The principal as eunuch?
I will confess to tremendous confusion about the actual skill level of principals, especially after reading a bunch of stuff about teacher evaluation and teacher labor markets (and whether principals should be able to hire teachers directly). Many of those who criticize the current state of teacher evaluation note that principals usually are poorly trained […]
What “multiple measures” looks like in reality
Friday’s Sun-Sentinel article on the new evaluation scale for Florida high schools shows what happens when a state moves away from general-assessment test scores as the end-all and be-all of accountability. In this case, Florida’s new scale for high schools rewards schools for graduating more students, especially those who have problems with the state assessments, […]
How can we use bad measures in decisionmaking?
I had about 20 minutes of between-events time this morning and used it to catch up on two interesting papers on value-added assessment and teacher evaluation–the Jesse Rothstein piece using North Carolina data and the Koedel-Betts replication-and-more with San Diego data. Speaking very roughly, Rothstein used a clever falsification test: if the assignment of students […]
Belated kudos to Broader, Bolder and to Fordham
In the whirlwind of my obligations this year, my reading has lagged, and I am late in recommending and praising two reports published in the first half of 2009: The Broader, Bolder Approach’s accountability report, published in late June. This report suggests combining the use of achievement test data and on-site school inspections for school-level […]
Proposed ground rules on teacher evaluation and test discussion
Seeing how too many writers about Race to the Top, tests, and teacher evaluation would have taken actions in the Cuban Missile Crisis that would have led to nuclear war–i.e., seeing the worst in opponents, or maybe seeing posturing as the best path forward for themselves personally or for their positions (sound like the health-care […]