The results of an interim survey of the first round trials of the teacher evaluation system were quite different from expected. Even when one considers that the Education Ministry, which rammed through the trial, conducted the survey based on the trial results of just three months at schools that volunteered to adopt the system, the results were surprising.
It has been pointed out that educators have strongly opposed the implementation of the teacher evaluation system, which evaluates them. But 66.7 percent of the surveyed educators expected that the evaluation system would improve teachers’ professionalism, 57 percent said it would help students academically, and 58.3 percent said it would contribute to school improvement. Negative expectations were limited to about 10 percent. Despite strong concerns that teacher evaluations would become a popularity contest or that parent evaluations would be nothing more than criticism of first impressions, most of the educators in the survey acknowledged the need to adopt an evaluation system.
For the Minister of Education, these are very welcome results. But the limits of this last survey are clear. For example, more than 80 percent of educators negatively evaluated the current work evaluation system. If asked about operating the existing work evaluation system with the new teacher evaluation system, how would the teachers respond? There’d be no need to answer. Accordingly, we must interpret these survey results thusly. Educators do not negatively evaluate the basic gist of teacher evaluations. It’s just that they oppose the new teacher evaluations while continuing the existing self-complacent work evaluations. This is because it amounts to double controls over teachers.
The second round of trials will last until August. The Education Ministry mustn’t push things through alone based on half-baked opinion. With the agreement of educational bodies, it must try various forms of evaluation models. One can count among these evaluations made within the schools’ own frameworks or ones made based on reform of the work evaluation system.
The Hankyoreh, 7 March 2006.
[Translations by Seoul Selection]
[Editorial] If the Teacher Evaluation System is to Bear Fruit |
