I’m grateful to National Journal and the blog contributors for making my recent National Press Club speech the focal point this week. And congratulations to Eliza and National Journal for earning a

best education blog honor from the Washington Post. One of this blog’s strengths is that, almost without exception, the posts are constructive, civil and sincere.

I appreciate the thoughtful responses, and I’m thrilled that most of those who responded have accepted my call to work collaboratively and constructively as we seek to tackle some of the most intractable problems in education.

Monty Neill and Deborah Meier are right to be cautious about the use of standardized test scores. Proposed evaluations that rely too heavily on those scores will be no better than the evaluations we have today. That’s why it’s so important that those who seek to improve teacher evaluations work with teachers who measure student achievement, evaluate student gains, and seek to improve their teaching every day. This is an effort to create a path to great teaching. That starts with supporting and deeply respecting teachers, and creating an evaluation system that helps us learn what’s working. Then we replicate what works and jettison what doesn’t. In that context, of course, student learning as well as teacher standards and practice are vital.

Monty and Diane Ravitch both point out that some people have distorted my speech. Distortions are inevitable when newspapers have just a handful of words for a headline. But it’s clear that some people treated my proposal like a menu, selecting only an item here or there that fit their agenda. I’d point those folks to a comment by Umberto Eco, who said, "For every complex problem there is a simple solution. And it is wrong." Evaluating teachers is complex. If you hear a simple solution, it’s wrong. I trust that I laid out comprehensive—rather than simplistic—solutions in my speech, which addressed not just teacher evaluations, but broader issues of teacher quality, due process, better supports for teachers, and improved labor-management relations.

I appreciate the candor from Justin Cohen and Steve Peha. I hope you’ll accept our invitation, approach us with an open mind, and work with us to improve teacher evaluations. I also appreciate Richard Rothstein’s insights. His analysis of why teacher evaluations have not improved is spot on. Richard is one of the partners I know will be working with us to create a better teacher evaluation system.

We’ve received many words of encouragement and support—including those from Ted Hershberg and Gina Burkhardt. Also, on the heels of my speech, the Douglas County, Colo., teachers union, school board and school district signed an agreement to work as partners to create and implement a teacher development and evaluation system. Thanks to others who have accepted the AFT’s offer to work as partners, we expect to see more collaborations like Douglas County’s in school districts across the country. Stay tuned.

Will the model for educator evaluation that the AFT has proposed succeed? We are completely confident that it can, and in the R.I. Department of Education we are working with the Rhode Island Federation of Teachers and Health Professionals to make sure that it does.

Last month (December 2009) the R.I. Board of Regents approved our first statewide evaluation-system standards. Like the model Randi Weingarten has proposed, our evaluation system includes reviews by trained evaluators, it is based on professional-teaching standards, it uses measures of student achievement to assess the effectiveness of educators, and it emphasizes the professional growth of all educators. Perhaps most important, we completely agree with Randi that, as she said in her talk “A New Path Forward,” the goal of evaluations is “to lift whole schools and systems, to help promising teachers improve, to enable good teachers to become great, and to identify those teachers who shouldn’t be in the classroom at all.” Well said!

We also share Randi’s belief that we have to conduct evaluations fairly and thoughtfully. Evaluations must be both objective and comparable across school systems. For that reason, a major component of our new evaluation-system standards concerns the selection and training of evaluators and the safeguards against errors and bias.

What we’ve been hearing from educators in Rhode Island is that they are more than willing to be held accountable, but they want to make sure that the evaluation system is valid, reliable, fair, and transparent – and we want that, too. We will work together with our labor leaders to put new evaluation systems in place. A contract recently negotiated in one of our districts, for example, establishes a labor-management team that will work in partnership to create a new evaluation system in line with the state standards. That’s a very hopeful sign.

What we won’t do is compromise on quality. I know that many serious discussions and tough decisions lie before us as we put our plans into action. For example, we certainly agree with the AFT (“A Continuous Improvement Model for Teacher Evaluation”) that we should consider assessment scores to determine “whether a teacher’s students show real growth.” We know that these measures must be objective and consistent across grade levels. Now, we’ll have to do a lot of work together to iron out the key details. We will have to determine how much annual improvement constitutes “growth.” We will decide how to consider multiple measures to determine growth and whether to use measures other than annual state assessments (e.g., interim assessments, pre- and post-tests for high-school courses). We will work on issues such as how to appropriately measure growth and achievement among students with disabilities and English-language learners, what expectations to set for high-achieving schools, and how to evaluate teachers whose students don’t participate in summative state assessments.

We recognize the importance of this speech and will be working with our local affiliates to carry out these efforts. As Randi said: “This is the time to shed the old conflicts and come together.” I would only add: Let’s be sure that we base all of our decisions on the best interest of our students.

