- D.C. neighbors oppose preschool playground [AppleTree Early Learning PCS mentioned]
- Special education charter uses neuroscience to transform students’ lives [Children's Guild PCS mentioned]
- Five things you should know about what happened this year in DC education
- Bowser’s ‘Deal for All’ aims to boost middle schools, but can programs be replicated?
- This year, I resolve to ban laptops from my classroom
- Trouble grading teachers with test scores
D.C. neighbors oppose preschool playground [AppleTree Early Learning PCS mentioned]
The Washington Post
By Michael Alison Chandler
January 3, 2015
A preschool playground has become the subject of a heated dispute among neighbors in a condominium development in the District.
Some residents that share a building with AppleTree Early Learning Public Charter School in Columbia Heights want to dismantle the school’s playground, which they say is located in common space, and replace it with something quieter and more appealing to the adults that live there.
AppleTree officials are fighting to keep it. They say their school is an anchor of the mixed-use, mixed income development that the city approved in the gentrifying neighborhood about a decade ago, and that the playground is an integral part of the school that was included in planning documents.
“The problem is that there are a few residents who don’t like the noise of children playing on the playground,” said Jack McCarthy the president and chief executive of AppleTree Institute for Education Innovation.
“It’s one of these issues where you just say, ‘Hey, can we be reasonable?’”
James Abadian, past president of the board of directors for the condo owners’ association, said the problem is not about children; it’s about decibels.
“The noise. It’s real. It’s crazy,” he said. “With windows closed and everything, I can’t take a phone call.”
Abadian, an attorney and realtor, said he works from home and has to go into the bathroom to take work calls sometimes when recess is in session because it’s so loud. He said the noise factor drives some residents out of the building during the day and some have left completely.
Charter schools in the District face a steep challenge finding adequate facilities that include playgrounds. Some schools build playgrounds on roof tops or use city parks or make do without playground equipment at all.
“There is a tremendous need for quality early learning in Washington D.C. and there are limited places where you could do this,” McCarthy said.
He said the school, which serves 160 students, relies on the on-site playground to meet city requirements for exercise and gross motor development standards. He likened the neighbors’ reaction to buying houses near the airport for a reasonable rate and then complaining about the noise under the flight path.
The issue came to a head in November, when the condo owners’ board of directors passed a resolution to remove the playground and pursue plans to redevelop the site t0 allow for “more natural, green and open space uses.”
Abadian said he believes the board has the authority to tear it down because of a legal opinion it obtained that says the playground area behind the building is actually commonly owned space that the board has a right to regulate. Many residents would like to use the space to barbecue or to have a more quiet area with benches and plants, he said.
The school responded to the resolution with an attorney’s letter, and McCarthy said a tear down could lead to litigation.
The resolution followed years of complaints from residents and months of conversations between the condo board and school officials, Abadian said.
He said he’s asked whether the school could limit time on the playground or create “a silent study area” for the children in place of the playground. Residents have suggested that the school use a larger playground located a block away next to community recreation center.
McCarthy said the school has worked in “good faith” to address noise concerns by reducing the amount of time that the students are outside playing to four hours a day. He said the teachers sometimes take children to the rec center down the block, though he cited safety concerns in the neighborhood and said the prospect of having children walking back and forth every day is worrisome.
For now the neighbors are at a standoff.
Special education charter uses neuroscience to transform students’ lives [Children's Guild PCS mentioned]
Watchdog.com
By Moriah Costa
December 29, 2014
BALTIMORE, Md. — The Monarch Academy charter schools in Baltimore don’t look like traditional schools. Instead, the walls and floors, and sometimes even the ceilings, are painted to help students feel like they are in an atmosphere they know — their backyard or downtown streets.
In some cases the walls reflect what the school is trying to teach its students — how the brain works.
The schools are run by TranZed Alliance, a Baltimore-based nonprofit that has helped the city’s most traumatized and special-needs kids. Operating since 1953, TranZed will soon serve Washington, D.C., students, as well.
Six years ago the nonprofit expanded from special education and opened its first charter school. Now it runs three charters and two nonpublic schools in the Baltimore area. In August 2015, it will open the Children’s Guild Public Charter School to 450 students in D.C, its first special education campus in the city.
The charter schools perform on par or better than traditional public schools in the area, with almost all of students either meeting or exceeding math and reading standards.
