To the Editor:
This November, I quit my teaching job to protest being subjected to cycles of evaluation under a rubric and evaluation framework inspired by Charlotte Danielson (“It’s Time to Rethink Teacher Evaluation,” April 20, 2016).
I had retired last year after a long career as a high school instructor. I missed working with kids, so I got a part-time job as a junior high teacher. This would have been my second year teaching at this level, but my first year under the evaluation process.
The district assessed teaching staff using Danielson’s framework, and I was shocked at what a demoralizing experience it was. I couldn’t bear to participate in and witness the beating-down that every teacher in the building was subjected to: the Pinterest-inspired scrapbooks we made for each “Danielson domain,” the hours of pre- and post-conferencing, the observations, and our elusive attempts to decipher how our ratings even remotely coincided with what had been observed in our classrooms. So I quit in the middle of the school year, something totally out of character for me.
I could not believe the system under which nontenured teachers were being reviewed, and I feel that this system—and others like it—are the exact reason so many of our talented young teachers quit.
Colleen Rogers
St. John, Ind.
