This project is exciting because it allowed for unique voices - ones that are typically not asked - to engage in policy development that affect their day to day lives.  Teachers and professionals from across the country were able to work with their peers to collaborate and build ideas essentially in a virtual workplace to create opensource recommendations around teacher evaluations.  Not only was the process and nationwide participation exciting, but the fact that the project still continues and real reform effect is the goal!

It is good to have teacher feedback, but I noted that sometimes after a meeting, the next e-mail did not reflect what we spoke of at the meeting but returned to a concept that was not preferred by the participants of the meeting.  I felt that perhaps the rubberstamping of someone's pet project was what was preferred. For ELL students in Delaware the idea of a perfomance portfolio was discussed,  an unwieldy tool for districts with large ELL populations and limited staff and funding, and yet it was returned as a sort of set in stone idea with a codicil only if it does not take too much funding or time away from teaching.  There is no way that evaluating 350 portfolios for my district would not rob time from other important instructional tasks.  Unless we ship them off to someone at state level to evaluate several thousand, this idea is untenable for large numbers of students.  I pointed these facts out to the committee in writing and yet, the idea still remains.

I just hope that this whole discussion is real, not merely a rubber stamping of someone's already preconceived notions, so that they can say that they got input.