Secretary Duncan Seeks and Gets Advice on the Evaluation of Teachers and Principals

http://nepc.colorado.edu

BOULDER, CO (August 1, 2011)—On July 14th, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan picked up the phone, called high school principal Carol Burris—named the 2010 New York State Outstanding Educator by the School Administrators Association of New York State—and during their conversation asked her to send him a letter describing guiding principles for the evaluation of educators and detailing suggestions for how to realize those principles. Duncan’s call was his response to Burris’s open letter to him in the Washington Post’s “Answer Sheet” blog. In that letter, Burris argued that the current push for punitive evaluation policies is harming schools like hers.

On July 27th, Burris and National Education Policy Center director Kevin Welner responded to Duncan’s request. A public version of the letter they sent him is now available as a policy memo on the NEPC website:http://nepc.colorado.edu/publication/letter-to-Arne-Duncan

Burris and Welner note that high-quality evaluation of educators is important and should be pursued, even while they stress the obvious fact that “If we fail to invest in our schools and communities, even the highest-quality educator evaluation will lead to little success.”

They point out that a useful and productive evaluation of educators would stand up well to being evaluated itself, based on its overall effect on student learning. Such an overall effect implicates at least four overlapping areas: (a) summative, (b) formative, (c) working conditions, and (d) incentives. Each of these is described in the letter.

Burris and Welner conclude with specific recommendations that suggest a way forward in which educator evaluation is organized and conducted in a way that values research evidence and knowledge.

Find the letter, set forth as a policy memo, by Carol Corbett Burris and Kevin G. Welner on the NEPC website at: http://nepc.colorado.edu/publication/letter-to-Arne-Duncan

The mission of the National Education Policy Center is to produce and disseminate high-quality, peer-reviewed research to inform education policy discussions. We are guided by the belief that the democratic governance of public education is strengthened when policies are based on sound evidence. For more information on NEPC, please visit http://nepc.colorado.edu .

CONTACT:  Kevin Welner  (303) 492-8370 Welner@colorado.edu    Carol Burris (516) 599-0839 burriscarol@gmail.com