And finally, as a state with both NEA and AFT, we look forward to hearing the NEA positions on these important issues.

Randi Weingarten was swinging for the fences with this speech and I'd say she barely slid into second. Her proposals were fine but It's a sad commentary that some of them should generate such hosannas. For example, is it so stunning for a union leader to concede that teacher evaluations might actually include measures of growth in student achievement (but only in tandem with "professional teaching standards" and "best practices")?

I was struck by this line: "So much of what is bargained is an attempt to codify behavior that, in a trusting relationship, would never need to be codified." The problem here is bigger than Weingarten admits. The modern school district simply doesn't make for trusting relationships; it's a centralized, command-and-control structure, and teacher unions have evolved as a perfectly logical response to the behemoth, mobilizing the labor force to deal as one with The Boss.

By contrast, take a look at Diana Lam's current Ed Week piece (http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2010/01/20/18lam.h29.html). The former Providence and San Antonio schools chief now heads Boston's Conservatory Lab Charter School, so she's got serious experience with the issues Weingarten raises. Decrying the adversarial cast of most contract negotiations, Lam writes of the process at her school: "The flexible, creative approach taken by both teachers and management was consistent with the culture and values of good charter schools. Our purpose—improving student achievement and teaching quality—was our foremost consideration. We wanted to get it right, not only for ourselves, but also as a demonstration for others of one path of possibility."

Finally, after the bruising week we've just seen in the NY State legislature, where the UFT and NYSUT did their best to cripple the state's best charter authorizers through Race to the Top legislation, let's note the dissonance between the AFT leader's statesmanlike speeches and the scorched-earth politics being played by her locals in state after state. It doesn't inspire much confidence that trusting, collegial conversations about evaluation and due process will actually happen at local bargaining tables, whatever the Washington office says.

(NOTE: If you want to save time, read Justin Cohen and Richard Rothstein. I’m not nearly as smart as they are, but I do try to add humor and alliteration.)


At least when I come late to a party, I bring a nice hostess gift. AFT is trying to steal the punchbowl.

Ever since I was a little son-of-a-teacher, I’ve been baffled by the behaviors of teachers’ unions. Now, in my ever-addled union-observing brain, I hear of trains leaving stations, of horses leaving barns, of days late, dollars short, and a million other idioms of inaction and lost opportunity.

Both AFT and NEA should have started this discussion years ago when they could have controlled the agenda—and made a truly amazing contribution to education. Who knows what wonderful schools we would have today if unions had beaten politicians and privateers in the race to reform our schools. I think life would have been much better for everyone, and that we would have avoided some of the less effective policies conceived in recent years, especially those conceived more out of frustration and potential political advantage than any civicaly sensible rationale.

(RE: Mr. Cohen on leadership. I’m sure some part of the definition of this word has something to do with going first. AFT is following, and followers only win when leaders flame out. In this case, there are too many leaders, and too few ways to flame out on the issue of improving teacher evaluation.)

(RE: Mr. Rothstein on responsibility. It's not like dozens of districts have been leading the charge toward better evaluation models either. So I guess we need to keep both groups after school, cancel their slumber parties, and take away their TV time.)

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with Ms. Weingarten’s ideas. Her model is comprehensive, and her intent seems solidly in support of using teacher evaluation both to improve teacher effectiveness and to remove those who are not effective. Granted, she’s a little fuzzy on the removal part, but Romans weren’t converted in a day. Did we really expect a Road to Damascus moment here?

I also like the potential “goose and gander” quality of Ms. Weingarten’s ideas. If fair standards and englightened due process evaluation systems are good for teachers, why couldn't we create such compassionate and effective systems for kids? If it's not good to evaluate teachers solely on student test scores, why should it be OK to evaluate their students that way?

In Ms. Weingarten’s mind, we have world enough and time to make the teaching profession the best that it can be. In reality, we don’t. Right or not, most of our country is ready to shove teachers up against the wall and steal their free and reduced lunch money. You should hear what I hear when I hear what parents in our lovely little hamlet say about our teachers—and we’ve got the top district in the state. The time for Ms. Weingarten’s discussion was the day after “A Nation at Risk” was released.

The problem here is not one of content but of context. At this juncture in American education reform, no one has the patience, except AFT, for a teaching reform effort that would likely take years or even decades to unfold. In that sense, I believe Ms. Weingarten has misjudged the temper of the times. Yes, many will cheer her for “tearing down that wall.” And if she goes down as the “Gorbachev” of American education, she will be remembered as one who was willing to risk the collapse of the system she oversees in service of the greater good. (Brava!) But while her gesture of glasnost should be gladly accepted, it should not be seen as anything more than the minimum she had to do to keep her organization’s head above water.

