More than 200 D.C. teachers fired for poor performance evaluations
More than 200 teachers in Washington, D.C. were fired on Friday after they were rated ineffective on their performance evaluations, reports the Washington Post.
The teachers represented 5 percent of D.C.'s teaching force, and were dismissed after they received low ratings on an evaluation program known as IMPACT, which the Post said was developed under former D.C. Chancellor Michelle Rhee before she resigned last fall.
According to The Post, the evaluation system grades on the following: "five 30-minute classroom observations and their compliance with nine broad standards. These include the abilities to express course content clearly, teach students with differing skill levels and manage time effectively. For some teachers, half of their appraisal is contingent on whether students meet predicted improvement targets on standardized tests."
Baltimoresun.com's 
Comments
I hope that I am wrong, but I see this as the shape of things to come in light of the "cutting edge" contract that the Baltimore City teachers voted for. Perhaps "cutting edge" refers to the teachers who will be cut from their jobs because their school did not make AYP.
Posted by: school marm | July 19, 2011 12:06 PM
A performance evaluation is backup for wanting to get rid of a teacher who has no intimidation capabilities. Teachers with and with out these capabilities should stick together. Pretty soon everyone will be included by the polite interventionism of our government.
Posted by: a teacher | July 19, 2011 6:14 PM
@ marm - That is exactly where the new reformers are going. Jettison all those "bad" teachers and the schools will magically get better. Except I have yet to hear where they are going to get all the new "highly qualified" teachers to replace them. Reading through that story also cemented the concept that this type of evaluation is to the determent of teachers working in high poverty schools. One consolation, those DC teachers may find work in Prince Georges County since they will not rehire hundreds of their foreign teachers whose visas have expired.
Posted by: OverTheTop | July 19, 2011 8:34 PM
I think we'll also see this cutting the other way back onto the administration: we'll start seeing which ones can and which ones can't. We've yet to see an equitable evaluation system that realistically segments out the many factors that impact learning that teacher's have no control over.
Considering how the current PBES has been used in MANY schools (extremely poorly and in many cases probably open to litigation for age, sex, racial bias), the current crop of leaders is in real trouble with this new contract.
I am sensing a whole new edginess. The new contract is sort of like taking a pack of very hungry dogs and throwing out a nice tenderloin. You're going to see less collaboration and more adversarial behavior. The incentives and risks are shifting, and this will not necessarily favor the children. A real shame. But like Alonso's recent test score performance, a house of cards...
Posted by: jschool | July 23, 2011 9:34 AM