Ask a Teacher: How Should Teachers Really Be Evaluated?

Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images
Welcome to the latest installment of Ask a Teacher, Slate’s education podcast with the Teacher Project at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. In this episode, host Matt Collette asks three working teachers to answer questions submitted by listeners, including “If you were to design a system for evaluating teacher performance, what would it look like?”
This episode’s panelists:
- Ruth Jetton, a sixth-grade math and science teacher at the Academy of Global Citizenship, a public charter school located on the southwest side of Chicago.
- Valerie Lake, an eighth-grade English teacher and literacy coach at Lower Manhattan Community Middle School in New York.
- José Vilson, an eighth-grade math teacher in New York’s Inwood/Washington Heights neighborhood. He's also the author of This Is Not a Test: A New Narrative on Race, Class, and the Future of Education. He blogs at thejosevilson.com.
This episode is sponsored by the Great Courses, offering more than 500 lecture series taught by top professors and experts, available in audio and video formats. Go to thegreatcourses.com/teacher for a special, limited-time offer.
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