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March 17, 2011

Superman & Teacher Evaluation

Elizabeth Coffman:

There's been a lot of negative media lately, particularly surrounding education and teachers' unions in Wisconsin, Ohio and Florida.

My children attend a Florida public high school that is ranked as one of the top five best schools in the state for academics, and consistently ranked number one in football and volleyball. They have an extensive Advanced Placement course program that is so popular that my kids cannot get into all of the AP courses that they want. The courses are large and overenrolled, but at least they are challenging.

From my perspective as a parent and a college educator, most of my kids' high school teachers have been excellent. A few, however, have been inferior -- a situation that does not really surprise me. As a former department chair and evaluator of faculty performance at the college level, I understand how flawed and difficult the evaluation process can be. I also understand how faculty have different strengths and weaknesses. The weaker scholar with the higher student GPA average may be the person who provides after-hours counsel to students in trouble. The faculty with the lower student evaluations and course G.P.A.'s may be the most intellectually challenging faculty in the classroom -- the one who students learn to appreciate after they graduate. And then there are a few faculty who should probably leave education entirely, but will not go and cannot be fired without difficulty, if they have tenure. All of these issues--teacher evaluation, compensation, tenure--are on the political table right now for public schools. Florida is one of the states that is pushing a bill to link secondary student performance to better teacher retention and merit pay. New Florida Governor (and Tea Party favorite) Rick Scott supports a bill in which teacher evaluations are no longer subject to the collective bargaining process, only pay and benefits are negotiated. Teachers' unions are unhappy about the methods (and the rhetoric) that many politicians are using for evaluating them and their classrooms. It's unfortunate how this clash between workers and management is playing out in the classroom.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at March 17, 2011 1:58 AM
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