Thompson: Common Core Moratorium On Value-Added

The best part of the Education Sector's Getting to 2014 (and Beyond): Choices and Challenges Ahead is Bill Tucker's "Taking a Long View of Teacher Evaluation," and its call for a one year hiatus on value-added evaluations when Common Core assessments are implemented. The best thing about Tucker's contribution is that it draws upon the insights of Craig Jerald, who explains that the new assessments "will necessitate a massive, and massively difficult, change in instructional practices for many, if not most teachers."  He also believes that high-stakes evaluations are a distraction from this difficult transition. 

For the next two years, educators will receive mixed messages.  They will be given professional development on teaching critical thinking skills for mastery.  In the inner city, many will be subject to termination, however, if they teach for higher order thinking before Common Core arrives.  As long as teachers, and their evaluators, face high-stakes bubble-in tests, they will be pressured to rush through a skin-deep curriculum.  So, it is great that reformers like Tucker are addressing the issue of implementing Common Core, while requiring teachers and principals to comply with its opposite.  I doubt he believes that a one year hiatus will be long enough to give Common Core a chance, and I suspect he would cheer if it stretched into multiple years.  If we want Common Core to succeed, however, reformers should join practitioners and make a "bold statement" on the need to teach 21st century skills, and repudiate value-added evaluations that will encourage the rote instruction of 19th century basic skills.- JT(@drjohnthompson) image via.

Comments

[Sarah]

I've always felt that students and teachers should have input on the effectiveness of the teachers they have/deal with for a year. I realize there are problems with that because some teens would simply lie in order to get a teacher they hate in trouble, but for those, like me, who honestly wanted to appraise a teacher, there's no system in place.

I had fantastic teachers in high school, middle school, and elementary school, but I also had some horrible ones. Sadly, many of those horrible ones are the ones with the most tenure and who earned far more than they were worth.

I had one music teacher when I was in kindergarten actually wrote a note to my mom (we were looking at old paperwork she found when spring cleaning). That note said - "Sarah sings off-key and is therefore a distraction in my classroom, so that's why I'm giving her a "D" for this quarter." I was in kindergarten and didn't know the song, so I can't imagine why I was expected to sing perfectly at such a young age.

[Diamond]

Ok agian here we go with the testing. ALL teachers should be correctly evaluated, but here this whole testing situation even got the editor stating evaluations could be a distraction for the transition and he's talking about this new common core. How is it a teacher can be affected by this one test but can be quickly evaluated. I don't understand it, but hey who dare challenge the government. As if they know it all, yeah right jsut because they are in high end positions doesn't make them know it all. How bout taking comments from both the students and teachers (the ones that actually matter in this whole common core transition.)