As the son of a lifetime NEA member and 30-year urban school teacher, and as someone who cares deeply about teaching, I have long been concerned that teachers’ unions have abdicated their responsibility for maintaining the integrity of their profession—and I have felt this way since I was about ten years old. I’m not anti-union; far from it. Union action in the early 1970s raised my mother’s salary enough so that she and her two little boys could get off welfare. Prior to that time, a college-degreed, full-time working professional with two kids employed by a major city school district in a fairly progressive state couldn’t make enough money to stay off the dole. That’s how bad things were for teachers then and how important unions were for them, their families, and the quality of our schools.

But while I have never been against unions per se, I have frequently and fervently opposed ineffective union practices. (You can blame my mom for that, I guess; she’s the same way). During this period of reform, arguably the most tumultuous time in the history of education, unions have done little to advance the teaching profession or to secure the long term interests of the people they serve. Despite Ms. Weingarten’s well-reasoned proposal, AFT continues in this ignominious tradition—albeit with less ignominy than its balky big brother; NEA seems to have nothing tangible on the table right now at all regarding teacher evaluation—or did I miss that memo?

The goals for a better teacher evaluation model set forth by Ms. Weingarten are lofty and laudable. But the list of proposed changes is long, the devil is in the unspecified details, accountability comes dead last, and, as Mr. Cohen points out, it comes with such carefully crafted conditional language that I caught myself wondering what the meaning of “is” is. Any PR flak worth his press pass would have at least advised handling the hot potato right off the bat—and cooling it down with straighter talk, stronger verbs, and fewer modifiers.

In defense of rhetorical cageyness, Mr. Rothstein provides us with a very important review of the facts—so sadly neglected in this debate—that disproves the widely-held belief that unions are solely to blame for the current state of affairs. There's plenty of blame to go around and districts are historically just as complicit in the teacher evaluation problem as are teachers unions. As I've often noted, here and in many other venues, my experience working with both evaluators and evaluatees has shown me that neither knows what to do most of the time, that both feel bad about the situation, and that neither knows what to do to fix it. Teaching is dying of embarrassment and this is why nothing is done. Perhaps bring evaluation "out of the closet" is what Ms. Weingarten's message is really all about.

But this simple idea, true though I think it is, doesn't account for the inherent complexity in the process Ms. Weingarten defines.

After states or districts have set up standards systems for teachers, and created better working conditions, only then does AFT propose even beginning to discuss the process for moving some teachers up and others out. Can you imagine how contentious it might be to negotiate just the “working conditions” plank of this proposal? Much like the current teacher evaluation process, AFT’s reform thereof could end up just as watered down, take just as long to complete, and possibly end up being just as tortuous. Ms. Weingarten’s ideas are not wrong, they are simply not stated as clearly as they could be, and they come at the wrong time. Something more responsive, with a more nimble framework for implementation, was required here. The teaching profession will be in tatters by the time Ms. Weingarten’s ideas reach fruition, if they ever bear fruit at all.

AFT should have taken this tack 25 years ago. Back then, it would have made sense, it would have been successful, and it would have helped our nation, our teachers, and our kids tremendously. States and districts would have had the time to wrestle with themselves and with their unions to create preliminary versions of the system Ms. Weingarten envisions. We would have had data by now on how her system works, data that would be highly valued in the current national dialog. But long ago, people like my mom and all her teacher friends knew, just as union leaders and district administrators knew, that teacher evaluation was broken, and that it had never been properly conceived of in the first place. Decisions, as they say, are made by the people who show up. AFT didn’t show up until last week.

Of course, NEA hasn’t shown up at all, so we must give credit to Ms. Weingarten for at least not being the last to go first. AFT, in my opinion, has historically been the better of the two unions when it came to things like standards, both for kids and for teachers. But NEA is so much larger, and therefore so much more influential, that we will have to wait until Mr. Van Roekel weighs in with his proposal to see how or even if his group decides to play.

(Personally, I hope we see both Mr. Van Roekel and Ms. Weingarten join our discussion this week. Their voices are important and press releases don’t always reflect the truth of a person’s vision or the candor required to put it across in unambiguous terms. I am open to the possibility that I have misjudged or mischaracterized both AFT and NEA in this post. I would welcome additional context, offered in a personal format, from the two pivotal players in the process. Without them, I think this important discussion will be incomplete.)

