Free Republic

January 18, 2010, 4:00 a.m. The Amazing RandiA brave union official endorses a commonsense reform to improve accountability. By Marcus A. Winters In what could prove a turning point in favor of education reform, American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten came out in favor of considering student performance on standardized tests as one part of teacher evaluations. If Weingarten turns her words into real actions, and if the teachers’ unions follow Weingarten’s lead, it will improve teacher quality across the country. Support for using student test scores to evaluate teachers is a departure for Weingarten. Two years ago,...

No Evaluation Left Behind by: Louisa Tavis, January 24, 2008 The Education Sector’s January 8 panel discussion regarding public education’s inadequate measurement of teacher performance featured an array of leading national experts on the subject, including Chris Cerf of the New York City Department of Education, Robert Rothman of Brown University, and Education Sector's Thomas Toch. The panel was moderated by Elena Silva, a senior policy analyst at Education Sector. The panelists uniformly stressed the beneficial effects that proper teacher evaluation can exert on the conditions of United States public schools. Its focus on the educational enterprise’s core—that is, the...