Yesterday reporter T. Keung Hui interviewed me for his article on Wake?s recent audit, regarding teacher evaluations. My quote in the article did express some of my thoughts ? but as Paul Harvey might say, ?Now, for the rest of the story,? let me share a few more of my comments.
I told him if the mission of the school was to advance a student?s content knowledge, then any evaluation must rely heavily on a value added component. It was ridiculous to only include ?inputs.?
Bottom line, if students are not learning, it does not matter what is being done in the classroom.
Only 25 percent of the principals say they use any type of ?assessment data? to evaluate teachers. Without using data most evaluations become a subjective muddle mass of opinions based upon feelings.
You can read the methods principals use to evaluate teachers in the classroom on page 232 of the 399  page audit.  After reading how teachers are evaluated in the county (which is probably systematic of the whole state), you completely understand why only one out of the 363 teachers surveyed received a ?below standard? by their principal. Wonder what that teacher did to make the principal so mad??