Sunday, July 25, 2010

Also True of the "Criterion-Based" Hiring Process in Providence

F314L314:

I have heard from several independent sources that the teacher classroom interactions that IMPACT monitors and rates are the very same things that the TFA teachers learn in their summer crash course! It’s pretty much all the TFA people learn – how to stand up in front of a class and teach according to a formula.

So, in contrast, vet teachers would be learning a lot of these techniques for the first time in IMPACT training sessions. I heard that a lot of the new teachers were bored in the IMPACT sessions, having just learned it.

Given that this is so, then new teachers have an automatic advantage on style and training, but being inexperienced, one assumes they have a disadvantage on substance. Conversely, veteran teachers would not have had this training recently they would tend to score poorly on the IMPACT rating rubric. So, was there sufficient training (during the the first year when observations were already going on)? Is a one or two day PD presentation sufficient for IMPACT training and expectation? Were there enough opportunities and were these opportunities taken advantage of by the teachers during the rollout year and sufficiently encouraged by administrators?

Might we also see some inverse relationships that show high IMPACT scores among new teachers but whose kids have low DC-CAS scores?

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