Bill Gates’ $5 Billion Plan, The way public school teachers are evaluated is complicated—and highly controversial among educators.
In fact, two out of three
teachers feel that the methods don't accurately capture what they do in
their classrooms, according to a January report by the Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) project, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Tying teacher performance to test scores is the main factor that has teachers up in arms. It was one of the main reasons teachers went on strike last year in Chicago and why teachers in Seattle boycotted the MAP test earlier this year.
Instead of focusing so much attention on test scores, philanthropist Bill Gates has another idea.
How about spending $5 billion to put a video camera in every classroom in America?
Anya Kamenetz of Fast Company reports that in a TED Talks Education
special airing on May 7 on PBS, we can expect to hear more about Gates'
plan. The hope Kamenetz writes, is for teachers "to be filmed in action
so they can be evaluated and, maybe, improve."
Gates has dedicated resources in the last few
years to identifying and developing effective teaching. His foundation
funded the $45 million MET project designed to determine how to best
identify and promote great teaching. They enlisted the help of 3,000
teachers and many experts to determine the best way to do this.
In regards to teacher evaluations,
the MET project concluded that a three-step approach is best. This
includes: student test scores, classroom observations by multiple
reviewers, and teacher evaluations from students.
While we have yet to hear all the details of Gates' plan for filming teachers, his idea is already getting criticism.
"You just don't know what you're seeing, until you have a conversation with the teacher and examine the students' work products or listen to their discussions," she wrote.
This isn't the first time installing video cameras as an evaluation tool has come to the table. In 2011, Wyoming lawmakers proposed placing video cameras in classrooms to evaluate performance.
As for the Gates Foundation,
this idea has been brewing for quite some time. Thomas Kane, a
professor of education and economics at the Harvard Graduate School of
Education and the director of the MET project, said in a 2011 interview with Education Next that there are a lot of advantages to having cameras in classrooms. He said:
To hear more of what Bill Gates has to say about cameras in classrooms, tune in to TED Talks Education on the 7th of May. Other influencial speakers include Geoffrey Canada, the CEO of Harlem Children's Zone and educator and activist Sir Ken Robison.
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