MARILYN PENN; EVALUATING THE EVALUATORS
http://politicalmavens.com/
So the state has imposed a new evaluation system for NYC teachers in which 20% will depend on their students’ test scores. If a teacher happens to work in a marginal neighborhood where students start school already years behind in their vocabulary, their grasp of basic concepts, their attention levels, their ability to sit still and follow instructions – the teacher will be held responsible as soon as these same children start being tested and fail to produce adequate results. Our politically correct society refuses to place the blame for school failure where it most squarely belongs – in homes lacking a father, lacking parental attention to children’s needs, lacking economic security, structure, consistency, monogamy, lacking the maturity and responsibility that are the sine qua non for parenthood. Blaming the teacher for a student body coming from homes that are damaged and deficient is just blaming the messenger for bad news.
This doesn’t mean that teachers should be exempt from criticism or that all teachers are equally competent – it just means that you need a magician to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. Religious and cultural norms determine the role of family and when you have enabled the disadvantaged to continue in a cycle breeding ignorance, failure, drugs and violence, there is no magic to turn these children into successful students. Poverty alone is not the governing factor as we have seen in various ethnic groups that will work as hard as necessary to make their children’s education the highest priority. Foreign Asian students whose family were peasants before emigrating to this country produce children who thrive at school while native-born Americans tune out and drop out.
I wonder why we haven’t clamored to impose evaluations on our city and state politicians. Why aren’t they judged at least 20% by the performance of their constituents? Why isn’t their continued employment subject to the same sort of scrutiny that we are now imposing on teachers? We shouldn’t have to wait for politicians to become criminals before removing them – we should have yearly evaluations and kick out those whose constituents have a high crime rate (including white collar crime), or excessive unemployment, or low rates of jury duty, voter turnout, volunteer efforts, military service, philanthropic giving or whatever standards are deemed to be indicative of good citizenship. Politicians should be held just as responsible for these factors as teachers are for student achievement.
The surest proof that teacher evaluations based on student performance is a hollow idea can be found in Mayor Bloomberg’s hailing it as a landmark in educational reform: “It gives New York confidence that our schools will be able to give the kids the education they will need going forward.” Now that statement, made by a mayor in his 3rd term of office with no apparent gains in our current educational system can only be described as chimerical at best and fraudulent at worst.
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