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Scores of professors and researchers from 16 universities throughout the Chicago metropolitan area have signed an open letter to the city's mayor, Rahm Emanuel, and Chicago school officials warning against implementing a teacher evaluation system that is based on standardized test scores. This is the latest protest against "value-added" teacher evaluation models that purport to measure how much "value" a teacher adds to a student's academic progress by using a complicated formula involving a standardized test score. Researchers have repeatedly warned against using these methods, but school reformers have been doing it in state after state anyway. A petition in New York State by principals and others against a test-based evaluation system there has been gaining ground.

Detroit teachers could go out on strike this fall as the result of a new contract imposed on the union Sunday by Detroit Public Schools Emergency Manager Roy Roberts. Although contracts are usually negotiated between DPS and the Detroit Federation of teachers (DFT), the emergency manager law, Public Act 4, allows Roberts to bypass the collective bargaining process, unilaterally determining the terms of employment for DPS teachers. The union's previous contract expired at the end of June. Roberts is waiting for DFT to inform its membership before he makes details of the new contract public.

"The Chicago Teachers strike is an incredibly important development because it is a the first time a union local has threatened to strike against education policies pushed by the Obama Administration through its Race to the Top initiative, policies, in my judgment have had incredibly destructive consequences for Urban school systems and distressed urban communities The policies pushed by Rahm Emmanuel, which are being simultaneously implemented in New York and many other cities, involve evaluating Teachers and schools on the basis of student test scores, closing schools whose test scores fail to meet a certain standard and firing half their staffs, replacing public schools with charter schools, some run as non profits and some run for profit, and trying to weaken Teacher tenure and introduce merit pay The first three components have been already introduced in Chicago and the mayor wants to intensify them and legnthen the school day. The union is saying enough is enough."

"...education is at a crossroads in our country and our neighborhood, our city is right at the intersection of these crossroads. There is an attempt to make schooling privatized, charter-ized, and more inequitable than it already is. There is an attempt to get rid of experienced teachers who have built relationships with families, who truly know how to teach and replace them with less expensive, inexperienced teachers who likely will only be at the school for two years.  There is an attempt to teach through testing, to make your child so bored in school from over-standardized testing that students aren't excited for school anymore. There is an attempt to further cut librarians, counselors, nurses, PE, World Language, Art and now classroom teachers, in order to "save" money. A budget is a political document, not a financial one, it's about priorities. Some priorities obviously need to be re-evaluated.  teachers in no way shape or form want to strike, we want to be working with and educating your children."

"First I want to clarify what I mean by us all. I believe the Chicago teachers strike is an important stand in the battle to improve, even save, public education in the United States. The strike, if successful, will benefit teachers, students and parents, not only in Chicago but across the entire country, as well as both unionized workers and non-unionized workers. This strike has the potential to go down in history along with other labor actions, such as those in Homestead, Lawrence, Paterson, Ludlow and Flint that ultimately built the union movement in the United States and transformed life for what used to be known as the working-class but what politicians today euphemistically refer to as the middle class. That is why I strongly support this strike and why I am wearing a red t-shirt to work in support of the teachers and public education."

I'd like to begin by thanking my teachers in the fifth, sixth and seventh grades, Mrs. Pulaski, Mr. Burke and Miss Elmer. They taught us percentages and showed us how to "round down," which I am doing now. The U.S. population is 312,624,000, and we have 3,198,000 public school teachers, which computes to 1%. But this is not the 1% composed of Wall Street fat cats, professional athletes, entertainers and other rich people. I guarantee there's no overlap between the two groups. The average teacher today earns about $55,000. At least 75 CEOs earn that much in one day, every day, 365 days a year. According to the AFL-CIO's "Executive PayWatch," the CEO who ranked No. 75, David Cote of Honeywell, was paid $20,154,012, for a daily rate of $55,216.47.

