better than those subjected to a system that is geared only to test scores.

'Nothing else counts'! Wow, I hope you don't mean that.

It is easy to teach children to read and to understand math basics without once testing them. Every single one of my students were reading before they were five years old with excellent comprehension, spelling and even grammar skills. Even those with learning disabilities and we did not test them until the 3rd Grade. They consistently scored way higher than their peers who were tested regularly. Testing is a DISTRACTION from learning and narrows the opportunities to actually teach and learn available to both teachers and students.

My school was a private school which respected both teachers and students. I changed careers as soon as I saw what was happening to education in this country. In all conscience I could not subject students to this system nor prepare those who were my responsibility for a system that actually prevents real learning.

And I am not the only one. I love teaching and hope one day sanity will be restored to the U.S. educational system. Until then I will work with parents who will have to basically educate their children themselves.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

25. Yes they are unless they are self employed

And that often includes metrics not just a a few "observations"

Self employed get evaluated by their customers.

Exception of course is politicians are obviously "evaluated" by the voting public.

[nadinbrzezinski]

43. Actually Police Officers ARE evaluated at all times

from the Academy on.

Doctors are evaluated from the first day in Medical School...

Some of my relatives ARE \ were cops, so I know that.

So are firefighters by the way and Paramedics. Since I were one, well I know. I did both the evals for my students, and I WAS evaluated every quarter or so.

My brother IS a doctor, so yes they are.

Banksters, yes they are as well... they get quarterly reviews like most people.

The problem is not the concept, since teachers ARE and HAVE BEEN evaluated for like ever... go to a teacher's college and do some research. It is in HOW it is done, and Arne is dead wrong in the method to his madness.

This they are not evaluated is a RW talking point. I see the catapulting of propaganda is working.

[Daphne08]

58. I am amazed that teachers haven't already

risen up in protest against this insanity!

[HEyHEY]

7. By height

[DrDan]

12. yes I have some thoughts - how about leaving it in the hands of the educators

Isn't that what principals and superintendants are paid to do? I suggest we let them do their job and step away.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

26. The current educator based system is not working particularly well in the eyes of many

[DrDan]

36. could it be that our politicians are also having an influence - such

as Jeb's educational reform in Florida where many critical decisions are now based on tests?

As well as legislatures cow-towing to the cut-tax crowd and hence reducing school budgets to the point of being dead-bare-bones.

[mzteris]

30. well that's what has been done and many would venture to say

it evidently isn't working very well. Thus the public calls for some measure of whether or not little johnnies teacher knows wtf they're doing.

[DrDan]

35. so . . . Jeb mucking around with his testing-focus in Florida is not exactly leaving

education in the hands of the educators . . . . . now is it - particularly as many of the critical student decisions are based on the tests.

[mzteris]

48. well - if FL were the only state with problems -

you might have a prayer of a point.

[DrDan]

50. well it is good to know that the legislatures of other states are providing the needed funding

and keeping class sizes down to the level to promote learning.

[dem mba]

33. the wealthiest nation in the world does not have the best educational

system in the world. Clearly something is wrong and needs to be fixed.

I'm not qualified to fix it of course, but I thought I had an interesting idea. I've enjoyed reading the responses.

[uncommon]

59. If the public thinks it's not working, then perhaps additional oversight is required?

All of this "all we can do is teach the test" crap is pissing me off - yes, there are tests. There always have been, there probably always will be. My daughter certainly learns plenty at school, just the same as we used to when I was in school.

[DrDan]

61. but never before this level of decision-making based on tests

in Florida - a child can be held back a grade based on the results of a single test. This is regardless of the opinion of the teacher, school staff, etc.

I am glad to hear your child is learning. Wouldn't you hate to have her have to repeat a grade because she might have not felt well and performed poorly on a single test?

This test focus is from the politicians - not the educators. They now feel they are providing the necessary oversight of our schools. But . . . it is so misguided.

[uncommon]

62. I agree that testing should never be the only factor in determining *anything*

[dkf]

13. My sister asked for a district exception for her kids based on the published school test scores.

She made a good decision as the kids are reading 2 grades above their level. She works in the education system. Many of her co-workers and friends request district exceptions.

However, the greatest indictment of public education here is how many teachers send their kids to private school. Irony is the private school teachers get paid a lot less than the public school teachers.

