What The Ratings Don't Show

1.  Mrs. G spent every afternoon working with a group of students who improved greatly.  The only problem is that Mrs. G was not the teacher on record.  She got to know the kids while trying to push them into class one day and they took a liking to her.  They stayed late every day to get extra help from her.

2.  Mr. T always ends up with the students no one else wants to teach.  He is strong and caring and manages to get through to many who have been deemed hopeless.  His only problem is that he loses some along the way and his statistics are never glowing.

3.  Ms. K can look at a student's face and know whether the topic she taught has been understood.  She doesn't have to wait for the test to evaluate learning in her classroom.   Ms K's problem is this ability is not measured by numbers and because she spends extra time on certain things, she has left other issues uncovered.

4.  Miss J has a heart of gold.  She instinctively knows how to comfort the child and how to make that child feel good about himself, even when others have given up on him.  Miss J's statistics are not all that glowing either, yet she is one of the most outstanding teachers in the school.

5.  Mr. P has been teaching combining radicals for almost a week.  On the 5th day, he modeled a few more problems, had a student go to the board and model a few more and then gave the class an assignment to do on their own.  As Mr.P walked around the room, he saw more than 50% of the class adding radical 27 to radical 48 put down radical seventy five as an answer.  He taught, nothing sank in.

Klein thinks parents have a right to know what sort of teacher their child has and every child should have a great teacher, but this data does not only not do the job, it hurts the very people that might be helping the students the most.