I recall many discussions in the rightwing think tanks to which I once belonged about how the schools and the teaching profession would be elevated if we could only judge teachers by the performance of their students and fire the lowest performing teachers every year. I recall asking, “where will the new teachers come from?” My colleagues said there would never be a shortage because there are so many people who prepared to be teachers but never entered the classroom. They would rush to fill the newly available jobs. What they never considered was the possibility that their brilliant theory was wrong. That judging teachers by the test scores of their students was unreliable and invalid; that doing so would drive out many find teachers and make teaching an undesirable profession; would indeed wipe out professionalism itself.

From a comment on the blog:

 

50% of evaluation based on end of course testing is so demotivating and humiliating that I am definitely getting out of teaching asap. Two years of bad test scores means suspension and potential loss of license. Seventy hour work weeks, failing technology, rotating cast of half my class load with various medical conditions that impede cognitive function. Adaptable, hard working, using differentiated learning and hands on learning/multimodal approaches does not mean jack now. Teachers are not able to control the tests, cannot develop multiple means for students to demonstrate mastery. So half my well meaning students will christmas tree their end of course test and my own family will suffer the consequences when I lose my job. Bleaker future than the past five with consistent pay cuts and benefits cut. Furloughs are a yearly experience now. I am very well educated and a top graduate in my field and hold multiple degrees so the stereotype of the poorly educated teacher without options or abilities does not fit. It doesn’t fit for the majority of teachers I know.


But if I stay in teaching now, I will be an idiot.

This evaluation system is the last straw. I cajoled PTA parents to put pressure on our district to stop this eval system. There are several well respected anchor teachers who are now making tracks to change fields. What a waste. New administration is in love with drill and kill, parents are blinded by smoke and mirrors of test scores as a metric of anything.
Thank you for letting me vent. I am planning on how nice it will be to have sundays off, no longer haul 25lbs of paperwork home, have money in the bank in a different career. No profession gets treated collectively so poorly these days.
I will miss the students but I will not miss being treated like an ignorant fool by thisevaluation nightmare.