Have you heard of Brookings? It is one of the world's most important thinktanks and is situated in the US. I subscribe to a number of Brookings newsletters by email and got this today, November 17th, in my email. It's a slightly technical paper on Education but the import of it isn't lost on me. The paper is titled "Evaluating Teachers: The Important Role of Value-Added". The paper goes on to argue that in addition to teacher evaluation, it is important to look at the value-added quality of a teacher. What is it that the teacher brings to the profession in addition to good evaluation reports? I would welcome such a paper, more so in the Indian context, where there is no thinking about quality in higher education. In India, in most universities, we do not even evaluate our teachers and there is no concept of the value addition of a particular teacher. In fact, I have seen instances where teachers want students to become their cronies and spies. Or where teachers defame other teachers and students think the teachers who defame other teachers are the best. Students also tend to be blinkered. The system promotes and encourages mediocrity in India. And we never think about the profession, what it means and what it entails. We never put any thought towards improving the educational system.
Anyway, you can read the Brookings article here: http://www.brookings.edu/reports/2010/1117_evaluating_teachers.aspx
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