Hi Chuck,
Thanks for the post from Al Shanker about the teacher tenure/peer review
topic.
In part, I quote below:
->    Everybody loses with a system like this--other teachers, who
-> have to live with the results of bad teaching by a colleague, as well
-> as students. But there is an alternative that works. Peer
-> review or peer intervention--it goes by various names--is a system
-> developed by teacher unions, in collaboration with their school
-> districts, in which experienced and excellent teachers observe
-> probationary teachers and offer them help when they need it. At the
-> conclusion of the probationary period, these master teachers make
-> recommendations about who should be offered tenure and who let go.
-> Peer review also includes assistance to tenured teachers who need
-> help with their teaching and, in some cases, advice to quit the
-> profession.
I had mentioned the idea of peer review in a family discussion some time
back (Thanksgiving?). My mother, who is a Marriage, Child and Family
Counselor, did not think it sounded like a big improvement over what we
have now. She pointed out that both the medical and law professions have
such peer review processes, and that as a result of her counseling she
knows of PLENTY of cases of doctors and lawyers out there who shouldn't
be practicing.
->    Toledo Federation of Teachers' peer review program, perhaps the
-> first in the country, has been in operation since 1981. In Toledo,
-> consulting teachers spend up to three years helping to train and
-> evaluate new teachers, and they  play a major role in deciding which
-> new teachers will get tenure. Tenured teachers who are in trouble get
-> the same kind of one-on-one help from  colleagues, and it
-> continues until the troubled teacher has either improved to the point
-> of being successful or a termination is recommended.
->
->    But aren't teachers likely to be even easier on their
-> colleagues than administrators? Both the Toledo Federation of
-> Teachers and the Cincinnati Federation of Teachers, which has had a
-> peer assistance and evaluation program since 1985, have found the
-> opposite to be true. In the Cincinnati program's first year,
-> consulting teachers rated 10.5 percent of their new teachers less
-> than satisfactory, compared to 4 percent by administrators. And 5
-> percent of beginning teachers under peer review were recommended for
-> dismissal as compared to 1.6 percent of those evaluated by
-> principals. Results for subsequent years have been similar.
Hmm. This is interesting. I wonder if this means the teaching profession
would be different from those others? Or would medicine and law be even
worse if they were not subjected to peer reviews?
Sheila
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