Evaluations– assessment in general– is a thorny issue for teachers and for teachers’ unions. It starts with the traditional union resistance to the merit raise. Unions, not too surprisingly, prefer to negotiate pay for all of their members at once, rather than for individual members. Perhaps most importantly, education is best served by a workforce of well paid-teachers. Too often, too, merit systems are used by administrators to reward what they consider good behavior.

Good behavior, for example, might include anti-union teachers, or teachers that support policies that favor the administration. So unions generally advocate avoiding the entire mess by letting the rising tide raise all boats. That’s only the start of the problems associated with evaluation, though. It’s…

I don’t often agree with the ACTA (American Council of Trustees and Alumni); in fact, to my way of thinking they are one of the best barometers of reactionary thinking in education. But I do agree with at least part of their December “Must Reads” (“Letting in the Sunshine“), in which the ACTA pays the Arkansas legislature a half-compliment.

It’s a good idea, the ACTA says, for universities to be completely transparent when it comes to administrative salaries; the legislature got that right. But the law is only necessary, they say, because the universities themselves haven’t stepped up to the plate. It’s the idea of a law that the ACTA finds so unnecessary. I think that the law…