[Daphne08]

14. We were always evaluated by our Principals and

Assistant Principals, and I never received a bad evaluation in eighteen years of teaching. The administrators knew who the effective teachers were.

I left the profession after all this "testing" crap began, and I will not go back into a classroom until I see some sanity return to the profession.

Teaching to the test is NOT an effective way to teach and it's certainly not an effective way to learn, but that's exactly what will continue occurring in classrooms all over this country.

If things don't change, I predict we will witness a mass exodus of good teachers.

Why do they think people go into the profession? It certainly isn't the pay or the great working conditions. I never worked so hard in my life!

There's a reason teachers are able to earn tenure after years in the classroom -- Education has always been a political football and tenure is proper protection for teachers who earn it.

When are we going to ask parents to accept some responsibility for their children's education?

And Arne Duncan is an idiot.

[Skittles]

53. SHEESH, DAPHNE

the way the media and half of DU thinks, you teachers were a bunch of loose cannons who NEVER were evaluated. WTF!!!

[Daphne08]

55. Yes, I know.

We were subject to formal evaluations (usually four to six per year) which were entered into our permanent employee files and informal evaluations which were not.

Also, people should realize that Principals and other administrators are free to walk by and into a teacher's classroom at any time of the day.

In fact, schools with attentive/interested/engaged Principals and Assistant Principals have fewer problems overall.

A lazy administrator will break a school, and I do mean break!

Teachers may be "written up" (different schools refer to it by different names) for offenses ranging from too many restroom trips (if one is fortunate enough to have a classroom located near a restroom) to missing bus/lunch duty (which is quite serious since teachers are responsible for every student under his/her watch during duty as well as during class).

Teaching was extremely demanding, exhausting work, but it was a profession that I found to be most rewarding. I still miss the students. They were great. :)

It was all the other crap that was so difficult to deal with (including disinterested parents, standardized tests, ridiculous rules, needless paperwork, inferior textbooks and inept administrators).

[zipplewrath]

15. You presume a static environment

You want to do metrics on a dynamic environment and then do comparisons over time. The demographics of schools changes. All students don't stay in the same school, district, or state for long periods of time. Neighborhoods change, class sizes change, school districts are altered and budgets fluxtuate. The metrics you want to use presume they are at least dominant and that teachers are the dominate factor is student success. That is not always true.

It's a bit like airline pilots. Identify what skills are important in a teacher, evaluate, identify, and document that those skills exist and are in use, and you are done. If the students are then not successful, either your criteria is wrong, or the problem is "outside the classroom". Predominately, the problem is outside the classroom. There are problems inside the classrooms, and many of them are beyond the teachers control. There are occasional individual problems, but to a great degree they are identified and corrected. The one problem that is often "uncorrectable" is when the school environment is so hostile to the teach that virtually any teacher develops a "bunker mentality". Generally, most teachers in that school will develop that mentality out of a sense of self defense. Fix the school, don't blame the teacher.

[LWolf]

17. Here's the hole:

Brain research tells us that the first four years of life are crucial to developing the neural connections necessary for later academic learning. While those connections can be built later, they don't develop as rapidly or as comprehensively as they do in the "prime time," birth to age 4.

We know that students don't all start on the same starting line when they get to kindergarten. What some people don't realize is that it's not just the starting line; that brain development will determine how they learn, how fast they learn, how much they learn. Some students are going to learn much faster, and therefore much more, than others. And while the teacher is a key factor within the school system, the teacher is NOT the factor when it comes to early brain development, or how fast, and therefore how much, a student will learn in a given period of time.

There's no practical way to control a statistical analysis that would include the differing abilities in teachers' classes. Teachers who teach middle and upper class students will show more gains than teachers who teach students raised in poverty and crisis, even over time. That's not a valid rating, and such a system would be a deterrent. If you're going to rate me on speed (and therefore, amount) of learning over time, do I want to teach slower learners, or faster? Who will want to teach those who need them most?

Here's how to "rate" teachers:

Identify a common set of behaviors and/or characteristics of good teachers. Create a rating scale for those. Rate us on what we do, not on what our students are doing. That's the only way to make sure all those outlying factors that we don't control aren't corrupting the rating.

