Last Wednesday I found myself in a conference room as part of a task force focused on implementing Washington State’s new evaluation system in our school district. As the day progressed, I learned five important things:
1. Thank God for the WEA. As the legislation behind the new system made its way through Olympia, our teachers’ union worked feverishly to insure that most of the important details would be worked out at the local level – where teachers themselves would have the greatest chance of being heard. That’s essentially why I was sitting in that conference room instead of teaching in my classroom. The reason why the WEA worked so hard on this front is open to interpretation. If you’re an idiot and/or an editorial writer for the Seattle Times, it’s because the union is greedily trying to maintain the status quo by giving ineffective teachers a greater chance of keeping their jobs. The rest of us understand that no one’s interests are served when teachers are treated like voiceless, dispensable cogs in a system where every decision is made from the top down. Like I said; it’s open to interpretation.
2. People will be losing their jobs. Early in the meeting a principal sitting across the table said something that startled me: “At least a third of my teachers are going to fail under this evaluation system.” I was taken aback, “How can you know that, when we haven’t even fleshed out the details?” “I’ve been in their rooms,” he said, “I know how they teach, and I know how they’ll score on this evaluation.” The WEA, along with OSPI and local school districts have tried to emphasize the potential to tie this evaluation system to professional development, and I’m sure they’ll succeed, to a point. But make no mistake: this system was originally conceived and is currently perceived as a way to facilitate the removal of poor teachers.