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Friday, May 24, 2013

San Jose Teachers’ Contract Offers Leadership Pathways | InterACT

San Jose Teachers’ Contract Offers Leadership Pathways | InterACT:

San Jose Teachers’ Contract Offers Leadership Pathways

Note: in November 2012, Accomplished California Teachers (ACT) released the policy report “Promoting Quality Teaching: New Approaches to Compensation and Career Pathways.”  The following post is the second in a series of profiles showing how California teacher leaders are beginning to develop and follow diversified career pathways.  California teachers, and our peers around the nation, are looking for opportunities to innovate and lead in our field, but without having to leave the classroom.  Our argument is that educational leadership will improve the more its carried out by those still in the classroom, and that students will benefit from having more accomplished educators remaining the in classroom rather than taking on entirely non-teaching positions.
This addition to the California Teacher Leader Profiles series of blog posts summarizes a promising development from San Jose, CA, as reported by John Fensterwald in EdSource Today:
Breaking new ground in California, San Jose Unified has adopted an innovative teacher evaluation process that gives teachers a role in reviewing their peers and greatly revises the current – and some say outmoded – method of measuring teacher success.
The new system would deny automatic raises to unsatisfactory performers and give evaluators the option of adding another year to the probationary period for new teachers – a provision at odds with the state teachers union. Bucking a national trend, the new system will not use standardized test scores as a direct