The charters are based on developmental neuroscience — the idea that a child’s developing brain responds to different sensory needs. The painted halls and floors are meant to stimulate and soothe, while teaching concepts and skills.
“It’s this whole idea of everything coming together to create a place that’s really safe and structured, but really an opportunity for you to push your thinking and not be afraid to ask questions,” said Maurine Larkin, principal of Monarch Academy Leroy Merritt.
It’s not just the hallways that spark children’s brains. Students at all the nonprofit schools are immersed in an academic program that encourages them to explore topics in-depth.
“We’re not interested so much in what they learn, but we’re interested in how they learn,” said Kelly Spanoghe, vice president of special education and student support services at the Children’s Guild, the nonprofit’s special education division.
She works at one of the organization’s nonpublic special education schools, where 56 autistic students are taught the skills they need to be successful in society. Some of the students have been kicked out of multiple public schools and, for many of them, it’s the last stop before residential treatment.
Spanoghe helped draft the D.C. school’s curriculum. While the school will focus on helping special-needs children, it will be open to any K-8 student in D.C.
Andrew Ross, president and CEO of TranZed Alliance, said he decided to expand to D.C. because he saw a need for special education and rigorous academics.
“Since our organization has been involved in operating schools that serve kids with special education needs for 60 years, it seemed like a perfect match,” he said.
Ross works with a group of designers to build each school and “send the right message” to students. He wants all his schools centered around the kids, not the adults that serve them.
“The (education) system is not not set up to serve the kids, it’s set up to serve the people in the system,” he said. “We turned that upside down and focused on the kids and creating a culture that operates like that.”
At the Monarch Academy in Maryland’s Anne Arundel County, this culture shift has helped eighth-grader Ricky Strader learn to focus.
“One thing that I’ve noticed is the reduction in bullying and the fact that this school seems more laid back and it’s more of a hands-on learning,” he said. “ Which, when you have (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) that’s a really good thing.”
Larkin, who is Strader’s principal, said she was surprised to hear him explain the school as “laid back.”
“That’s like beautiful to me because I know we’re not,” she said. “ We’re highly structured, but we do it in such a way that the kids don’t know we’re highly structured.”
It’s the type of structure Ross wants to bring to students in D.C. He doesn’t know what the school’s atmosphere will look like yet, but he does know one thing: It will reflect the community.
“We’re coming to D.C. with the understanding that each kid is an individual,” he said.
Five things you should know about what happened this year in DC education
Greater Greater Washington
By Natalie Wexler
December 31, 2014
It's been an eventful year for education in DC. Here's a look back at some of the major developments.
1. Much talk but little substance in the race to be DC's Education Mayor
Education emerged as a pivotal issue in the 2014 mayoral contest.
Muriel Bowser began her campaign with a slogan of Alice Deal for All, promising to replicate the success of Ward 3's lone middle school across the District. Her rival, David Catania, touted his extensive record as chair of the DC Council's education committee and scoffed at Bowser's "empty platitudes."
After critics pointed out that the success of Deal Middle School had a lot to do with its unusually affluent student body, Bowser shifted her education strategy to a more general one of staying the course, promising to retain DC Public Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson.
While Bowser's victory was an endorsement of the status quo, none of the three major candidates, including third-place candidate Carol Schwartz, promised a significant shift from previous policies.
None, for example, seriously questioned the system of mayoral control of DC's schools that has been in place since 2007, and none called for any significant changes in DC's robust charter sector. Still, the prominence of education as a campaign issue helped keep the subject on DC's front burner.
2. Overhauling DC's school boundaries and feeder patterns
The DCPS boundaries currently in effect date from the 1960's, and they've become a lopsided mish-mash because of demographic changes and school closures. Some schools are overcrowded while others are underenrolled, and many students have the right to attend more than one school. An advisory committee charged with rationalizing the system began meeting in the fall of 2013, and its labors ultimately bore fruit, and produced controversy, in 2014.
The committee's original proposals, released in April, would have largely replaced the system of neighborhood schools with student assignments through some form of lottery. That idea proved wildly unpopular, and in June the committee released a revised proposal that preserved residents' rights to attend schools in their neighborhoods. Outgoing Mayor Vincent Gray adopted that proposal in August.
Even that didn't satisfy everyone because it excised some residents from school zones they preferred. But a poll in September showed that over half of DC residents supported the plan.
