Diane Ravitch
No Student Left Untested
New York’s education officials are obsessed with test scores. In order to secure $700 million of promised funding from Obama’s Race to the Top program, the state wants to find and fire the teachers who aren’t able to produce higher test scores year after year. But most testing experts believe that the methods for rating teachers are inaccurate, unstable, and unreliable. New York’s hurried and wrong-headed teacher evaluation plan will profoundly demoralize teachers, as they realize that they have lost their professional autonomy and will be measured according to precise behaviors and actions that have nothing to do with their own definition of good teaching.
February 21, 2012