Here is one set of characteristics:

http://www.socsd.k12.ny.us/curriculum/framework_for_teaching_c_danielson.pdf

[WinkyDink]

20. Flaw: Top students would make little "gains". (How would you rate Phys Ed staff, BTW?)

[dem mba]

40. i think it would be understood that

if a child is reading above their grade level, then their year over year growth is not as important.

phys ed teachers would not be measured by this method.

[harun]

22. What the students and parents think of them should be a part of it.

My job reviews at work contain metrics for what my peers and clients feedback of me is.

[Dyedinthewoolliberal]

29. My father taught school.

There are so many factors that come into play when determining how well a student learns. This crap is the wrong way to go about it. If we really wanted EXCELLENT teachers, we'd be willing to start the pay at 75K, first off.
Secondly, who knows what kind of home environment the student is coming from? Do they get enough to eat? Is there an adult at home when they are? Are they encouraged about doing the school work by that adult? etc,etc,etc.
Then there are the kids who haven't been taught, or ignore, or are incapable of grasping the concept of group behavior. A great deal of my dad's time was spent 'policing' the one or two kids who disrupted the class, while the other 25 or 30 kids sat waiting for things to get settled.
My point of view is no doubt biased but laying all this at the feet of teachers is so freakin' wrong, I can't begin to express it. Although Skittles did a fine job for me! :)

[dem mba]

42. i'm not a fan of using teachers as babysitters

i think trouble makers should be sent to another classroom to either waste their own time or learn in a more constructive manner. no easy task, but i liked what they were trying to do in The Wire (season 3 I think).

[izzybeans]

34. Progress monitoring is the current method and the one advocated

by education researchers. It definitely has holes. All of them make it necessary to statistically control for all the known social factors that determine school performance. The biggest problem isn't so much a hole as it is a type of system that requires a "total surveillance" which is anathema to our political culture. Parents would have to submit a lot of private information to schools to be included in the dataset, this data would have to be linked to neighborhood, census tract, city, and state level variables, and then to the scores and other home-grown assessments teachers use.

I believe when those models are available they are called value-added.

It's overkill. A principal that does their job and is in the classrooms actively working with students can give you a better assessment of how a teacher is doing than these numbers.

My wife sees it all the time. Teachers with wonderful strategies, hardworking, excellent classroom managers, story tellers, communicators, etc. will have bad years on assessments. most of that is out of their control. Value-added models can't tell you what happened there either. You just know something happened.

I see someone outlined the two biggest holes. Students that start out more advanced grow more slowly on average than students who have a lot of catching up to do. There is only so much one can grown. When all you test on is reading and math - and maybe science - how do you rate specials teachers (or more specialized high school teachers)?

[dem mba]

41. thanks for the response

great points.

ideally a mega-algorithm that factors in testing, teachers peer reviews, student attendance and all these other intangible social factors would not be the final arbiter of a teacher's success.

however, experience tells me that over time bureaucrats would probably hold a score over all the other metrics, quantified or not, that tell us who are our best teachers. kinda like FICO scores, or nielsen ratings (rip arrested development).

[izzybeans]

45. Yep its what C. Wright Mills called the bureaucratic ethos

turning the tools of social science inward for the purposes of controlling, rather than liberating human behavior.

[Orsino]

38. After we fund them for a few years, and can see them actually teach.

I wouldn't pick an Olympic swimming team based on how well the competitors drown. x(

[Iris]

46. How about if we leave that to principals?

[grantcart]

47. Better question "how do we rate parents"

Select the children of the Parents who are willing to turn off the TV and make sure that the kids are focus and motivated to succeed in school.

Put all of those kids into a class. Randomly pick teachers to teach these students.

Miracle of miracles we have now selected the best teachers in the system.

There are many factors that have caused education to go downhill. The teachers are as good or better than they were before. The focus on the teachers is a wrong approach.

[Daphne08]

56. You are so right! n/t

[MissB]

49. All the teachers at my kids' school are fantastic. A++++. AND....

Our school's kids perform very well on the required standardized tests. Our school consistently hits the >95% in all areas and in some grades/subjects >98%.

Are those two things connected? Do fantastic teachers = excellent student achievement on standardized tests?

Sure, there is some sort of connection there.

But more than that, I live in a district where the median household income is greater than $200k. We have exactly zero kids on free or reduced lunch (we don't even bother going for federal funding for the lunch program and instead contract with a caterer who creates food from local and organic ingredients, for a cost of about $4-$5/meal). Our school still has a full time librarian, art teacher, music teacher, PE teacher, foreign language teacher and counselor. My oldest was one of 11 kids in Kindergarten and now in middle school has a maximum class size of 21 (caps at 14 in K-2, 18 in 3-6).

