Free agency and the individual teacher

In the debate on teacher quality, and how to evaluate those who will be the most successful at educating children, the issue of teachers' freedom to innovate and experiment in the classroom is often on the mind of those who criticize public schools. As union- and board-negotiated agreements view the evaluative process, it is often at best a toothless method for providing suggestions, at worst so poorly enumerated as to allow vindictive administrators to fire political opponents while simultaneously making it impossible to "redistribute" poor performers.

Part of this seems to be a focus on evaluating the teacher's behaviors in the absence of substantial achievement data - E. D. Hirsch would argue that the progressive education movement formentned in teacher colleges has dictated a body of techniques that are "approved", whether or not they work, based on ideology. I'm not sure if I follow him to the end of that road or not, but Wendy Kopp, founder of Teach for America, discusses how she addresses her hires by looking for a character of perseverance over a repertoire of techniques. I appreciate her approach, but what I don't see in many places and in many discussions is the committment to using hard data in staff evaluations. My theories:

• Many in the education field are not comfortable enough with quantitative data to use it effectively, so they just dont.
• Some over-aggressive politicos in schools either misuse data, or rely on quantitiative data in a unethical or incorrect way, i.e. relying on a single test as an indication of teacher quality.
• Unions disparage data-based supervision in the same way they disparage merit pay, throwing out the baby with the bathwater (slap me for relying on cliche, please)
• Teachers are, I hate to say, often emotionally-focused to a fault - they hate to make hard decisions based on something so cold as numbers