Adell Cothorne, DC whistle-blower extraordinaire, offers a warning: Don’t believe so naive as to believe the hype from the District of Columbia public schools about its teacher evaluation system.
Cothorne was there.
She says that the principals were not trained; that school secretaries often did the crucial paperwork.
That the IMPACT system is so complicated that no one, not even its designers, could explain how it works.
That the system continues to lose excellent principals and teachers.
That the evaluation system has no bearing on student achievement.
Cothorne suggests that IMPACT should be applied to central office staff.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The purpose of IMPACT is not to evaluate but to terminate.
Agree. One administrator repeated many times while doing a professional development on teacher evaluation that if a standard is not met it can be a cause for dismissal. That would be one standard out of the boat load of them. And what would a cause of dismissal be for administrators? Firing too many teachers. They must have a quota written somewhere. They are granted power as if they were operating under private corporation guidelines. (Shoot, education was sold to corp. a while ago. I forgot.) All I know is that unions better get tough.
Adell Cothorne in her own words, speaking from firsthand experience on the ground, on Edushyster. Michelle Rhee in her own words, no firsthand experience on the ground and oblivious to the impact of IMPACT, to appear tonight on CNN.
Adell Cothorne, who risked and lost a great deal for the sake of integrity. Michelle Rhee, who cavalierly quit her position as DCPS chancellor in order to move on to even greater $tudent $ucce$$.
It is time for Michelle Rhee and the “education reform” crowd to quite repeating their favorite line of Marxist dogma whenever they ask us to take their word over that of honorable people:
“Who you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?” [Chico Marx, in that famous Marxian tract DUCK SOUP]
There’s another Marx?
🙂
I just love these PR statements from administrator types! Sorry Adell, I am not talking about you. I read the blurbs sent out by my school district and I know some of the reality behind the hype. I remember the rah, rah notes we used to get from the superintendent where I used to work. The reality was something far different than what he wrote. Teachers grumble and get on with business. So often, there is no place for teachers’ voice. When I was a young parent, I remember teachers courageously passing information to a parent group. They had been told to spout the district stance on an important issue that had raised considerable concern in the community. We never revealed their identities, but they were instrumental in the defeat of the district initiative, and it was important for parents to know that there were many teachers who agreed with us.
Beautiful reporting. My heartfelt thanks to Adell for speaking out yet again.
The cook should always sample the product before forcing others to eat! Yeah, use it to evaluate Central Office!! And make all the Rhee-formers take standardized tests.