Education

Evaluation: Needs Improvement

By Anthony Rebora — January 15, 2008 1 min read
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Many quite reasonable people wonder why teachers seem hesitant to adopt performance-pay plans. Renee Moore explains that it’s at least partly because they know how shoddy school performance-evaluation systems are:

[It's] not, as many uninformed critics have argued, because teachers don't want to be held accountable. I believe teachers do want to be held to high standards and meet them; this is our life's work. However, teaching quality can't be measured with a test-score print out at the end of the year and a "walk-by" peek in the window of my classroom door.

Moore uses herself as a case in point: In 15 years of teaching, she says, she never once had a thorough and constructive evaluation.

A version of this news article first appeared in the Blogboard blog.