Still, neither Catania nor Bowser endorsed the overhaul. Bowser, whose DC Council district includes one of the neighborhoods most disgruntled by the plan, originally said she intended to start the whole boundary review process over. Later, she began to tone down her rhetoric, eventually saying she wanted only some "tweaks."
Bowser hasn't said much on the issue since her election. Nor did she introduce legislation to halt DC's common school lottery, which opened December 15 and is premised on applying the new boundaries to students who are new to DCPS in the fall of 2015. Families can use the common lottery to apply to charter schools and DCPS schools that are selective or are not their assigned neighborhood school. It seems unlikely Bowser will end up making any significant changes to the boundary plan.
3. Tensions between DCPS and charter schools
There were signs of greater coordination between DCPS and charters, including the launch of a common lottery that allowed parents to apply to schools in both sectors simultaneously. But for the most part, relations between DCPS and the District's burgeoning charter sector, which now enrolls 45% of DC students, grew more tense.
The debate about the school boundary overhaul unearthed some of that tension. The boundary committee originally saw its mission as limited to DCPS, but parents at community meetings called for more coordination with the charter sector. They argued it made no sense to draw up plans for DCPS schools that could easily be upended by unchecked charter growth.
That point was underscored in July, when a new charter school announced it would open directly across the street from a DCPS school with a similar focus. DCPS Chancellor Henderson, who said she found out about this development from Twitter, offered some sharp words about "cannibalization" and a lack of communication and joint planning.
Generally, proponents of neighborhood schools—which, in DC, means DCPS schools—say that charters are draining students and resources from DCPS. Charter advocates respond that competition from charters should spur DCPS to improve. Moreover, they say, it's hard to plan where schools will locate when space is in such short supply—partly because DC has failed to release some mothballed DCPS buildings.
These tensions have now erupted in court: a coalition of charter schools has sued DC, alleging the District is violating federal law by funding DCPS more generously than charters.
During the mayoral campaign, some called for the candidates to impose limits on charter growth. Bowser has indicated her willingness to do that if necessary, but she clearly would prefer to find a way to get charters to engage in joint planning voluntarily.
That task will almost certainly fall to her deputy mayor for education, Jennie Niles, who—as a former leader of a prominent charter school—should be well positioned to accomplish it.
4. Charter school growth and quality
Despite talk of limiting growth, the Public Charter School Board has continued to expand the number of slots at charter schools. At the same time, it's trying to ensure that as many of those slots as possible are high-quality.
Four new charter schools opened this fall, and the PCSB has approved charters for three new schools that will open in 2015. But it also turned down five applications that it deemed unworthy. And it voted to close one charter that engaged in financial fraud and self-dealing, while almost shutting down another.
As for charters that are struggling academically, the PCSB is increasingly trying to find ways to turn them around rather than close them. This year successful charter networks took over two charter schools that had been at risk of closure, and a third such charter will merge with DCPS next year. The PCSB recently gave a last-minute reprieve to another charter slated for closure, provided it can meet certain conditions.
The PCSB's efforts to improve school quality appear to be paying off. This year, over 12,000 students are enrolled in charters meeting the agency's highest standards, an increase of 9% over last year. And only five schools are in the PCSB's lowest category, down from eight last year.
5. The continuing debate over whether schools are improving
Standardized test scores continued to inch up. Even so, only about half of DC students are proficient in reading and math. More troubling, the achievement gap between affluent white students and others remains stubbornly wide.
Test scores have generally been on a slow upward trajectory for the past seven years, but critics have charged the reason for the increase is an influx of affluent students rather than any actual improvements in education. In July, a group of education advocates called for DC to release more information about testing data, claiming it would show that achievement gaps are actually growing.
However, a recent study examining the raw test scores seemed to indicate the opposite, concluding that there has been progress for all ethnic and socioeconomic groups.
No doubt that conclusion will be challenged by others. And with the advent of a new, more difficult test this year, scores will almost certainly plummet.
Will 2015 be an equally eventful a year for DC education? Stay tuned as it unfolds.
Update: A spokesperson for the PCSB has pointed out that charter growth in 2014 was the slowest in DC's history, as the PCSB opted to prioritize quality over growth.
Bowser’s ‘Deal for All’ aims to boost middle schools, but can programs be replicated?
The Washington Post
By Michael Alison Chandler
December 29, 2014
When the bell rings at 3:15 p.m., students at Alice Deal Middle School all have somewhere they can go. If it’s Monday, it might be African drumming or calligraphy club. Tuesday means ultimate Frisbee, meditation or Science Olympiad; and Wednesday, there’s fencing, fantasy football or Model U.N. On Friday, one club closes out the week doing yo-yo tricks in the main hallway.