AFT is the small fish in the big pond. The water is deep and the sharks have been circling. The phrase “too little, too late” comes to mind. I don’t see anything wrong with any of Ms. Weingarten’s ideas. But I can imagine that implementing them—with AFT negotiating fiercely at every twist and contractual turn—would easily take a decade or more. With competing ideas popping up all over the place, and more to come via Race to the Top, AFT will be forced once again to fight a rear-guard action. And teachers will once again be playing catch-up to ideas from more savvy foes with far less patience for the status quos.

It’s a cheap cliché to harp on unions these days, especially teachers’ unions. But UAW doesn’t seem to have done very well by their members, and the Machinists Union in Everett, WA (along with everyone else in the state) is still bristling over throwing away that Boeing plant. Perhaps AFT’s proposal makes more sense, then, when viewed symbolically. If we don’t concern ourselves with the timely implementation of its ideas, we could say that the document represented a new form of union leadership in the area of teacher professionalism. That’s certainly a step in the right direction. If NEA comes in with something similar, then the people who control the working lives of four million teachers will at least have put stakes in the ground before someone put stakes in their hearts.

So will the AFT teacher evaluation effort succeed? Probably not, and if so, only in the most limited fashion. States have already shown a penchant for breaking union agreements as they race to the top. What’s to keep them from breaking unions altogether in the coming decade? Furthermore, so many other organizations are so much farther along in revamping teacher evaluation that it’s hard to believe any union could ever catch up, especially given the push-me-pull-you nature of professionalization within a union context.

AFT’s work in teacher evaluation will be two-steps forward, one step back, as it wrestles with itself, its constituents, and the resentful and justifiably impatient universe of American education. Whether most of us on this blog want to believe it or not, far more people I talk to in schools today—teachers included—sound a lot more like Ms. Allen and Mr. Antonucci than they do like Ms. Ravitch, Ms. Meier, Mr.Neill, and Mr. Rothstein. And even though I’m more endeared to the likes of Dianne, Deborah, Monty, and Richard, I have noticed in the last few years that when I advance their thoughtful and compassionate ideas, I end up on the losing end of the argument. The times they are a-changin’, and those of us who care about teachers and teaching should have started the change ourselves back when Dylan was singing that song. (Of course, I was only a year old in 1964, but I still feel some responsibility being a teacher’s kid and all.)

Will AFT’s effort bring about change? Yes it will. First, it will put pressure on NEA to throw its hat into the teacher evaluation ring. Second, it will validate and energize other organizations that have already created new teacher evaluation systems. And third, it will embolden states to push ahead their own union-crushing teacher-destroying initiatives. AFT’s announcement is not a proposal, it’s a permission slip. Now anyone can create and implement new teacher evaluation systems. After all, the unions are doing it.

This leaves only two other questions to ponder: What would have been a better thing for AFT to do? And what will happen to teachers and the teaching profession in the future?

Teachers’ unions are in a tight spot. AFT may not be as boxed in as NEA, but that may only be because they have fewer teachers in their box. The fundamental union values of securing good salaries and benefits, improving working conditions, and preserving job security are at odds with creating an evaluation system that would, by definition, upset each of these iconic apple carts of organized labor.

Given AFT’s own member survey data, I would have advised a much bolder, more strategic break with the past. As Ms. Weingarten noted:

“The AFT recently asked our members: When your union deals with issues affecting both teaching quality and teachers’ rights, which of these should be the higher priority—working for professional teaching standards and good teaching, or defending the job rights of teachers who face disciplinary action? By a ratio of 4 to 1, our members chose the former. They—and the AFT—want a fair, transparent and expedient process to identify and deal with ineffective teachers.”

If AFT’s members are this adamant about the cause of teacher quality, Ms. Weingarten may have missed an historic opportunity to redefine her organization for all time. Think about it: 80% of AFT members think teacher quality is more important than teacher’s rights. To me that’s AFT’s cue to become a new kind of organization and begin the long-overdue process of getting out of the union business and into the professionalism business.

A sea change like this would have rocked the teaching world and set historical precedent. AFT could become “a union of professionals” while NEA would be left to defend why it remains merely a union. At this magical moment, as our nation lives in limbo between the current ESEA and the new ESEA, a bolder vision of change for AFT, including but not limited to teacher evaluation, could have caused a game-changing shift of momentum in favor of teachers, teaching, and responsible large-scale reform. The time was now; the moment may never come again.

Finally, given the AFT proposal, and NEA’s lack thereof, what will happen to teachers and the teaching profession in the future? I fear the outlook is bleak. Teachers have been unable to prove through scientific research that their profession is based on a systematic discipline. At the same time, organizations like Teach For America have been compiling research on successful teachers that threatens to redefine what it means to be effective, who the next generation of effective educators might be, and how these people will (and will not!) be trained, certified, evaluated, paid, disciplined, and ultimately defined.

