Miranda Jones can remember many afternoons in the counselor’s office in her small-town Colorado middle school, crying about other kids relentlessly teasing about her weight, CNN reports. Now at a top-ranked women’s college in the Northeast, Jones is grateful her debate coaches helped her find something she loved that kept her focused and got her into college. “Without an after-school activity, academic support from adults and without constantly reminding myself that it wasn’t going to last forever, I never would have survived the endless taunts of my peers.”
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New Jersey launches pilot teacher evaluation program, equally weighing tests and class success
New Jersey launches a pilot program today that will evaluate teachers at 10 schools by equally weighing a student’s academic and classroom performance, the Huffington Post reports. In a guest column published in the Star-Ledger Thursday, New Jersey acting Commissioner of Education Chris Cerf writes that about half of a teacher’s evaluation will come from student “learning outcomes” like progress on standardized test scores.
“To avoid penalizing teachers who work with our highest-need students, evaluation criteria should be based on student progress and not absolute performance,” Cerf writes…