Students can choose from about 70 after-school clubs four days a week at the District’s largest middle school.
“The idea is to build a culture at the school where everyone can find something they are interested in,” Principal James Albright said.
The abundance of extracurricular offerings adds to the allure of the District’s most-sought-after middle school. With more than 1,300 students, Deal enrolls nearly a fifth of the D.C. school system’s middle-school-aged students at its Upper Northwest campus.
Mayor-elect Muriel E. Bowser (D) has committed to “transforming” the city’s middle schools and creating more high-quality options for families, many of whom leave the public schools — or the city entirely — in search of better educational offerings, often as their children enter middle school. Bowser campaigned on a slogan of “Alice Deal for All,” saying she would work to bring the same kind of academic programs and extracurricular activities to schools throughout the city.
In June, Alice Deal Middle School’s Sydney Forman helped Kelly Miller Middle School’s Idris Rajah adjust his microscope during a face-to-face forensic science lab at Deal. On the right is Kelly Miller’s Damon Mance. (Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post)
But as the school system works to attract students back to neighborhood schools after decades of declining enrollment, it struggles with a fundamental problem: How can it offer equitable programming across the city when enrollments are so unbalanced?
Deal has grown by more than 400 students in the past five years and is preparing to expand into a new wing with 15 extra classrooms after winter break. The school system’s students who don’t go to Deal are enrolled in about 30 other middle schools or “education campuses” for pre-kindergarten through eighth grade. The second-largest middle school is less than half the size of Deal, and some education campuses have fewer than 100 students in the middle grades.
“When you have a broader base, you can offer a lot more,” Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson told a group of high school students this fall.
Putting similar programs in smaller schools drives up per-pupil costs. This year, the District spent $8 million to hire more than 80 teachers in the middle grades for newly required classes meant to ensure that schools have a base line of art, music, social studies and physical education.
Henderson also put in an extra $5 million for what she has called a “fun fund” to help schools promote nonacademic activities. All 111 of the system’s schools received a grant of $100 per student, or a minimum of $10,000, to promote student satisfaction.
Henderson told the student group that many school leaders haven’t been thinking about fun because they have been so focused on academics in a city that’s under the microscope for school improvement.
Abdullah Zaki, principal at Kelly Miller Middle School, said he was all work and no play when he took over the job five years ago. “I’m just a stick in the mud,” he said.
“The idea is to build a culture at the school where everyone can find something they are interested in,” says James Albright, principal at Alice Deal Middle School. (Bonnie Jo Mount/The Washington Post)
After a few years of “books, books, books, numbers, numbers, numbers,” Zaki is seeing results in test scores, and the Northeast school’s enrollment is climbing. Now, he said, he feels as if there’s room for something beyond academics. He gave the okay for students to organize a fall dance this year for the first time since he became principal.
And he said clubs are playing an increasingly important role at Kelly Miller. The school offers a wide range of activities — including spoken word, future engineers, school magazine, crochet, woodworking and fashion design — that are built into the regular school day, during an “X-block.” Everyone participates, and teachers can engage students through their interests and talents.
The grants are helping to support that effort, he said.
Rose L. Hardy Middle School used some of its “fun fund” money to pay for an after-school newspaper club and to buy an industrial mobile cooking cart that can be used for classes and clubs. Francis L. Cardozo Education Campus in Ward 1, which serves grades six through 12, used the funds to offer cooking and swimming clubs. It hopes to restart its band, which was discontinued two years ago for financial reasons, said Principal Tanya S. Roane. Noyes Education Campus planned to use the money to support track and field, a school newspaper and home economics.
Variety matters when it comes to middle-school clubs and activities, said Jen Rinehart, vice president for research and policy at the Afterschool Alliance, a Washington-based advocacy group. By this age, students have opinions about what they want to do. Middle school is a time that students are at risk of starting to disengage from school, and clubs are an important way to make them feel connected, she said.
About 45 percent of D.C. parents with middle-school-aged students say their children are enrolled in an after-school program, according to a survey published by the Afterschool Alliance.
D.C. schools partner with more than 150 community organizations that provide extended learning, including after-hours and summer programs for students. But the survey still showed unmet needs. For students not participating in the programs, more than 70 percent of their parents said they would enroll them if there was a program available. “The demand in the District is huge,” Rinehart said.
