So what IS a fair evaluation system for teachers?

[ancianita]

13. Each and every teacher in the CPS system is evaluated already...

But remember that personnel evaluations are considered confidential and not open to public scrutiny, as are the evaluations of everyone in this system. Talk to Board members -- or any corporation, for that matter -- about why that is.

Variations of this exist in each school due to what the principals deem appropriate for their community and student incoming skills levels and exit skill goals. Here's a broad brush look at the system used in the general high school I taught at for 25 out of my 34 years in the system. I had to accomplish these things, keep documentation of it all and be subjected to four administrative visits and two evaluation conferences each and every year.

1. Attendance -- 95% attendance gets a 'satisfactory' rating or better
2. Lesson plan submission -- 100% gets a 'satisfactory' rating or better
3. Availability of weekly plans for students and parents' constant use
4. Materials relevance and use in lessons -- including the use of technology and other 'auxiliary'materials
5. Classroom management
6. Attendance and grade record keeping
7. Learning climate classroom environment
8. Collegial work
9. Involvement in community/school activities
10. Involvement with students beyond the classroom

Principals, as Instructional Leaders of their schools, are THE legally responsible EVALUATORS, which must be documented and completed by the end of March each year. In most elementary schools that have populations under 800, a principal can evaluate the 50 or so faculty with a high degree of validity and reliability.

But at the high school level, in which populations number from 1200 to 3,000, a faculty of 100 or more -- which is about 40% of the 90 high schools -- the reliable and valid evaluation process can and does get compromised by the demands of the principals' job.

I constantly heard about how hard it was to evaluate 100 teachers by ten or more criteria. Yet, teachers EACH AND EVERY WEEK, AND EIGHT TIMES A YEAR, are expected to deliver valid and reliable evaluations in the form of homework, weekly test, half-point marking period tests and averages, and full marking period percentage-based grades without fail -- FOR THE OFFICIAL CPS STUDENT LOAD OF 180 STUDENTS. Or their evaluations go down, haha.

Now, if a teacher has a five-class, three preparation day, with a homeroom, lunch and preparation or duty period, which one of those times might that teacher provide peer evaluations of other colleagues? Nevermind the ongoing help they give to students who come for it during those periods.

Is anyone out here seeing the logistics problems associated with all this teacher input? Who should be qualified to evaluate a doctor? Other doctors? Non-doctors? Should all doctors get a pay cut or be eliminated from their professional associations because a few who are rated 'bad'?? Is that doctor objectively bad in all settings, or just in certain areas? Is s/he remediable? Is s/he deserving of a process that addresses that remediation?

Someone, anyone, come into a school, understand what degreed professionals accomplish with the demands made that just can be seen, nevermind the intangibles that they provide that no layman is even award of, and TELL ME WHAT MAKES A BAD TEACHER.

My last question is, why should the public NOT know that teachers are already evaluated? They must not have children in schools or schools in their communities, or pay much attention to either if they don't know these things. Yet it boggles my mind as a parent of two that other parents wouldn't even be aware of such things in the course of having been in school or had children there.

Finally, what the hell business is it to the rest of the country, anyway-- of which 70% DO NOT EVEN HAVE COLLEGE DEGREES -- that teachers should have to be the whipping boys of the professional class in America.

I could go on about the ramifications of the OP's question, but I'll just leave my answer as factual as my constitution will let me.