Latest News and Comment from Education

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Shanker Blog » The Categorical Imperative In New Teacher Evaluations

Shanker Blog » The Categorical Imperative In New Teacher Evaluations:

The Categorical Imperative In New Teacher Evaluations

There is a push among many individuals and groups advocating new teacher evaluations to predetermine the number of outcome categories – e.g., highly effective, effective, developing, ineffective, etc. – that these new systems will include. For instance, a “statement of principles” signed by 25 education advocacy organizations recommends that the reauthorized ESEA law require “four or more levels of teacher performance.” The New Teacher Project’s primary report on redesigning evaluations made the same suggestion.* For their part, many states have followed suit, mandating new systems with a minimum of 4-5 categories.

The rationale here is pretty simple on the surface: Those pushing for a minimum number of outcome categories believe that teacher performance must be adequately differentiated, a goal on which prior systems, most of which relied on dichotomous satisfactory/unsatisfactory schemes, fell short. In other words, the categories in