At Deal, teachers and students suggest ideas for programming, and clubs come and go based on student interest, Albright said.
There are clubs for bocce ball, Spanish theater, filmmaking, creative writing and board games. The school also has more than a dozen sports teams and something called Period 8, which is an optional after-school enrichment course in subjects such as forensic science, mapmaking and the science of happiness.
When Lacey Maddrey was hired two years ago as the school’s sixth-grade social worker, she brought a portable turntable to school and began a vinyl club.
She wasn’t sure it would take off. But on the first day, five students showed up, she said. Now as many as 15 students come on Wednesdays, crowding into her small office to listen to records.
In between songs, she said, students sometimes talk about how middle school is going, how they feel about their teachers or what’s happening with their friends or at home.
“They can explore their friendships and autonomy while learning about new songs and feeling punk-rocky cool,” she said.
Maddrey came from MacFarland Middle School, which had fewer than 200 students and a similarly small number of activities. The Northwest school closed in 2013, leaving no stand-alone middle schools in Ward 4.
Christopher Alexander, a Ward 4 father of two, said he is concerned that the education campuses do not have enough students to support a variety of activities after school. The database developer is starting a Saturday academy to introduce children to science and technology topics and hopes to attract a broader base of students.
“I want Ward 4 kids and kids across the city to have all the same kinds of options available at Deal or at schools in the suburbs,” he said.
Parents in Ward 4 are working to reopen MacFarland as a rejuvenated school with well-rounded programs. Bowser helped secure funding to draft the plans.
While many parents have advocated the reopening of more stand-alone middle schools, Mary Ann Stinson, principal at Truesdell Education Campus, cautioned that bigger is not always better.
Her school does not have every club that she would like to offer, specifically robotics and a debate team, but she has a “full complement of sports, choir and band,” she said. And there other benefits at a smaller school where older children and younger siblings are together and teachers and administrators get to know their families very well, she said.
At Deal, on the Monday before winter vacation, some clubs were already on hiatus. Just one drummer showed up to African drumming, but a group of young chefs headed over to the nearby Whole Foods for cooking club.
In the cafeteria, a cheerleading team practiced human pyramids. Nearby, a few pairs of Scrabble players snacked on pretzels and studied their tiles.
In a third-floor classroom, eight girls were watching a TED Talk about women’s rights in Saudi Arabia for a club called “Girl Up,” which was organized to raise awareness about human rights.
And in a first-floor classroom, the Boys Discussion Only Group — or BDOG — was attended by a half-dozen sixth-graders who like to eat spicy fries, talk about sports and “act dang crazy sometimes,” according to 12-year-old Davon Tong.
“It’s fun,” he said.
This year, I resolve to ban laptops from my classroom
The Washington Post
By Tal Gross
December 30, 2014
I settled on my New Year’s resolution while giving a lecture to 85 masters students.
It was one kid who unintentionally suggested the idea. He was sitting in the back row, silently pecking away at his laptop the entire class. At times, he smiled at his screen. But he rarely looked up at me.
I had a choice. I could disrupt the class to single him out. Or I could do what most teachers in higher education do: just ignore it. After all, these students are adults, and they have to take a final exam. Do I have to be the disciplinarian?
When I was a student myself — not that long ago — no one brought laptops to class. I took notes on legal pads, and the remains of those legal pads are still filed away in my office. Today, few students take notes by hand.
Since most students can type very quickly, laptops encourage them to copy down nearly everything said in the classroom. But when students stare at the screen of their laptops, something is lost. The students shift from being intellectuals, listening to one another, to being customer-service representatives, taking down orders. Class is supposed to be a conversation, not an exercise in dictation.
This is not just vague worrying on my part. There’s now good research on the topic. Take, for instance, a recent study by two psychologists, Pam Mueller at Princeton University and Daniel Oppenheimer at UCLA. Mueller and Oppenheimer asked 67 undergraduates to watch videos of lectures. Half the students were randomly assigned to watch the lectures while taking notes on a laptop, while the other students were asked to watch the lectures while taking notes with paper and pen. Afterward, the students were all given an exam. The students who took notes longhand scored much higher on conceptual questions than did the students who used a laptop.
