Michelle Rhee's "Plan B"

It looks like Michelle Rhee wants to bypass the teacher’s union and link teacher licensure to “effectiveness” as determined by OSSE. The union has already tripped up, in my opinion, by rejecting the principle of the idea and upsetting people like Kevin.

But really, they have a point about the nuts and bolts problems of teacher evaluation in DC. In all the coverage of the DC contract negotiations, no one seems to have noticed or cared that this year’s DC-CAS scores didn’t come back in time to be used for teacher ratings. That means teachers couldn’t be evaluated by the standards for success they set for themselves in September. Evaluations were done anyway, regardless of the fact that the system didn’t provide teachers with the evidence they needed to prove their effectiveness.

Would you want to bet your teacher’s license on the OSSE bureaucracy’s ability to fix the teacher evaluation process all at once? Or would you ask that they demonstrate a working system of evaluation before they tie it to your livelihood? I don’t think it’s asking too much that teachers at least be able to examine the evaluation process the Chancellor wants to use before she uses it to fire them.