Good elementary school teachers: They really can change your life. - Slate Magazine: "In recent years, school districts from New York City to Los Angeles have revamped the way teachers are evaluated and rewarded. In the District of Columbia, teachers voted last year for the option to trade job security for merit pay, meaning that high-performing instructors could expect five-figure bonuses (and the laggards could fear pink slips). One particularly controversial component of D.C.’s move to greater teacher accountability is the use of “value-added” evaluations based on the test scores of students in a teacher’s classroom. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo also took a tentative step into this teacher evaluation minefield when he suggested in his State of the State on Wednesday that New York teachers statewide should be evaluated using standardize test scores. Critics of value-added measures worry that putting so much emphasis on standardized tests will create a culture of “teaching to the test,” and they speculate about whether standardized tests really tell us anything useful about students and whether they’re acquiring the skills they’ll need to lead successful lives."
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