What connection does our neighborhood's affluence have on those test scores? Answer: a lot.

Our neighborhood kids come prepared to learn. They've been exposed to more art and culture by the time they arrive in Kindergarten than most elementary kids see by the time they finish elementary school. They don't worry about the roof over their heads leaking at night, or suddenly being uprooted from their home, or having to live in a car. They have plenty of good, healthy food. Their parents can provide for them, and have chosen this district because it will offer their kids an excellent education - i.e., the parents are incredibly involved in volunteering at the school. It isn't unusual to see one or both parents volunteering in the classroom each week at a set time.

How is it fair to grade the teachers at my kids' school on the same criteria with teachers at the school in the "poor" neighborhood across town, where more than 80% are on free/reduced lunch and 60% are english-language learners? It doesn't make a bit of sense to me. Our kids can't help but excel. They've been given every possible advantage.

[uncommon]

60. True - but disadvantaged kids can excel as well.

It is more difficult without support at home (although plenty of poor kids have loving parents who want them to succeed and encourage them to do so) but it is far from impossible. My sisters and I got free lunch and food stamps and welfare and the whole 9 yards - our parents were far from perfect - we did worry about where we would live - but we still did very well in school - AND on the standardized tests.

The assumption that kids from poor areas are destined to fail is painful to read again and again - we should be flooding resources to those kids instead of making excuses for failure.

[Gabi Hayes]

51. 'Why No Child Left Behind Is Nuts''.....By Steve Sailer

A reader who teaches math in a public high school in northern Orange County, California recounted the following dialogue with one of his students:

Student: "My mom is 28 years old."

Teacher: "How old are you?"

Student: "Fifteen."

Teacher: "So, your mother had you when she was thirteen?"

Student: "Wow! You can do that in your head that fast?"

Teacher: "Uh, well, uh, don't worry about it. That's why I'm a math teacher!"

And his student went away happy, self-esteem reassured by knowing that only nerdy math teachers can quickly subtract 15 from 28.

Meanwhile, America's Great and Good carry on making plans for America's schools based on assumptions that wouldn't survive an hour in an average classroom. (Not that they would ever send their kids to a typical school.)

The Aspen Institute's bipartisan Commission on No Child Left Behind, co-chaired by former governors Tommy Thompson and Roy E. Barnes and paid for by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (among others), has just issued 75 recommendations for improving the NCLB legislation when it comes up for renewal by Congress this year.

Despite the many small reforms advocated in the Commission's report "Beyond NCLB: Fulfilling the Promise to Our Nation’s Children" (222 page PDF), not one word of criticism is uttered against the original legislation's most important and implausible requirement: "that all children should reach a proficient level of academic achievement by 2014" in math and reading.

The report declares this goal of 100 percent proficiency by 2014 to be "audacious … morally right … and attainable."

What they don't mention about this demand: It's nuts.


http://www.vdare.com/sailer/070218_child.htm


Name a piece of legislation more harmful to the general welfare of our country, including the Alien and Sedition Act (PATRIOT, maybe?). You'll be hard pressed

as someone above stated, it was CLEARLY and TRANSPARENTLY designed to destroy publice education and set the stage for what we're starting to see now, under Duncan/Obama: the move to privately owned and controlled schools

if you think that's bad, do a little reading about Xtian Reconstructionists, and their plans for education, as well as the entire constitutional system. Rushdoony and his acolytes have made much greater, much faster progress than I think they'd have ever thought possible

good going, dems!

[Gabi Hayes]

52. ''Can Irrational Become Unconstitutional? NCLB's 100% Presuppositions ''

in which it's argued that NCLB violates the precept of equal protection under the law, violating the 14th amendment.

skip down to p177 and read the conclusion if you don't want to bother with the meat of the argument

http://epicpolicy.org/files/EPRU-0508-133-OWI%5B1%5D.pdf

[uncommon]

57. I actually agree that teacher's should be judged at least in part by results --

and by results I mean improvement or decline in student performance.

There *are* things outside a teacher's control that make a huge difference in how students do in school, so this needs to be taken into account, but most jobs have results-based evaluations and I see no difference here.