The driving force behind the education reform movement in the US has been a recognition that poor and minority children were being left far behind by a public education system that claims to be society’s great equalizer. The effort to address those inequities has involved a relentless focus on measurable outcomes. It’s an approach that reformers say is necessary to hold schools and students accountable, and one that critics complain has turned schools into mindless test factories, drained of the creative vitality that education should impart.
Those competing strains of thought were on display in yesterday’s Globe and New York Times. The front of the Globe Metro section featured this story by education reporter James Vaznis on the newspaper’s effort to obtain data from the Boston School Department on teacher and principal evaluations from the just-concluded school year. The evaluations were carried out under new revamped state regulations that attempt to bring more rigor to teacher assessment procedures, which have been faulted in districts across the country as perfunctory. As Vaznis writes, most of the data generated in the school-reform era has been on student performance. The newer focus on teacher performance could provide valuable information on whether highly-rated or subpar teachers are evenly distributed across the district or more concentrated in certain schools. Teacher evaluation data might also play a role in parents’ school selections in Boston’s choice-based student assignment system.
The Globe sought data on aggregate teacher evaluation results for teachers at each school in the system, not information on individual teachers. Similarly, the paper asked for district-wide data on principal and administrator evaluations. The school department turned down the request, saying the information is part of employees’ personnel files and not subject to public disclosure laws. The Globe plans to appeal the decision to Secretary of State Bill Galvin, who oversees enforcement of the state public records law. The battle will soon be moot, however, as the Legislature took action last year requiring the state education department to release school-level teacher evaluation results, something state officials say they will do sometime this fall.
While the state moves to make more information available on teacher evaluations, there is growing unease with the extent to which students are being subject to continuous testing as part of the effort to raise school performance. Now joining the backlash is the New York Times editorial page, which, like the Globe, has generally been a liberal voice of support for more accountability in US K-12 education. In a strongly-worded editorial yesterday, headlined “The Trouble With Testing Mania,” the Times said testing is being “overemphasized — and misused” and it urged the country to “reconsider its obsession with testing, which can make education worse, not better.” It’s not a call to throw the standards-based baby out with the test-soaked bathwater, but rather a warning that the incessant focus on student testing is stifling the classroom curriculum and ignoring other crucial elements of school reform, including improving the country’s “abysmal” teacher preparation system.
It’s a healthy reminder that even if there is much to support in the drive to bring more accountability to US schools, those in charge need to be open to course corrections to check what may be a natural impulse for policy pendulums to swing too hard in one direction or the other.
–MICHAEL JONAS
BEACON HILL
Rising interest rates are bad news for state and local projects that rely on borrowing money.
MUNICIPAL MATTERS
Worcester Mayor Joseph Petty pushes for a tougher residency law for city employees, the Telegram & Gazette reports.
Boston Mayor Tom Menino has inked a deal to write his memoirs — with help from James Michael Curley biographer Jack Beatty.
CASINOS
Keller@Large wonders if it’s time to fold and cut our losses on casinos before they’re even built.
A survey conducted by UMass Dartmouth suggests Massachusetts residents visit the Twin Rivers casino in Rhode Island more often and spend more there than Rhode Island residents, the Telegram & Gazette reports.
NATIONAL POLITICS/WASHINGTON
Protesters take to the streets in cities across the country to protest the verdict in the Trayvon Martin case. Close to 500 people rally in Dudley Square in Roxbury.
Time says the Sunday morning news show debate between Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell bordered on farce as the two men took positions on confirming presidential nominees that were the opposite of what they each argued a decade ago when their roles were reversed.
New York magazine details the long game Sen. Elizabeth Warren is playing against Wall Street.
The National Review editors say the severing of the food stamp program from the farm bill is a chance to enact a real reform to the program forcing recipients to either work, be in job training, or actively search for employment.
ELECTIONS
Democratic gubernatorial candidates introduce themselves at the state convention gathering in Lowell, the Sun reports.
Gabriel Gomez says he’s open to a future run for political office.
Boston City Councilor and mayoral hopeful Rob Consalvo wants fellow candidates to join him in signing a “people’s pledge” to keep independent spending out of the mayor’s race. So far, no takers. The Herald breaks down the scramble for votes in the North End.
Huma Abedin makes her debut on the New York mayoral campaign trail, as onlookers heckle her and her husband, Anthony Weiner.
BUSINESS/ECONOMY
Massachusetts risks losing the competition for highly skilled foreign workers if Congress continues to fail to reform the H-1B visa program.
Banker & Tradesman columnist Scott Van Voorhis predicts that one-time Menino aide Tom O’Brien will thrive under a new Boston mayor.
The National Marine Fisheries Service is taking public comment on a plan to reopen 3,000 square miles in the Atlantic that has been closed to commercial fishing for years.
EDUCATION
A showdown is expected tonight as the Salem School Committee takes another vote on ending the extended school year at the Saltonstall School, the Salem News reports. In an editorial, the Salem News urges the committee to keep the program in place.
Swansea officials are considering privatizing the school lunch program as the longtime head of the program is stepping down after 27 years.
HEALTH CARE
Charlton Memorial Hospital in Fall River now takes reservations for the emergency room. Seriously.
ENERGY/ENVIRONMENT
Cape businesses worry about the repercussions if there is another attack by a great white shark, but most towns around the world that have had similar incidents show no lasting negative effects.
CRIMINAL JUSTICE
A MetroWest Daily News editorial points out that a bill to move 17-year-olds into the juvenile justice system risks languishing in the Legislature.
The former lawyer for Francis “Cadillac Frank” Salemme predicts that Stephen Flemmi is about to put the last nail in Whitey Bulger’s coffin.