The crumpled page contains a description of Type I, II, and III assessments. It’s from some professional development meeting related to our evaluations. All I can say is that any evaluation system that requires 20 or more appendices desperately needs to be rewritten. The state law that resulted in this appendix needs to be repealed.

Our government’s claws may eviscerate education at the rate we are going. Twenty-two page evaluations are ridiculous, especially when they are based on about half a day’s observation at most. I’m not against data. I’m against made-up data. Any twenty-two page document based on a half-day’s observation has a large element of fiction in its pages.

At some point, I’ll bother to read that chunk of dead trees and find out how much fiction. Or not. I’m at a natural retirement break point and I announced to the break room that I was going. Will I continue teaching elsewhere? Life would be easier if I moved up the socioeconomic ladder to a place where test scores are higher and administrators don’t have the state breathing down their necks. Still, I may quit to follow my North Star toward writing instead.

Eduhonesty: I’m sure some of these evaluation documents are larger and some are smaller. Regardless, I believe three to five pages at most ought to cover a teacher’s evaluation, just as I think one week of standardized testing each year ought to cover student data needs. The data dragon needs to be slain.