U-T San Diego
The best policy initiative put forth by President Barack Obama, hands down, is his push for teacher accountability. The president says most teachers are solid or better, but that bad teachers – perhaps 10 percent of those now on the job – must go. How do you identify them? At least partly by looking at test scores reflecting student improvement over the course of a school year, using reasonable expectations based on students’ previous progress. This last distinction is key. It shows the intent is not to punish teachers with students from challenging backgrounds. Instead, a key goal is to help students from challenging backgrounds by making sure they have at least minimally capable teachers. The least-skilled, least-prepared teachers often end up in schools in low-income minority areas. This is why former state Sen. Gloria Romero, D-Los Angeles
