Attack Poverty, Not Teachers.

Dear Editor,

On April 16th, the Commissioner of Education in Massachusetts released a set of proposed regulations on teacher evaluation. These regulations have been greeted with much enthusiasm, as they will utilize standardized test scores to evaluate teachers. The common belief is that finally teachers will be held accountable.

The belief is that we can identify those “good” teachers and put them in the lowest performing schools. I find it unfortunate that the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education doesn’t realize that many of our best and most dedicated teachers are already working in the these schools.

The belief that data from test scores can actually show whether a teacher is good or not is seriously flawed. When the data is examined, the most common factor among students who perform poorly is poverty. Every piece of data we have shows that children who live in poverty perform poorly on standardized tests.

Twenty one percent of the children in the United States live in poverty. This is the issue that needs to be addressed by the government. The call should be for a war against poverty, not an attack on teachers.

Very truly yours,

Janet Anderson
President, Taunton Education Association