The union for Los Angeles teachers has suspended its legal challenge to a pilot evaluation program that includes using standardized test scores as part of a teacher's performance review. The union also reserved the right to reactivate the case should talks with the district sour. A joint statement released by L.A. schools Supt. John Deasy and United teachers Los Angeles President Warren Fletcher said the two sides agree that current teacher evaluation procedures need improvement.

Teacher evaluation is at the top of the list of things to talk about in the education reform world. I've largely stayed away from writing about it on this blog because I think there are a lot of more fundamental changes that need to be made in public education before we spend time revamping Teacher evaluation. It seems to me that a lot of new evaluation schemes are attempting to hold Teachers accountable for factors they don't control and penalize them for shortcomings for which they are not responsible.

Nearly every morning after I groggily grope for the kitchen light to grab my pre-packed lunch, I notice the drawings made by my fiancée's former students still hanging on the fridge. Stick figures grin and hearts frame students' last messages to a teacher that had positively affected them: "Where did you go?" "When are you coming back? I want to learn more about dinosaurs." "Ms. D I love you. What happened? Where do you live now?" My fiancée worked at Harlem Success Academy 3, which lost more than a third of its staff over this summer alone. This figure did not count those who were fired or who left of their own volition during the school year. Ms. D is just one of the many dedicated young educators who were incompatible with the school's structure and model for teachers and students. One popular defense of high turnover rates is that teacher firings are always done for the good of the students. Yet the refrigerator art in our apartment stands as just one compelling example that hasty dismissals can have a profoundly negative effect on students.

Nearly every D.C. teacher offered the chance to forego some of their classroom evaluations chose to do so, under a new incentive program for top teachers. D.C. Public Schools introduced a pilot program in the fall that allows teachers rated "highly effective" on their Impact evaluations for the past two years to skip three of their five classroom observations if they perform well on the first two

Given the experience to date with an overwhelming focus on student achievement scores as a basis for high-stakes decisions, policymakers would do well to pause and carefully examine the issues that make teacher assessment so complex before implementing an assessment plan. To facilitate such examination, this brief reviews credible research exploring: the feasibility of combining formative assessment (a basis for professional growth) and summative assessment (a basis for high-stakes decisions like dismissal); the various tools that might be used to gather evidence of teacher effectiveness; and the various stakeholders who might play a role in a teacher assessment system. It also offers a brief overview of successful exemplars.

Haven't heard of Yolie Flores? You will soon. And if you've been fighting for teacher quality but need more allies, she might be your new best friend. The educator who helped revolutionize Los Angeles's sprawling school system has just launched a national organization to ratchet up the conversation around teacher quality by, among other things, getting parents seriously involved in school reform efforts. Called Communities for Teaching Excellence (C4TE), Flores's new organization is a Gates Foundation-funded advocacy group whose initial focus will be the four "deep dive" Gates districts-Memphis, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, and Hillsborough County (Florida)-which were awarded $335 million to overhaul teacher evaluation and support. If Flores's past accomplishments are any indication, C4TE won't be content to put out reports and hold polite press conferences: Flores's four-year stint on the LAUSD board included pushing through a controversial process that gives teachers and outside nonprofits a chance to help fix the district's most challenged schools each year.

In the long-simmering debate over how to judge the quality of New York State school employees, there is one thing all sides agree on: a system should be in place. The sticking point has been agreeing about how to do it. There is the fight between New York City and its teachers' union over the parameters of an evaluation system that must be put in place in 33 struggling schools. And there is the fight waged in court by the state teachers' union, which sued the Board of Regents last year over its interpretation of a law on teacher evaluations.

Among my son's favorite books are the ones in Richard Scarry's Busytown series. In What Do People Do All Day?, Able Baker Charlie puts too much yeast in the dough, resulting in a gigantic, explosive loaf of bread that the bakers (and Lowly Worm) need to eat their way out of. The opposite problem -- a lack of yeast -- is present in Michelle Rhee's recent op-ed in Education Week. In it, she limits her call to "rethink" teaching policy to "how we assign, retain, evaluate, and pay educators" and to "teacher-layoff and teacher-tenure policies." (And she casts the issue of retention purely as one about so-called "last-in, first-out" employment policies rather than about school leadership, collaboration or working conditions.) The utter absence of any focus or mention of teacher development either in this op-ed or in her organization's (StudentsFirst) expansive policy agenda leaves me wondering if Rhee believes that teachers are capable of learning and improving.

