Dear Commons Community,

Linda Darling-Hammond has an essay on value-added teacher evaluation in the current issue of Education Week.  She sees great harm in this approach and uses as an example the case of a teacher in New York City.

“New York City’s “worst teacher” was recently singled out and so labeled by the New York Post after the city’s education department released value-added test-score ratings to the media for thousands of city teachers, identifying each by name.

The tabloid treatment didn’t stop there. Reporters chased down teacher Pascale Mauclair, the subject of the “worst teacher” slam, bombarding her with questions about her lack of skill and commitment. They even went to her father’s home and told him his daughter was among the worst teachers in the city.

Now the facts: Mauclair is an experienced and much-admired English-as-a-second-language teacher. She works with new immigrant students who do not yet speak English at one of the city’s strongest elementary schools. Her school, PS 11, received an A from the city’s rating system and is led by one of the city’s most respected principals, Anna Efkarpides, who declares Mauclair an excellent teacher. She adds: “I would put my own children in her class.”

Most troubling is that the city released the scores while warning that huge margins of error surround the ratings: more than 30 percentile points in math and more than 50 percentile points in English language arts. Soon these scores will be used in a newly negotiated evaluation system that, as it is designed, will identify most teachers in New York state as less than effective.”

As I have written before on this blog, the value-added teacher evaluation system and the idea that teacher evaluations be made public are appalling, insulting, and professionally disgraceful.  The New York City Department of Education should be ashamed for what it has created.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Rick Santorum created a firestorm while campaigning in Puerto Rico on Wednesday by commenting that to become a state the commonwealth had to adopt English as its main language.  USA Today quoted Santorum:

“As in any other state, you have to comply with this and any federal law. And that is that English has to be the main language,” Santorum told El Vocero, a San Juan newspaper. “There are other states with more than one language as is the case in Hawaii, but to be a state in the United States, English has to be the main language.”

Santorum stood by his comments today.

“What I said is English has to be learned as a language and this has to be a country where English is widely spoken and used, yes,” he said, according to ABC News. He added the use of English should be a “condition” if Puerto Rico is to become a state.”

CNN pointed out that the U.S. Constitution spells out how a state can be admitted, but there is no mention of a language requirement. Some states and local governments have adopted what are known as “English only” laws, making English the official language of government.

Santorum’s  remarks drew criticism, and prompted one delegate who had been pledged to him to quit, saying he was offended.    On Thursday Mr. Santorum and his aides scrambled to contain the damage, with the candidate saying several times that the local media had misquoted him as saying he wanted English to be the “only” language, whereas he believed that English should be the “primary language.”

Tony