I am not a person who believes in the inherent evil of teachers unions. Nor do I think their leaders are bad folks. But I do think they have for far too long allowed labor movement ideology to cloud their judgment about what has been happening outside the union world—and perhaps, as Ms. Weingarten’s statistics show, even within the union world as well. The extraordinary level of member agreement she cites takes years to coalesce. So one can logically assume that it was either there all along, or that at least the seeds of it were sewn perhaps as far back as a generation ago, when I was a year old, and my mom was a teacher on welfare.

Randi Weingarten has announced that she will press her union's locals to agree to contracts that include systems for fair and balanced evaluation of teacher performance (including, but not limited to measures of student achievement); and for the speedy removal of ineffective teachers, with simplified due process rules, when appropriate support fails to correct inadequacy.

Indeed, the AFT president may encourage local unions to proactively propose such procedures, even where school administrators fail to do so. The speech has the potential to shift our debate about responsibility for raising student achievement, calling the bluff of those who claim that union protection of poor teachers is mostly what retards student learning.

Yet some are making too much of this speech. Although it is conventional to blame unions for protecting ineffective teachers, the union does not unilaterally impose teacher discipline rules. Every teacher contract negotiation requires agreement between school district administration and a union. From the commentary on Ms. Weingarten's speech, you'd think that school superintendents have been proposing fair and balanced teacher evaluation systems, with expedited due process disciplinary procedures, and teacher unions have been refusing to agree. This is far from the truth. There is no case where a school superintendent has proposed a teacher evaluation and discipline system of the kind Weingarten described in her speech, and where a union then refused to go along.

And if a union had, initially, balked? The reality of collective bargaining is this: administrations have the right to propose such systems, and to impose them if, after bargaining, a union continues to resist. At that point, the union's only option is to strike (where public employee strikes are legal) or to beg for further discussion or mediation. In the absence of eventual agreement, management has the right to impose its proposal without union consent. It is impossible to imagine a realistic situation where a fair and balanced evaluation system, with due process protections, would be a strike issue for any local teachers union. Unions strike if salaries lag far behind inflation, if pensions are cut, if health insurance coverage is slashed. When adequate compensation is in place, unions don't strike (and haven't) to resist fair and balanced evaluation with due process protection.

In contrast, strikes over grossly unfair teacher termination policies remain likely – recall the United Federation of Teachers strike in 1968 over arbitrary dismissals in Ocean Hill-Brownsville.

Recently, when the New Haven school administration proposed a system that takes small steps toward the kinds of procedures endorsed in the Weingarten speech, the AFT was a willing and enthusiastic partner.

Of course, some local union leaders today stupidly adopt a posture of resistance even to reasonable teacher evaluation proposals. But it is only a posture. They have no choice but to go along with such proposals if, in bargaining, management insists.

So why, then, don't we have fair and balanced evaluation of teachers with simplified due process rules for the removal of those who are persistently ineffective? Only because school district administrations do not propose such systems. No speech by Randi Weingarten can change this reality.

Administrations don't propose such systems mostly because they are very, very expensive. Evaluation of teachers, including the mentoring of novices and of veterans in need of improvement, requires the employment of many additional supervisors of teachers. Call them master- or mentor-teachers, not supervisors, if you wish. The cost implications are the same. Schools today are under-administered. Frequently, one principal supervises as many as 30 teachers. No principal can evaluate and mentor this many. In addition to teacher evaluation, principals are handling curriculum, scheduling, student discipline, parent and community relations, and supervision of buildings and grounds. Lately, in our enthusiasm for administrative decentralization, we've added budgeting and purchase of supplies to her load. Even with the addition of an assistant principal, the challenge is impossible. The reason we have such terrible "drive-by" teacher evaluation systems, with principals taking perfunctory peeks into classrooms, is that principals have no time (or training) to do it right.

No other profession operates with such inadequate supervision. Can you imagine a nursing supervisor overseeing 30 nurses? A newspaper editor overseeing 30 reporters? A law firm partner overseeing 30 associates? Even an assembly line can't rely on only one foreman for 30 workers. Management theorists recommend that no leader should have more than 5 direct-reports. The failure of public education to organize itself around this common-sense principle is the roadblock to fair and balanced evaluation. Blaming teacher unions for this failure is demagoguery.

If, as Randi Weingarten supports, we were to simplify teacher discipline rules to make it easier to terminate an ineffective teacher, there are two core elements of due process that must be retained. First, a principal must be able to demonstrate to a hearing officer that the teacher's weaknesses had been identified, that the teacher had been notified of those weaknesses, and that the teacher had been given the opportunity (with appropriate mentoring, if necessary) to correct them. Second, a principal must be able to demonstrate that other, similarly-situated teachers, were treated similarly: the principal wasn't using the weakness as a pretext for arbitrary discipline while other teachers with similar weaknesses were ignored. Meeting both of these conditions requires an intensity of oversight and observation of instruction that is impossible to achieve with existing supervisory ratios, except in the most extreme cases of gross incompetence.

