Rocky Mountain News Editorial

3/17/07

      If tracking individual students' progress is a way to help them learn better, then isn't tracking individual teachers' results every bit as much of a way to help them teach better?

      Legislators apparently think so. Senate Bill 140, which would create a commission to examine the feasibility of doing exactly that, sailed through the Senate on a 35-to-0 vote, and is close to doing the same in the House.

      The broad-based commission established by SB 140 is asked to develop a process that will use individually assigned numbers for teachers and principals to evaluate whether a teacher's students regularly make satisfactory progress each year, even if teachers move from school to school or district to district.

      In principle, we suppose, the commission could recommend "don't do it," but that is pretty clearly not what the legislature expects it to do, and we hope it doesn't. Teachers will tell you, and they are correct, that teacher quality matters more for student achievement than almost any other factor under the school's control. And if teacher quality is measured, as it should be, by how much progress students make in a given teacher's classroom, then there has to be an effective method for linking teacher and student records.

      Any such evaluation must take into account that teachers face very different challenges. But fair methods exist, for example, to compare how well Ms. Smith's fourth-graders did in her class with how well the same children did in third grade and in fifth grade with different teachers.

      The Colorado Education Association has expressed worry that once such evaluations are available, they may be used against teachers. Well, we think that in certain circumstances they should be. If a teacher consistently ranks in the bottom tenth of teachers statewide, say, and doesn't improve, why should he or she continue teaching, to the students' great detriment?