Helping Teachers Help Themselves

[elleng]

The Montgomery County Public Schools system here has a highly regarded program for evaluating teachers, providing them extra support if they are performing poorly and getting rid of those who do not improve.

The program, Peer Assistance and Review — known as PAR — uses several hundred senior teachers to mentor both newcomers and struggling veterans. If the mentoring does not work, the PAR panel — made up of eight teachers and eight principals — can vote to fire the teacher.

Sitting in on two cases last week, I could not tell from the comments which of the panel members were teachers and which were principals. In one of the cases, 11 of the 12 panel members present voted to follow a principal’s recommendation and discipline the teacher; in the other, they decided in a 10-to-2 vote to reject a principal’s recommendation and support the teacher.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/06/education/06oneducation.html?hp

[elleng]

1. More

Unfortunately, federal dollars from the Obama administration’s Race to the Top program are not going where Dr. Weast and the PAR program need to go. Montgomery County schools were entitled to $12 million from Race to the Top, but Dr. Weast said he would not take the money because the grant required districts to include students’ state test results as a measure of teacher quality. “We don’t believe the tests are reliable,” he said. “You don’t want to turn your system into a test factory.”

[NYC_SKP]

2. Recommended.

New teachers don't get the support they need, not in California anyway.

I think first year teachers shouldn't be left alone to figure things out, with just the occasional observation.

Several weeks of co-teaching or observation over the first year should be the minimum.

[elleng]

3. More more

Race to the Top aims to spur student growth by improving teacher quality, which is exactly what Montgomery County is doing. Sad to say, the district is getting the right results the wrong way.

It does not seem to matter that 84 percent of Montgomery County students go on to college and that 63 percent earn degrees there — the very variables that President Obama has said should be the true measure of academic success. It does not seem to matter that 2.5 percent of all black children in America who pass an Advanced Placement test live in Montgomery County, more than five times its share of the nation’s black population.

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[dkf]

4. This is exactly what we need. Help teachers who can benefit from development, fire those

Who are simply unsuited for the job.

But we also need to make sure those who observe, train and evaluate the teachers are unbiased. The children must come before personal relationships.

If the teachers unions were advocating this type of program I could get behind them 100%. But if they insist every teacher is capable of doing the job with the right guidance I beg to differ.

[elleng]

5. Unions here are:

'Administrators and union officials credited the good will developed through PAR for some of the district’s other successes. Five years ago, the district created a budget committee, half of whose members belonged to unions. Last year, when Larry Bowers, the district’s finance director, said the schools could not afford a scheduled 5.3 percent raise, the teachers’ union agreed. “Saved us $89 million,” Mr. Bowers said.

Mr. Prouty, the union president, said he knew Mr. Bowers was telling the truth. “We formulate the budget; we know where the money is, which makes us much more trusting,” said Mr. Prouty, whose members also agreed to forgo a raise next year.'

[dkf]

6. Yup I like seeing unions who understand they are partners.

Those who believe they are simply there to get what they can are the ones who end up damaging the reputation of unions.