Dive Brief:
- Nine out of 10 New York City teachers earned the top rating scores on the city's new teacher evaluation system.
- Teachers and principles received scores based on an aggregation of information that included student test scores, classroom observations, and school-specific factors like student surveys.
- Of the city's teachers, only 1.2% were ranked the worst score ("ineffective"), making some question the legitimacy of the evaluation.
Dive Insight:
While teacher evaluations are often pushed by ed reformers as a way to suss out the team and find out who could be dismissed, the all-around high scores unfortunately make it difficult to really differentiate who is doing what — and how effectively.
"Many districts appear to have completely botched this,” education reformer Timothy Daly, the president of the New Teacher Project, told the New York Times.
The newspaper reports that departing state Education Commissioner John B. King Jr. had similar sentiments: "I’m concerned that in some districts, there’s a tendency to blanket everyone with the same rating. That defeats the purpose of the observations and the evaluations, and we have to work to fix that.”