The White House is now allowing petitions to be posted, and 5000 signees will get you an official response!
This dairy will be a short but sweet run down of the contents of my petition. Long story short, the Obama administration is wrong to insist the teacher evaluation be tied to student results on standardized tests. This diary doesn’t seek to rehash every argument against “value added” testing measures. If you want to see that case made by a real education expert, peep a few Teacher Ken diaries here.
Here is the link to my petition. I’d love to have as many of you sign it as possible……….if you can wade through a rather slow registration process.
End "value added" teacher evaluation!
Here is the "blurb" part of the petition
we petition the obama administration to:
grant waivers to the No Child Left Behind act to without using standardized test scores for teacher evaluation.
And the body
The No Child Left Behind act is a law riddled with flawed methods of improving education. The single-minded focus on high-stakes standardized encourages poor teaching. The Obama administration rightly views the “100% proficiency” mandate as poor policy that only encourages teaching to the test. The Obama administration should not try to solve this problem via mandating that all teachers be evaluated on the standardized test scores of their students. No valid system of “value added” measurement of teachers exists. This mandate is “Voodoo” educational policy at its best and will cause a greater number of educators to teach to the test. Secretary Duncan should be directed to grant “clean” waivers to NCLB that will not compel states to tie teacher evaluation to standardized test scores.
Again, I hope you all feel moved to sign it!
UPDATE!!!!
In order to sign the petition:
1) Click on
End "value added" teacher evaluation!
above
2) Scroll to the bottom of the petition when the link takes you there. Click on "create an account" and you'll soon be signing away to your heart's content.