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  • Gendron calls on school leaders to review teacher evaluation models, Steve Bowen, MHPC
      ...The TAP program is by far the stronger of the two models. It is a comprehensive and fully integrated system that brings together targeted teacher training and support, thorough teacher evaluations, a career ladder model of professional advancement, and performance-based pay.  As the NEA's paper notes, the TAP program is in place in districts across the county and has proven to be highly effective at improving student outcomes.
         The Framework for Teaching model, though, is far more one-dimensional. It seeks to identify the various components of effective teaching, then uses that "framework" to assess and evaluate teachers. Under such a system, teachers are not evaluated for actually increasing student achievement directly, but for possessing the characteristics and skills that the Danielson framework suggests are simply correlated with increased student achievement. It is not, therefore, a pay-for-performance model. It is undoubtedly better than the evaluation systems in place in most states and school districts, but it is not a system that evaluates and rewards teachers for their success at actually increasing student outcomes.
         But, because it does not directly tie teacher pay to student achievement, it has become the darling of those elements within the teacher unions which favor teacher evaluation reform, and I have little doubt it will be the first model approved by the now-infamous stakeholder group.
  • A big week in Maine education, Matthew Stone, Kennebec Journal

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  • Teachers' unions stand in the way of education reform, John Chandler, Sunday Telegram
  • [...So goes Ohio] Need for control of costs could lead to consolidations, Editorial, vindy.com
      ...Shrinking the number of school districts in Ohio is a key thrust in a new movement that will soon engulf Ohio. It's called "Restoring Prosperity," and it is led by nonprofit heavyweights The Brookings Institution of Washington, D.C.
  • [...So goes Vermont] Commissioner will take recommendations on advisement, Anne Galloway, VTdigger.org
      ...key areas of contention centered on whether the $20 million school boards saved in general education costs could be counted toward the Challenges target for fiscal year 2011; whether consolidating school districts into unified supervisory districts should be voluntary or mandatory; and whether the state should impose a limit on staff-to-student ratios.

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  • Where are our schools going?, Commissioner Gendron, Bangor Daily News
      ...We will not "rank" the schools, but the list will contain all the data, and we know there will be a strong temptation by some to do so.

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  • Radio Address: Race to the Top, Governor Baldacci
      ...These (innovative) schools ...will have flexibility in instruction design, staff selection, school calendars and assessments of professional development.

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  • [Dept of relentless flogging] Consolidation Consequences, Editorial, Bangor Daily News
      [On-line response]
         The logic of this editorial seems flawed.
         First, was the consolidation law good for the districts that reorganized or was it bad for them?
         If it was good for them -- if they now are enjoying the necessary relief and advertised benefits of the policy -- how are they harmed whether or not the districts which found no benefit from the law are penalized?
         And, if it was bad for them -- if, in fact, the penalties rather than educational and cost benefits were what forced them into bad policy decisions -- then why is the harm done to them compelling reason to apply the same harm more broadly?

         Further, the editorial concludes that, because 40% of the state budget goes to support schools, the state should get to set the rules.
         But there are non-compliant towns in which school spending represents over 90% of the local tax assessment.
         Following the editorial's reasoning, should this give these towns more than twice the authority of the state?

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  • [Dept of the magic 8-ball: Alna, Chelsea, Palermo, Somervile, Westport Island, Whitefield, Windsor, Wiscasset] RSU 12: So far so good, Betty Adams, Kennebec Journal

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