Teacher unions will continue to resist proposals that fail to meet these requirements – such as those that evaluate teachers primarily by their students' standardized test scores – and nothing in Ms. Weingarten's speech suggests otherwise.

There are some districts today where teacher unions influence, even control, administration policies because of union members' participation in low-turnout school board elections. In such cases, unions may, in effect, be bargaining with themselves, and administrations may never be able to insist upon reasonable and simplified due process rules. But such circumstances are rare, and do not characterize big-city school systems, especially those where mayors appoint school boards or administrators. In these districts, the question we should be asking is not, "what would the union say if the chancellor proposed and insisted upon a fair and balanced evaluation system," but "why hasn't he?" And if he did, are we prepared to provide the funds for all those additional teacher supervisors and mentor teachers an effective system would require?

(Note: Randi Weingarten serves on the Board of Directors of the Economic Policy Institute, where I am a Research Associate, and the American Federation of Teachers has made financial contributions to EPI. Neither Ms. Weingarten nor anyone at the AFT has seen this post in advance, nor did she or anyone at the AFT approve its contents. This post represents my views alone and is not necessarily consistent with the views of Ms. Weingarten or the American Federation of Teachers -- Richard Rothstein)

Two quick comments on this, one on the content and one on the atmospherics. First, in theory, the AFT's framework sounds right. It has all of the critical components of a good method for evaluating staff effectiveness: a strong process, transparent evaluation criteria, the use of multiple data points, measurement of both inputs and outputs, and ramifications for different ratings. But there is VERY careful wording around the removal of ineffective teachers. Here's the exact language: "Once a valid and comprehensive system of teacher development and evaluation is in place, districts can formulate a fair process for ... when necessary, removal of ineffective teachers who do not improve." Maybe it's the skeptic in me, but I'm willing to bet that the words "when necessary" and "improve" are going to do a lot of work - and have a lot of flexibility - in that formulation. Ineffective teachers should be required to become EFFECTIVE teachers, not merely improve within the context of ineffectiveness. The formulation in the AFT's platform leaves too much wiggle room on this.

Second, I'm thrilled with the AFT's "determination to lead the way to a more rigorous system of teacher development and evaluation," but isn't this a really flexible definition of leadership? Off the top of my head I can name a handful of organizations who have been light-years ahead on this issue for years, including The New Teacher Project, The New Teacher Center, DC Public Schools' IMPACT system, and the Education Trust, to name a few. If systems of teacher evaluation across the country evolve along the dimensions that the AFT has explicated here, I will be an incredibly happy little ed reformer, and I will give boatloads of kudos to Weingarten and the rest of the AFT for shifting across difficult political fault lines. But tons of folks have been pushing this issue for years; some have spent careers on it. Some credit where credit is due would be nice.

Developing valid and reliable approaches to teacher evaluation is the lynchpin in the successful implementation of a whole variety of education reform efforts: alternative compensation for educators; revising teacher tenure laws; more targeted investments in professional development; and most critically and timely, school turn around models being proposed for chronically low performing schools around the country.

The national teacher unions have either opposed or stayed out of the debates around some of these reform conversations, but with the many opportunities for ARRA funding tied to progress in some of these key reform areas, the AFT has wisely recognized that it can have more influence participating in the development of valid and reliable evaluation systems than sitting on the sidelines. Certainly, the abundance of hastily crafted and recently approved laws coming out of state legislatures across the country in response to the ARRA-inspired grant competitions requiring the development of more robust teacher evaluation systems has moved the conversation from the national level to the states—for policymakers and union leaders alike.

The AFT is also right to point out that by and large current teacher evaluation models fall far short of meeting even basic standards of validity and reliability (cite the REL Midwest review of teacher evaluation policies in the Midwest or see www.tqsource.org <http://www.tqsource.org/> for the TQ Center R&P Brief by Mathers, Oliva and Laine for a summary of the REL study and recommendations for improving teacher evaluation), and should therefore not be used as the basis for implementing local reform initiatives that impact a teacher’s career.

Learning Point Associates Retaining Teacher Talent research has consistently pointed out that teachers believe the unions spend too much energy protecting ineffective teachers and not enough time and resources on developing high quality opportunities for ongoing learning and development for teachers (see Retaining Teacher Talent Report: The View from Gen Y).

