Jun 29, 2009 10:53 am US/Eastern
Peer Review Helps Struggling Montgomery Teachers
GERMANTOWN (AP) ―
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The Montgomery County school system is using a program known as peer review to help struggling teachers improve and weed out those who can't do better.
The Montgomery County school system is using a program known as peer review to help struggling teachers improve and weed out those who can't do better.
The county is the only school system in the Washington area and one of about 80 nationwide to use peer review, which was introduced in Toledo, Ohio, in 1981. Union contracts and tenure rules tend to make it difficult to dismiss ineffective teachers. But people on both sides of the labor management divide consider peer review a promising solution.
In Montgomery County, which established peer review about 10 years ago, teachers are selected for the program based on a poor job evaluation. Each year, the program weeds out 2 to 3 percent of the county's probationary teachers, along with a smaller number of tenured faculty. The program costs Montgomery schools $2 million a year.
Of 66 Montgomery teachers in peer review in the 2008-09 school year, 10 are being dismissed and 21 have resigned or retired. Five will remain in review for a second year. The remaining 30 will successfully exit.
"We've changed the whole culture from 'gotcha' to support," said Montgomery Superintendent Jerry D. Weast.
Jean Bernstein, a math teacher at Roberto Clemente Middle School in Germantown, entered the program last fall. She said she was given assurances that there was no danger of losing her job.
"I wasn't put in this program to be ousted," she said. "And that was made very, very clear to me." Despite being a capable teacher, Bernstein had fallen weeks behind the pace of the county curriculum.
Her case fell to Theresa Nebel Robinson, one of 28 teachers designated in the program to help others. Robinson made announced and unannounced visits to Bernstein's classroom.
One day before Thanksgiving, Robinson watched Bernstein wrestle for control of her class. "I'm waiting on ... just about everybody," Bernstein said. "I don't see eyes, and I'm hearing a lot of talking." She rang a cowbell once, twice. "What should you do when you hear that bell? Stop, look and listen."
Early in the year, Bernstein was struggling to keep every student engaged. She thought of using bingo balls to call on students at random and started passing around math problems on a dry-erase board and having each student contribute a piece of the solution.
By the end of April, Bernstein had improved so much that Robinson recommended her release from peer review. "I have a few things to work on this summer," Bernstein said in May. "But that's what summer's for."
(© 2010 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
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