LAUSD moving to better review teachers

Original article in the Los Angeles Daily News by Barbara Jones.

It's got more depth, more breadth and, certainly, more heft.

At 30 pages, the performance evaluation that Los Angeles Unified wants to use to rate its teachers is 27 pages longer than the one that's been in place for years.

Instead of the cursory review that now nets nearly every teacher a satisfactory rating - despite the district's dismal 56 percent graduation rate - the new Teaching and Learning Framework plots a teacher's knowledge and skills in more than five dozen categories.

Principals use "evidence" collected through classroom visits, parent meetings and lesson plans to discuss a teacher's strengths and weaknesses and craft a plan for improvement. The ultimate goal is to improve student achievement by raising the quality of the instructor.

To read the complete article, visit the Los Angeles Daily News.