New York Times Opinion Pages hits again.

On April 12 an opinion piece called, “Teachers: Will We ever learn?,” by Jal Mehta, that gut wrenchingly challenged the ability of teachers to challenge the cognitive development of their students. The worst is when the author states, “By these criteria, American education is a failed profession.” A failed profession? To think that I’m entering into a profession that is already deemed as a failure makes my heart sink.  Yet this also motivates me to try my hardest to fight this idea.

Something that Mehta proposed struck me as interesting:

We let doctors operate, pilots fly, and engineers build because their fields have developed effective ways of certifying that they can do these things. Teaching, on the whole, lacks this specialized knowledge base; teachers teach based mostly on what they have picked up from experience and from their colleagues.

Now, with the implementation of the Common Core, teachers will actually need to be evaluated, feeling strangely similar to what Mehta proposes.  It is slightly absurd.

In my Sophomore year, three other students and I developed a Mathematical Model for how to grade teachers on Effectiveness. The conclusion of the project? No system would be fair considering the personal opinions that need to go into it.  Now, two years later, we’re seeing a similar system come into play.  The HEDI System. The eventual goal is to help students be prepared for college, basically to fight the rising gap of student underachievement, and yes, this is a goal we should strive for.  Still, I’m not sure if teacher evaluations are the best route for this – I think half the battle is the desire of teachers to see the best in their students.  When I hear about the failure of students, I myself and motivated to see them improve, not see myself improve through a series of grading systems.

In all this, I’m really not sure how I feel about this grading.  What do you think?