Clay Shirky, a professor at New York Univeristy, recently asked his students to stop using laptops in class. Another recent study convinced him to do so. The title: “Laptop multitasking hinders classroom learning for both users and nearby peers.” A research team in Canada found that laptops in the classroom distracted not only the students who used them, but also students who sat nearby. Meaning, not only do the laptop-using students end up staring at Facebook, but the students behind them do, as well.
Both of those research studies suggest that, in the classroom, laptops actually hinder learning. And you don’t need a randomized-controlled study to know that. It’s just hard to focus in front of a laptop. (I checked Twitter twice before finishing that sentence.) Everyone struggles to focus when the Internet is only a click away. So why bring that distraction into the classroom?
Granted, laptops have their advantages. A laptop can be securely backed up more easily than a notebook. A laptop allows students — especially those for whom English is a second language — to look up words and background on the fly. But such benefits are surely overwhelmed by the enormous gravitational tug of Facebook and e-mail.
And so I’m left with a resolution for the new year: no more electronics in class. On the first day, I’ll describe the research that’s been done, and I’ll ask the students to put away their laptops and their cellphones. Some students might grumble, but they’ll be better off for it.
I’m not a Luddite. Without computers, I couldn’t do my own research. I spend all day in front of a computer. But the enormous, world-changing benefits of computers have to be weighed against the costs. We are becoming a distracted nation, constantly alt-tabbing to our e-mail and peeking at our phones. We should not be so quick to throw out our pens and pencils.
Trouble grading teachers with test scores
The Washington Post
By Jay Mathews
January 4, 2015
Forget about the Common Core State Standards, last year’s hottest educational topic. A potentially more disruptive movement is sweeping the country and needs more attention in this new year.
More than 20 states are adjusting to new legislative requirements that student test scores be part of the teacher evaluation process. Both the George W. Bush and Obama administrations championed this approach, as have many governors. Teacher unions continue to raise objections, but it is difficult to argue that teachers should not be measured, at least in part, on how well their students are doing.
Jay Mathews is an education columnist and blogger for the Washington Post, his employer for 40 years. View Archive
Now three representatives of the new generation of reformers championing the rising emphasis on student achievement — a group that has been friendly to the teacher assessment reforms — have written a persuasive critique of the way the change is being made. They warn that its inflexibility might bring more harm than good.
The authors of “The Hangover: The Unintended Consequences of the Nation’s Teacher Evaluation Binge” merit close attention from Washington-area parents and teachers because they have all been public school policymakers or managers in this region. Sara Mead, 36, is a member of the D.C. Public Charter School Board. Andrew Rotherham, 43, a co-founder of the Bellwether Education Partners consulting group where Mead is a principal, was a Clinton White House staffer specializing in education and a member of the Virginia state school board. Rachael Brown, 31, is a former teacher who is a manager of teacher effectiveness for the D.C. public schools.
In their chapter of the new Harvard Education Press book “Teacher Quality 2.0,” the authors say that imposing school achievement measures on teacher assessment could harm promising developments in “technological innovation, blended learning and the growth of charter and portfolio models in many urban areas.” Requiring that teachers be rated using student test scores risks “becoming as much an impediment to progress as the old, inadequate systems they displaced,” they conclude.
Mead, Rotherham and Brown decry limp evaluation systems that rate nearly all teachers as satisfactory. But there has not been enough research yet to prove that assessing with test scores will improve instruction. The wave of change in teacher assessment laws “may simply be locking in the current state-of-the-art teacher evaluation knowledge” and make it difficult to adjust when schools learn what really works, they say.
They note that some of the most successful public charter schools rely much more on principals’ judgments than state test scores in evaluating teachers, and they argue that the new laws requiring the use of test scores could stymie them. Many educators teach subjects such as history, science, art and music that are not tied to state tests. New instructional systems emphasizing teamwork and blended learning probably will increase the number of teachers whose work cannot be evaluated in the ways legislatures require.
“Right now,” the authors say, “teacher evaluations are too often marketed as an educational wonder drug without a clear plan for how evaluation results translate into improved teaching or what system elements are necessary to foster effective teaching.”
Such caution is noteworthy coming from people not tied to the teacher unions that have been the most persistent critics of test-based assessments. Mead, Rotherham and Brown recommend more respect for innovations, perhaps by giving creative school leaders waivers from the laws.
Teacher evaluation systems are unlikely to become political campaign topics akin to Common Core. That is just as well. Let’s allow people who understand school dynamics, including principals, classroom teachers and these authors, to examine the most promising reforms and show us which have the best results.