Michael writes: >> I guess that anything that does not come out full bore one way or >> another is a cop out. Test scores are a non-subjective measure. So >> too would be height or weight. All three are fairly meaningless.
I don't see how you can say that test scores are meaningless. It was on this very point that the LA union lost credibility among the general public when the LA Times published test scores by teacher recently. >> I have no reason to believe that principals would be fairer or better >> judges than the teachers. I await your response, which will be the >> last word on the subject. I have papers to grade. Again, this is not a teacher/principal issue. This a generalized organizational issue. My view is that we should strive to place authority for any specific decision at an institutional level based upon the correlating incentives of the position. In a private market world, if teachers formed a school and made collective employment decisions, we would not be having this discussion, as the fortunes of the teachers would be directly tied to their collective decisions. But we live in public run and funded school world, where the union exists precisely to protect its members from market forces (i.e. the need to attract students and produce a competitive schooling product). If you ask the teachers union how to make employment and salary decisions, you get the seniority answer, which has absolutely no correlation with student or school performance (contra Mr. Meeropol). While I would never make the argument that managers are infallible, and the incentive structure for adminin! istrators in our public school system leaves a lot to be desired, I believe managers are better situated and incentivized than the teachers to make these decisions. BTW, if student performance is not a good evaluator for teacher performance, do you feel the same about its usefullness for student performance? If peer review works for teachers, why not use it for students? It will at least give you more time to argue with me. David Shemano _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
