News Brief
How to Prepare for Common Core Testing—and Why Current Teacher Evaluation Systems Won't Help
eSchool News (02/28/13) Pierce, DennisAt the American Association of School Administrators' National Conference on Education on Feb. 22, Linda Darling-Hammond, the Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education at Stanford University, talked about the need for high-quality professional development to prepare teachers and students for the next-generation assessments aligned with the Common Core State Standards that are being developed by the Partnership for the Assessment of College and Career Readiness and the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium. She said "drive-by, one-off workshops" have no effect on student achievement. Instead, school districts should provide at least 50 hours per year of professional development focusing on teachers' specific content areas, allow teachers to collaborate, and offer support through coaching and modeling. Darling-Hammond said teachers should build lessons and score student work together and develop common rubrics. "The more teachers collaborate, the more we see the work of teachers as a collective, the greater student achievement will be," she remarked. However, she warned that teacher evaluation systems that rank teachers using value-added formulas foster competition instead of collaboration. She recommended that teacher evaluation systems include both group and individual goals and take into consideration the teacher's contribution to the overall school culture as well as their own classrooms.
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