Dear Commons Community,

Bill Gates has an op-ed piece in today’s New York Times, criticizing the recent decision/plan to make teacher evaluations public in New York City schools.  Gates states:

“I am a strong proponent of measuring teachers’ effectiveness, and my foundation works with many schools to help make sure that such evaluations improve the overall quality of teaching. But publicly ranking teachers by name will not help them get better at their jobs or improve student learning. On the contrary, it will make it a lot harder to implement teacher evaluation systems that work.”

I agree with his view completely.   However, Gates, his foundation, and his corporate colleagues have to bear a good share of the responsibility for creating a culture of unbridled testing especially here in New York City that has reduced everything in the schools to assessing students and teachers.  Public disclosure of teacher evaluations directly relates to vitriolic attacks on teachers and their unions and are related to projects and initiatives started by Gates, Broad, Walton and several other corporation-affiliated foundations.

His op-ed piece and his call for a more sophisticated teacher evaluation system seems hollow.

Tony