Wisconsin Assembly should ice teacher discipline bill

Mary Bell:

If you want to tell if someone is a good driver, you watch them drive. If you want to tell if someone is a good teacher, watch them teach. When it comes to evaluating teachers, the further from the classroom you get, the weaker the measure is.

There's no doubt about it - high-quality evaluation systems for teachers and principals help students and schools. Our union of educators has called for consistent evaluations for years - and even advanced our own proposal back in January. We have been one of many voices on the State Superintendent's Educator Effectiveness Design Team, which is near to releasing a comprehensive evaluation framework.

The education community knows what works: professional development, consistent and thorough classroom observation and using results to help good educators become great.

It was troubling, then, when last week the state Senate voted to advance a bill to tie teacher discipline - even firing - to students' Wisconsin Knowledge and Concepts Exam (WKCE) test scores.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at October 26, 2011 1:17 AM
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