Ryan Goes and Gives the Quality Education Council a Piece of His Mind

The post that I wrote over the summer on measuring teacher effectiveness was well received in a lot of quarters; I didn't realize just how well until I received an invitation last month to be part of a panel of teachers talking to the Data Governance Workgroup that's a part of the Quality Education Council, which is the new big committee that was formed out of HB2261.

We met at the WEA Headquarters in Federal Way, and it was a pretty impressive group. The Chair, Bob Butts of OSPI, is a pretty nice guy, and he was sitting next to Cal Brodie, a financial wiz who's helped me with some impact aid issues in the past. Lots of good questions, lots of brainpower, a really good conversation about the data that teachers use, how we use it, and how the system could be improved to the benefit of our kids and ourselves.

The last question, though, was the biggie--linking evaluation to student testing data. I essentially repeated what I always do, that designing a system sensitive enough to suss out the good teachers from the bad mathematically would be almost impossible given the testing apparatus that we have now. A couple of the teachers on the panel were strongly in favor of doing exactly that, a couple strongly against.

Given that I <3 politics I'm looking forward to the legislative piece, when a bill gets constructed and the fight begins. That'll be fun to watch.