Dinner and teacher evaluations.
I’ll be sitting with folks I’m meeting for the first time. Maybe over dinner.
“So, Fred. What do you do?”
“I’m a K-5 Art teacher.”
There will be a smile, a nod and, “Oh! That must be fun.” And that will be the end of that conversation. We will both feel a little awkward and move on to sports, movies or the latest developments with Don and Peggy on Mad Men.
Things have changed.
Now when people find out I’m a teacher they want to talk about teacher evaluations and why more bad teachers aren’t fired.
Is this a sign of how the much the Reformers have gained control of the narrative? America’s schools are in crisis and the reason is poor teacher evaluations.
It happens so often that I’m now fully prepared.
I ask about their own kids. What do they think of their teachers? Their school?
If they are from the suburbs, they will tell me things are great. City schools? Not so much, although even in those cases people tend to appreciate their own kid’s teachers.
When we focus on experience, it becomes clearer that there is not a general crisis and where there are serious problems it is certainly not a problem of teacher performance reviews.
But, damn. It takes a while to get to that place.