Here are some obvious conclusions from the study: Teachers are really important. They make a lasting difference in the lives of their students. Some Teachers are better than other Teachers. Some are better at raising students' test scores. The problems of the study are not technical, but educational. The Chetty-Friedman-Rockoff analysis points us to an education system in which tests become even more consequential than they are now. Teachers would work in school systems with no job protection, and their jobs would depend on the rise or fall of their students' test scores.

Nicholas Kristoff wrote yesterday about the "landmark" new teacher value-added study from Chetty, Friedman and Rockoff. It's worth being clear about why the study has garnered so much attention. It's not because it shows that teachers matter. Everyone knew or believed that already. It's because it shows that teachers vary in how much they matter. And, for the first time, it takes the value-added debate out of the standardized testing box.

I am a teacher at ...... one of the PLA schools. .... has been a "Transformation School" since September 2010. I have been a Social Studies teacher at this school since September 1990. Yesterday, we were summoned to the auditorium for a special faculty meeting. Our very well-liked principal, . . . conveyed the information he'd received from his superiors: the City intended to change our school to a Turnaround Model. The implications were not completely clear, but it almost certainly meant that we teachers and our supervisors would have to re-apply for our positions to come back in September 2012, and around half of us would not be re-employed.

The large-scale education reforms towards greater accountability and measurement in schools worldwide have evoked much debate concerning issues of teacher effectiveness and quality and their role in raising student achievement. Strong's book is a welcome contribution to this debate as it provides a review of the research and issues related to teacher quality and describes the author's own project to develop a new measure for evaluating teachers through observation.

Charter schools are being hailed as 'the answer' and then they unapologetically push my students out. I have worked with kids who were counseled out of all of the major charter school providers in Chicago, even the highly publicized ones lauded by Arne Duncan, Mayor Emanuel, and President Obama. The charters are not serving my kids. My students are also getting more and more untrained novice teachers, like the corporate reform favorite Teach for America provides, and fewer experienced educators. Many of these young college grads know nothing about these students' cultural backgrounds or extensive social-emotional needs. To add to all of that, my students are being labeled as "failures" by the standardized tests mandated by corporate reform's signature piece of legislation, No Child Left Behind. All I hear coming from the powers that be is to "fire more teachers," "create more charters schools," or "give more tests." None of the remedies being peddled by the elites help my students AT ALL. They are the kids being left behind. So what DO my students need? They need caring, committed, EXPERIENCED teachers.

Los Angeles Unified School District is embroiled in negotiations over teacher evaluations, and will now face pressure from outside the district intended to force counter-productive teacher evaluation methods into use.  Yesterday, I read this  Los Angeles Times article a lawsuit to be filed by an unnamed "group of parents and education advocates."  The article notes that, "The lawsuit was drafted in consultation with EdVoice, a Sacramento-based group. Its board includes arts and education philanthropist Eli Broad, former ambassador Frank Baxter and healthcare company executive Richard Merkin."  While the defendant in the suit is technically LAUSD, the real reason a lawsuit is necessary according to the article is that "United teachers Los Angeles leaders say tests scores are too unreliable and narrowly focused to use for high-stakes personnel decisions."  Note that, once again, we see a journalist telling us what the unions say and think, without ever, ever bothering to mention why, offering no acknowledgment that the bulk of the research and the three leading organizations for education research and measurement (AERA, NCME, and APA) say the same thing as the union (or rather, the union is saying the same thing as the testing expert).  Upon what research does the other side base arguments in favor of using test scores and "value-added" measurement (VAM) as a legitimate measurement of teacher effectiveness?  They never answer, but the debate somehow continues ad nauseum.