By Steve Gunn
EAGnews.org

SCRANTON, Pa. – The teachers in the Scranton School District recently passed a resolution stating that they have “no confidence” in their district’s administrators.

Why?

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Because a team of supervisors has recently been visiting classrooms unannounced to observe and critique the teachers at work.

That’s way out of bounds, according to Rosemary Boland, president of the local teachers union. She says the district’s collective bargaining agreement only allows building principals to evaluate teachers.

The problem is that the district has about 900 teachers and only 17 principals. If only principals do teacher evaluations, very few evaluations will be completed in any sort of timely manner.

Perhaps that’s precisely what the union has in mind.

We’re guessing that the unannounced nature of the evaluations is what’s really bothering the union. They want teachers to know when they are going to be watched in class, so they can wear something nice, paint on their best smile and plan a special lesson for the students.

Such pre-arranged observations will never produce an accurate picture of a teacher’s day-to-day effectiveness.

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An editorial published by the Scranton Times-Tribune, titled “Supervisors Dare to Supervise,” rightly slaps around the union for trying to obstruct any type of increased teacher accountability.

“Teachers quite rightly say that evaluation standards should not be based too heavily on student testing because student performance results from a host of factors, many of which teachers cannot control.

“But, apparently, they don’t think that supervisors should be able to critique their classroom performance, either, which they can or should be able to control.

“Technically, the Scranton no-confidence vote is meaningless, but it is illustrative. District administrators and state lawmakers should continue to press for accountability.”

We couldn’t have put it better ourselves.