Changes in Education

Quick little post... Today my wife, a sixth grade teacher in the Meridian School District, received proof that the grandfathering of continue contracts in the "Students Come First" legislation was pretty much worthless. Due to the failed levy from last month, the school district is going to have to RIF about 100 teachers. In an email to my wife (and likely every other teacher) was informed that all teachers would be given RIF numbers (I guess like draft numbers from the military). The numbers are assigned based upon scores on evaluations the teachers received in their last formal evaluation. In other words, bad eval, low RIF number, good eval, high RIF number. Seems fair enough, but what if the teacher was just having a bad day? Plus, it doesn't sound like any teachers actually knew that evaluations would have that sort of impact. That sort of lack of transparency really calls into question the fairness and efficacy of using that sort of standard. More on this later...