AFT’s president, Randi Weingarten, has officially opened the door for conversations to take place among state and local affiliates to develop the next generation of teacher evaluation models that connect formative feedback on teacher performance (including the use of student achievement data) with the in-depth and sustained types of professional learning that teachers are calling for.

If we don't know where we're going, any path....

Yes, of course. But nothing stopped principals for judging teachers on the basis of their impact on student achievement. I know. I was a principal for 20 years. But to believe that test scores in ELA and Math tests are a synonym for achievement is either deliberate obfuscation or sad ignorance. But worse than that it drives schools further and further away from tackling the more important take--helping young people (as Ted Sizer put it) learn to use their minds well. Powerful teaching and learning that prepares the young to take on a complex world by the age of 18 can't happen inside schools whose measure of their task is defined by standardized test scores. We're increasingly staking the desk against those who are most seriously dependent on schools to offer an alternate version to right/wring multiple-choice thinking. But, it doesn't even do it in ways that will not have a similar dumbing down attack on the "haves" as well. (Jeanne Allen,et al--It would be helpful to the debate to recognize that those who disagree with you are demanding more, not less, of educators.)

o have marginalized teachers and their organization as a "special interest" is to pander to the lowest intellectual form of argument.

My best, Deborah Meier

Randi Weingarten's proposed model for evaluation of teachers is sound. The downside is that so many journalists and policymakers are not paying attention to the details of her proposal, which are crucial. She proposed a multi-step approach to evaluation: First, states would clearly define what teachers are expected to know and be able to do, so that teachers understand what is expected. Next, districts must provide support, mentoring, opportunities for professional growth. Third, evaluations must be based on multiple measures, including classroom observations, portfolio reviews, self-evaluations, review of lesson plans, and other ways of gauging teachers' work. She added that student test scores "based on valid and reliable assessments should also be considered, but "NOT by comparing the scores of last year's students with the scores of this year's students, but by assessing whether a teacher's students show read growth while in his classroom." This latter means that Randi would not accept the NCLB approach of comparing this year's fifth grade class to last year's fifth class, but would insist that students be tested at the beginning and end of the school year, to see how much they had gained. This is not what most districts do now. Randi wants administrators and district leaders to be held accountable for implementing a successful support and evaluation system. Linked to this evaluation program would be an overhauled approach to due process, which has not yet been spelled out. She made clear that she would not accept any terminations based solely on test scores, and that her proposal is a package, to be adopted in full, linking professional support, evaluation, and due process. I will make a prediction. No matter how many districts adopt this program, no matter how many districts adopt a harsh approach to evaluation and accountability, it will have little or no effect on the quality of American education. Our schools are not overrun with incompetent and ineffective teachers. We will not get better schools by laying the blame for the ills of American education solely at the feet of teachers. Scapegoating teachers is not a reform strategy.

Randi Weingarten’s speech should be celebrated. She is providing genuine lead­er­ship in addressing the two most important features of the education status quo, both of which have been challenged by the Obama ad­min­is­tra­tion.

First, although her remarks on eval­u­a­tion do not embrace pay-for-per­form­ance, they call for the creation of the necessary foun­da­tion on which any fair performance-based compensation system must rest: sophisticated frameworks for examining the practice of teaching. She cites, for example, the work of Charlotte Danielson, who has divided teaching into four broad domains with 22 separate components and provided protocols for each to rate practice from unsatisfactory to distinguished. When these ratings are combined with empirical data from sophisticated value-added models, we will have arrived at reliable, balanced, multiple-measure systems of evaluation.

Second, Weingarten’s comments about due process respond to a problem that rank-and-file teachers are clear about: they don’t want as colleagues teach­ers whose instructional practices deprive children of the learning they deserve. The AFT will accept a new system that will ensure due process, but lead to timely dismissal if teach­ers are unable to improve their practice despite being provided the time and resources to do so. We’ve described a way this can be done by adapting a “peer assistance and review” process (see Theodore Hershberg and Claire Robertson-Kraft, eds., A Grand Bargain for Education Reform: New Rewards and Supports for New Accountability (Harvard Education Press: August, 2009).

The NEA’s failure to join the AFT is deeply disappointing. Taking the position that it is manage­ment’s responsibility, not labor’s, to remove unsatisfactory teach­ers from class­­rooms, in effect, permits the status quo, in which almost no ineffective educators are fired, to flourish. The NEA appears to be afraid that reforming this system will undermine the willingness of its members to pay high dues if they are not provided with what has historically meant career-long job security.

Imagine how much better we would all be if the NEA secured the commitment of its members by providing them with help to excel in the classroom.

In any case, here’s a New Year’s toast to Randi Weingarten and a prayer that the NEA will find the courage to break from past practice and embrace genuine and positive change.

