Labor & Employment Law

AFT?s Weingarten Proposes New Teacher Evaluation Rules

By Mike Hall

AFT President Randi Weingarten yesterday proposed a new way to align teacher development and evaluation with due process for tenured teachers. The three-step plan includes clear standards for what teachers should know and be able to do, a time-limited improvement and a support plan for teachers deemed to be unsatisfactory, according to the evaluation standards and a hearing process.

Speaking at an AFT conference on teacher development and evaluation that included teachers and administrators, Weingarten said:

Our aim is to have a comprehensive, fair, transparent and expedient process to identify, improve and?if necessary?remove ineffective teachers.

She also noted that ?quick fixes? such as ?drive-by or test-score-driven evaluations? are not effective or fair ways to judge teachers.

As important as evaluations are to assessing teacher performance, what passes for evaluation in many districts frankly isn?t up to this important task. Way too often, they?re superficial. They?re subjective. They miss a prime opportunity to improve teacher practice?and, therefore, to increase student learning, which is what it?s all about.

With many school districts considering teacher layoffs because of budget shortfalls, education privatizers and opponents of public education have claimed that teachers and their unions are standing in the way of reform and fiscal responsibility by protecting teachers they call incompetent. In Wisconsin and Ohio, for example, Republican Govs. Scott Walker and John Kasich are attempting to eliminate the collective bargaining rights of teachers and other public employees. Similar efforts are under way in other states.

But Diane Ravitch, a former high-ranking Bush administration education official who once fiercely backed school privatization and spoke out against teachers unions, now says attacking teachers and their unions is the wrong way to go.

Writing on her blog, Bridging Differences, Ravitch says:

If there is no organized force to advocate for public education in the state capitols of this nation, our children and our schools will suffer. That’s the bottom line. And that’s why I stand with the teachers of Wisconsin.

Click here for Weingarten?s full remarks, here for more details on the AFT plan and here for the full text of Ravitch?s letter.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on February 25, 2011 (boomark / email).