Education

The Charlotte Danielson Who Is Getting Rich on the Misuse of Her Intellectual Property

While I could speak until I drop about the absurdity of standardized assessment as the heavy indicator in learning, what is equally—if not more baffling—is the way in which teachers are handled and currently evaluated according to new systems across the country. They are based on Charlotte Danielson’s Effective Teaching Rubric and the rubric, as implemented in New York and many, many other states, is composed of 22 domains and sub-domains of observable and non-observable teaching practices or requirements that are meant to determine not only the effectiveness, but the development of a teacher along a spectrum that ranges from ineffective to highly effective.

Teachers, of course, use rubrics all the time so it only stands to reason that they might be employed in their own professional evaluations, however not only is such a comically huge rubric off-putting and worrisome, this particular one has no scientific research, focus group, control group, or experimental backing—no evidence based research of the sort teachers are legally mandated to employ themselves in classroom practice—that has ever been presented to justify its ubiquitous installation in national standards.

Additionally, Charlotte Danielson herself appears to have very little substantial evidence to credential her existence. The artifacts are few and far between. There are rumors swirling that she is a fiction developed by the Danielson Group to propagate their highly lucrative consulting services and texts. Purportedly she appears and speaks about her research, and is generally dismayed at its usage…but there is no empirical evidence of this in the media, and the Google Results yield very little beyond corporate propaganda and this very theory.

....Regardless of the actual existence of the philosopher, the philosophy has been used to Machiavellian ends to assist in the destruction of public education by removing the art from teaching. There is no room for creative, thoughtful practice. There are no teachable moments. You have to follow the script outlined by CCLS and Danielson—this is the unfathomable “even worse” evolution of the boxed-curriculum. Both the CCLS and Danielson leave very little room for creativity—indeed they call for so much mathematical data and assessment they hardly leave time for teachers to have lives. If the turbulent tides of education don’t soon change course—almost entirely—you can expect that many teachers won’t hive livelihoods either, because the system and the expectation, in light of the disorganization, misinformation, and under-resourcing of public education is designed to drown the system and sink us all in the crashing waves of an engineered perfect storm.

Scripted learning is an insult to teachers, and it harms students.

From Huff Post

Who Is Charlotte Danielson and Why Does She Decide How Teachers Are Evaluated?

A format based on the Danielson rubrics is already being used to evaluate teachers in at least thirty-three struggling schools in New York City and by one of the supervising networks. Kentucky has been using an adapted version of Danielson's Framework for Teaching to evaluate teachers since 2011 and according to the New Jersey Department of Education, sixty percent of nearly 500 school districts in the state are using teacher evaluation models developed by the Danielson Group. The South Orange/Maplewood and Cherry Hill, New Jersey schools have used the Danielson model for several years.

According to the Times editorial, the "new evaluation system could make it easier to fire markedly poor performers" and help "the great majority of teachers become better at their jobs." But as far as I can tell, the new evaluation system is mostly a weapon to harass teachers and force them to follow dubious scripted lessons.

Ironically, in a pretty comprehensive search on the Internet, I have had difficulty discovering who Charlotte Danielson really is and what her qualifications are for developing a teacher evaluation system. According to the website of the Danielson Group, "the Group consists of consultants of the highest caliber, talent, and experience in educational practice, leadership, and research." It provides "a wide array of professional development and consulting services to clients across the United States and abroad" and is "the only organization approved by Charlotte Danielson to provide training and consultation around the Framework for Teaching."

More:

Administrators are instructed how to race in and out of rooms and punch codes into an IPad with evaluations actually completed in cyberspace by an algorithm. Teachers will fail when supervisors do not see things that took place before or after they entered the room, if lesson plans do not touch on all twenty-two dimensions, or when teachers adjust their lessons to take into account student responses.

On Edit:

It took me a while to find this post I remembered from cachukis from 2011 here at DU. It describes Danielson's system

There is an inherent antagonism built into the system. The evaluators are overworked and limited to specific criteria for evaluation, very cookie cutter by the way. They are required to present an explanation of that evaluation and offer recommendations based on that rubric. That's it.

Read Danielson's book, look at her tapes. Copy. I'll be back to see how well you mimic. Your students better be able to pass the test based on your mimicry. If they don't you are not a good mimic and must go.

My principal gave me good marks, but reminded me that I had to be more Danielson. That was what was expected.

The evaluators are human and have personal judgement experiences. They all want to do a good job, but have moved into a totalitarian system. Rebel, you're out. Once you've made that move you are defending that paycheck.(Sinclair anyone?)

More at the link.