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The schools chancellor, Joel Klein, and the president of the teachers' union, Randi Weingarten, are locked in a bitter debate over whether test scores should be used to evaluate teachers. Mr. Klein thinks they should and Ms. Weingarten thinks they shouldn't. The legislature and the governor have sided with Ms. Weingarten, and it looks like New York is going to be the only state in the union that will forbid using test scores to evaluate teachers. As it happens, we're not terribly excited about this fight one way or another, because we don't think test scores should be the device for evaluating teachers. We have another contraption we favor for evaluating teachers. It's called parents.
How To Evaluate Teachers
NY Sun April 11, 2008
That's what I call upping the ante.
1 comment:
Nice Op Ed. If we can't evaluate them any other way, let's evaluate them with our feet by taking our vouchers elsewhere.
Incidentally, though, this reminded me of something that maybe should help us feel better.
I have recently been reading Kearns Goodwin's Team of Rivals, the bio of Abraham Lincoln and his political colleagues of the day. In it, you learn that William Seward as gov of NY tried to propose sweeping changes to the school system, including changes that would make most schools open (and free) to immigrant children (Irish catholics and germans) to attend school. Since no one else wanted those kids, he supported using state funds for parochial schools. He never managed to get those funds for parochial schools, because the sentiment against such public funding (for Papists!) was rather high, and he nearly lost his 2nd term election because of that.
The arguments used then were the same as they are now, basically.
So, it's not a new battle being fought here at all.
I, of course, being 35 and having taken AP history and AP govt courses, getting 5s on both, know almost no American history, so I of course had no idea that vouchers and public school choice has had such a long political history.
(btw Catherine: what kind of history does Ed specialize in?)
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