Since teachers are “graded” on their performance based on the score that students receive, I would like to propose that other professionals that are funded by tax dollars be graded the same way.
As everyone knows, the test scores that students receive are collected without factoring in the other things going on in a student’s life. No allowance is given for students who have a physical or mental issues that limit their ability to focus on the test. Neither does it take into consideration excessive absences or other factors that affect the outcome of the test scores. The test scores do not take any “abnormal” circumstances into account when these scores are recorded.
Let us grade the local police department on their performance based entirely on the outcome of their encounter with citizens. Is this a fair way to judge the job performance? Without taking into account the mental or physical state of the citizens that they interact with, or other factors, does it make sense to assume that the officer is not doing their job correctly?
Let us look at the mayor’s office or county government and evaluate their performance the same way. If the citizens of their city do not obey the laws, take proper care of their homes or family, show up for work every day, or do over things that affect their daily lives, should the mayor be “graded on” how well that he/she is performing their job?
I can think of many more publicly funded organizations, but I think that you get the point that I am trying to make. It does not make sense to grade a teacher’s performance basted on situations that are completely out of the teacher’s control. There are simpler, less time and resource-consuming ways to decide if a teacher is doing their job.
In an economic time as we are in right now, why are we taking our valuable time and resources to evaluate teachers with a system that does little to actually measure their performance? Any school administrator can tell you how well their teachers are doing without these test scores. They can use factors such as economic base, attendance base, or other variables to “predict” what these test scores tell us. They can do this with data that they already have.
Please encourage our government to put those resources into education and not into taking away from education.
Carol Whitney
Marysville
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