We can applaud Weingarten's proposals only if we ignore the history of similar union proposals in the past. NEA has had little to say about her speech because it already went through its "reform" period. In 1997, NEA President Bob Chase launched his "new unionism" initiative with a speech at the National Press Club. NEA would focus on teacher quality and would collaborate with administrators to create better schools.

“The new direction we are charting… is not only about vision, it is about action. It is about changing how each of our local affiliates does business, changing how they bargain, changing what issues they put on the table, changing the ways they help their members to become the best teachers they can be," Chase said.

He also rattled cages by admitting: "There are indeed some bad teachers in America's schools, and it is our job as a union to improve those teachers or - that failing - to get them out of the classroom."

NEA even had a five-year charter school initiative. It ran into a host of problems - most of them internal - and never generated enthusiasm among local affiliates.

In his 2002 farewell speech to the NEA Representative Assembly, Chase emotionally urged the delegates, "Please don't go backwards." Today you would hard-pressed to find a copy of Chase's National Press Club speech, the details of his initiatives, or someone who remembers any of this.

Weingarten is a different person, in a different union, during a different time, but ultimately it doesn't matter whether she's sincere in her efforts or simply making a PR pitch. She can say whatever she wants, but she can't make the Chicago Teachers Union, or Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, or UTLA - or, now, even her own local, the United Federation of Teachers - do anything they don't want to do.

This kind of thing has a short shelf life, and no doubt we'll be debating the union's next "new path" in about 2013.

Last week's speech by Randi Weingarten exemplifies what’s wrong with teachers unions and their control over America’s education system. Randi made news by announcing that she’d be willing to incorporate student test data in teacher evaluations-but she also listed a litany of other things (including “portfolios”) that should be included.

I’m not impressed.

I simply don’t see why the concept of putting student learning first is so challenging for her. Randi's attempts to pacify those who want to see bad teachers removed from the classroom and off of the public payroll lack specifics. What will she do to remove the stranglehold that her union has over principals across America when it comes to terminating the employment of people who cannot teach - so that we can rightly elevate and compensate those teachers who can? What I see is an ‘our way or no way’ approach by the AFT that neither benefits children to the fullest nor serves the best interests of her members.

Finally, any speech on “reform” by Ms. Weingarten is specious, given that her union claims to want the “best” schools for children. This can’t be true, or else she and her allies would be fighting for school choice programs, not standing in the schoolhouse doors blocking the exits for low-income children.

Randi Weingarten fails to impress me once again.

It is no surprise to anyone involved in education that evaluation of educators needs great improvement. Such evaluation has never had high enough priority to garner the money needed to pay for the substantial educator work time needed to train evaluators well and use the information helpfully.

Randi Weingarten's speech and the AFT model correctly point out that the main purpose of teacher evaluation should be formative, to support and guide professional learning. To a degree, by establishing what it will take to do evaluation well and rejecting the near-witch hunt of "bad" teachers, they challenge the dominant accountability rhetoric to live up to its claim of wanting to improve schools.

However, there are at least two significant, interrelated dangers that could cripple the positive aspects of the proposal. The first is the use of student standardized test scores as "significant" factors (the RTTT formulation) in teacher evaluation. Such use will only intensify the out-of-control teaching to the test that is choking out real learning. Both President Obama and Secretary Duncan have derided existing tests, but this did not stop them from pressuring states to use those very tests to evaluate teachers. Using "growth" models based on current sorts of tests, rather than multiple sources of high-quality, evidence, would perpetuate the problem, as a 2009 report of the National Academy of Sciences Board on Testing and Assessment convincingly warns. AFT - and NEA - state and local affiliates have given very mixed responses to RTTT's pressure to judge teachers on test scores, though many are, correctly, resisting.

Second, what if states incorporate the testing but do not construct the high-quality evaluation systems tied to ongoing professional learning, instead simply enacting the well-documented flaws of payment for test score schemes? Unfortunately, within the current political configuration, this outcome seems more probable than does winning the full set of the AFT's proposals. The funding is not likely to be sufficient to complete the job and the RTTT timeline is far too short. What will the AFT and it affiliates then do?

Unions should take a lead role in helping local educators, parents, communities and politicians take a deep breath and step back from the effort to rapidly implement bad ideas for a chance at the "race to the trough" funds. If the AFT's proposal can be implemented in full - including multiple sources of educationally valid information about student learning, the emphasis on professional improvement, and formative rather than punitive uses - then states and localities should move ahead, taking the time to do it right. They must avoid installing test-based systems. Otherwise, the nation will make worse an already educationally destructive process of reducing schooling to test delivery, a process that is more common, intense and hurtful to low-income youth.