Letters: Debating teacher evaluations
Students raise their hands in a classroom. Credit: istock
In the article on teacher evaluations , New York City school officials admit, the statistical margin of error for ratings based on students' improvement on state English tests averaged 26.5 percentile points. I'd be very worried if that reliability standard were adopted for safety tests in the automobile industry.
In the name of educational excellence, some are willing to sacrifice basic logic and fairness. A teacher's job and reputation could be put at risk if names are publicly released under a flawed evaluation system.
Even if the margin of error were greatly improved, teachers' names should not be released publicly. That information belongs within the school system.
Jerome Marullo, Massapequa
Editor's note: The writer is a retired personnel director from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
All of the recent commentary against publishing schoolteacher ratings seems to be from teachers and school administrators.
The public has had no role in teachers union contract negotiations. And the Triborough Amendment allows public employees to collect annual "steps" raises in their contracts, even after the contracts expire.
Now we finally have the beginnings of a system to evaluate teachers, where test scores make up only 40 percent of the evaluation, and teachers are digging in to avoid making the ratings public. It seems like our school employees don't want us to know how our hard-earned money is spent and want to keep poor-performing teachers earning top dollar.
How does the community benefit? How do our children benefit?
Jerry Romano, Sea Cliff
