Here we go

Tomorrow I will venture back to the Capitol in Denver to not as an observer, but to testify in front of the House Education Committee.
I will be bringing in a copy of our Professional Practices Handbook so they can see firsthand how complex a good evaluation tool is. My emphasis will be that not funding this bill is shortsided because it does not take into account the training needed for Principals, and the embedded and personalized professional development that must occur-even with the best and exemplary teachers, as we define them. Without that piece, the intensive evaluation tool is not useful for the teacher. I experienced it. I was in a school who waited the longest to implement TAP, but we started using the evaluation rubric right away. There was no way for my principal to give me the all the help I needed to understand how to improve. If I didn't have a GREAT mentor teacher (Kate)-the old type of mentor who did everything for basically free-I would have drowned. Luckily now we have a paid mentors and masters who can help. I am not saying that our system is perfect-IT IS NOT-but, if we are to have evaluation systems in place that are as rigorous as we have in ECS, such as seems to be the wave right now, I would HATE to know people would have to suffer through it without a fair support system. And I believe with the right people/leadership in place our support system works well for new teachers and teachers who want to sharpen their classroom strategies. The exact people who would be needing to prove themselves effective to their principals. This is only half the battle, but the other would be connecting teachers to assessments. Right now the biggest issue I have is that there are few good tests out there for the core subjects-RRR. And there are no tests that exist for 60% of the rest of the teachers out there. What are we going to do? Have schools make them up would be the cheapest way, not the wisest. Pay for test experts to do it-expensive and not the wisest. Ahhh, pay for a panel of educators who teach the subject to create the tests. Not free, but wiser. As you can see, none of this is free. Colorado must be able to fund this bill. Please don't allow this to be an unfunded mandate. Let the Governor's Council on Teacher Effectiveness do it's job. Then lets talk.