Week 1...Second Post

I posted a second comment to an article about the downside of evaluating teachers using "value-added" measures. There is a growing movement to align pay with performance in the country, and evaluating teachers are how far along they've brought students (instead of against a set-in-stone benchmark, keeping in mind the educational disparities in the U.S.) seems to be the fairest method available.

"There's no I in "Value-Added" mentioned that this arrangment would create a dog-eat-dog world where teachers would not be willing to help each other given that one teacher must beat the next in order to raise his income. I do not believe that this is the case. If I were to be evaluated against other teachers, it would be city-wide, so I would feel no threat from my own immediate colleagues.

I also took the conversation in a different direction. I noted that the whole question is a moot point because I do not believe that there is a meaningful collaboration in schools these days. One prep period simply does not allow teachers to bounce ideas off each other in a way that substantially affects the quality of their performance in the classroom. In Japan, the school day is longer and stuffed with prep periods, and the system places a premium on teachers working together, whereas collaboration appears to be more incidental in NYC schools. How could "value-added merit pay) produce a disincentive to work together when there almost no opportunity to work together anyways?

Unfortunately, there were no further posts to this thread, but my post stood apart from others in that most others highlighted how unfair "value-added" approaches are. I personally think it is the lesser of all evils. There needs to be more accountability in schools these days, and this just might be the best way to go.