Teachers Matter - So Why Do We Treat Them Like Widgets?
The nation’s indifference to teacher effectiveness is the focus of a new report from The New Teacher Project (TNTP), a nonprofi t dedicated to helping education leaders find, develop, and keep great teachers. Though effective teachers are central to student success, TNTP’s analysis of more than 40,000 teacher evaluation records in four states and 12 districts illustrates that teacher-evaluation systems refl ect and codify the “Widget Effect”—the fallacy that all teachers are essentially interchangeable—in several major ways: All teachers are rated good or great; excellence goes unrecognized; professional development is inadequate; novice teachers are neglected; and poor performance goes unaddressed. A TNTP leader will share the fi ndings of this powerful work and point the way toward a system in which good information about instructional quality is a primary factor in decisions concerning development, compensation, retention, and dismissal.
Dan Weisberg, vice president of policy and general counsel, The New Teacher Project, Brooklyn, N.Y.
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