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Thursday, February 23, 2012

Bill Gates Really Has Evolved on Teacher Quality - Dana Goldstein

Bill Gates Really Has Evolved on Teacher Quality - Dana Goldstein:

Bill Gates Really Has Evolved on Teacher Quality

I heard some push back last month when I praised Bill Gates for adopting a more holistic view of teacher evaluation, one focused less on student test scores and more on peer review and continuous improvement. But today he's signaling his evolution on these ideas in the loudest way possible, by publishing an op-ed in the New York Times that argues against releasing teachers' value-added scores to the public--a policy the Bloomberg administration and Arne Duncan support--and in favor of using value-added as just one measure of teacher effectiveness (emphasis added):

Many districts and states are trying to move toward better personnel systems for evaluation and improvement. Unfortunately, some education advocates in New York, Los Angeles and other cities are