The idea of linking student achievement to teacher evaluation has been around for quite some time through a variety of titles--merit pay, performance pay, incentive pay, etc. It's also a concept that gained new traction last week when Secretary of Education Arne Duncan released information about the Race to the Top program that the DoE is using to push for state-level changes that favor charter schools, merit pay, and linking student test scores to teachers.
One of the notions that you often here during these discussions is, "The good teachers have nothing to be afraid of." Let's talk about that for a bit.
Last year, for one of my Master's classes, I dug into testing data I had on hand for the first grade team in my building. These are real numbers and real averages with real kids behind them; the test in question is the Measures of Academic Progress, from the Northwest Evaluation Association.
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