NYS Teacher Evaluation System Is Ill Considered

Here is a letter that Scarsdale School Board Member Linda Hillman Chayes wrote to the NY Times last month concerning teacher evaluations: To the Editor: Why is it we can’t have a meaningful discussion about education without degenerating into sound bites, “false dichotomies” and calcified narratives? One discussion (among many) that has gone awry is the one on teacher evaluation.

Of course it makes sense to evaluate teachers on how well they educate our kids, and there are many school systems and students that have floundered without meaningful teacher evaluations. But New York State’s hasty and ill-considered point system for teacher evaluation based on year-to-year student performance on standardized tests is so wrong it is hard to know where to begin — and the Education Department has ignored feedback.

Our already financially starved schools will see more unfunded mandates imposed to carry out these reforms. Teachers will have even greater incentive to teach to standardized tests rather than focus on the kind of critical and analytic thinking our children need to succeed in our world. It is hard to imagine how you make this work given the differences in class baselines and how it would make any sense in some districts where differences on standardized tests are minuscule.

I have to believe that we can think more deeply about these complex problems, work more collaboratively with all constituents and spend our money more wisely as we address the inequities in educational opportunities as well as improve the overall quality of education in our country.

LINDA HILLMAN CHAYES
Scarsdale, N.Y., April 11, 2011

The writer is a member and past president of the Scarsdale Board of Education.