Saturday, June 13, 2009

If teachers are so important, why do we treat them like widgets?

Effective teachers are the key to student success. Yet our school systems treat all teachers as interchangeable parts, not professionals. Excellence goes unrecognized and poor performance goes unaddressed. This indifference to performance disrespects teachers and gambles with students’ lives.

The Widget Effect is a wide-ranging report that studies teacher evaluation and dismissal in four states and 12 diverse districts, ranging from 4,000 to 400,000 students in enrollment. From the beginning, over 50 district and state officials and 25 teachers’ union representatives actively informed the study through advisory panels in each state.

Panel members provided ongoing feedback and perspective and were invited to submit unedited written responses to the study’s findings and recommendations. Their insights [keep reading here]...

1 comment:

  1. This year, they started making us clock in and out in the office. If I wanted to clock in and out, I'd have a job at Dairy Queen. I went to college...I have a degree. I'm professional and am always at work much more than 8 hours a day. If I am sick, I call in. So why do they treat us like hourly workers?

    Our school is brand new. Teachers are not allowed to eat or drink anything outside of the teachers lounge. We LIVE at school. We can't even have coffee at our desks. I'm tired of being treated like an imbicile.

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