It would be unfair to lay at the feet of teachers full responsibility for poor performance by some of their students.
It is not, after all, a teacher’s fault if a student comes from an unstable home where learning is a low priority, or if some pupils just don’t make an effort and don’t do their assigned homework.
But that does not mean there should be no firm standards by which to judge a teacher’s work. Gov. Phil Bredesen has learned, however, that insisting on such standards is a fast path to unpopularity with teachers’ unions. He is promoting reform that would link student test scores to teachers’ performance evaluations and decisions on tenure.
But the main teachers’ union, the Tennessee Education Association, objects to making test scores a significant part of teacher evaluations.
We agree that test scores do not tell the full story of how a teacher is performing. But if, over a period of time, one teacher’s students regularly test much better than students of similar backgrounds who are taught by another teacher, it should be obvious that one of the teachers deserves a better evaluation and perhaps greater advancement opportunity.
It seems that is the point Gov. Bredesen is making, and it makes sense.