There is no mass exodus of good teachers

Grounding our debates in real data and information is an important part of progressing education forward. Building up knowledge, trying new things and assessing their effectiveness, and searching for every edge possible is all a part of how the work should be done. There will be no silver bullets but there is promise, there are partial solutions, that can bring us closer to a more effective education system.

Keeping more great teachers with the students who need them most is a part of the solution. Read my piece at RealClearEducation on how rigorous teacher evaluation may be helping.

A Decision-making Question - Compared to What?

One of the ways I think about data, and also the purpose of teacher evaluation in general, is whether the information presenting itself is useful for decision-making. Ultimately, that decision-making is what much of policy is about. Are we making the best decisions possible, as a teacher, as a school leader, as a district staffer, certainly as a bureaucrat tasked with coaxing policy-making aspirations into in-reality improvements.

How you process all this brand new information is an important part of the decisions you end up making. You can see my post on the EDGEucator blog about the decision-making implications of the question "Compared to what?"