Jennifer Scucces

Want to change education overnight? Get rid of standardized tests. Get rid of standardized teacher evaluations. Because nothing about students or teachers is standard. Machines are standardized. Assembly lines are standardized. Education isn’t. But we keep treating people like parts in a system. And that’s how you keep getting mediocrity

It’s Time to Do Away with Standardized Teacher Evaluations Teacher evaluations are starting to look a lot like standardized testing for students. We built both for accountability. We were told both would improve outcomes. They didn’t. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation MET study showed we got better at identifying differences between teachers. That’s it. It didn’t lead to widespread improvement in teaching. It just gave us a more organized way to sort people. Same thing happened with testing. It didn’t suddenly make kids better learners. It changed behavior. Schools adjusted to the system. More focus on what’s measured. Less on what’s not. Teacher evaluation follows that same path. Put a rubric in place, and people start thinking about the rubric. What gets checked gets attention. Everything else fades. Charlotte Danielson built her framework for reflection and professional conversation. We turned it into scoring, which it was never designed to do. Now it’s less about getting better and more about where you land. And here is part of the problem, in education, when something doesn’t work, our instinct is to add more. More walkthroughs. More categories. More data. More forms. We keep stacking layers on top of a system without ever stopping to ask a simple question: Is this even the right approach? Not “How do we improve it?” But “Should we be doing this at all?” Because if the foundation is off, adding more just makes it more complicated. Not better. Now we’re talking about running that same system through AI. Faster write-ups. Automated feedback. Cleaner reports. Still the same system. We built it for efficiency, not for people. So it does what it was designed to do. It standardizes. It documents. It creates consistency. It doesn’t develop professionals. After years of refining this—more structure, more detail, more time—we’re still not seeing the kind of improvement that justifies it. At some point, you stop tweaking and admit the idea itself might be off. And here’s the reality—many of the highest-performing systems in the world don’t even use a standardized teacher evaluation model like we do. It’s time to do away with it. Keep feedback. Keep accountability. Lose the system built on rubrics, checklists, and scores. Replace it with leadership that actually helps people get better. Aspirational Conversations. Coaching. Knowing your teachers well enough to support them. If teachers are professionals, they shouldn’t be evaluated like this. And most people in schools already know that.

Dear Parents—your child doesn’t need to be the smartest in the class, the best on the field, or the most talented in the room. But they do need to be teachable. We’ve raised a generation that can Google every answer, but too many are forgetting how to listen, respect, and learn. Being teachable isn’t about grades or intelligence—it’s about humility. It’s about realizing you don’t know everything and being willing to grow when someone tries to help you. As parents, we don’t need to raise perfect kids. We need to raise kids who can take feedback without falling apart. Who can apologize. Who can show respect even when they disagree. Who can be corrected without becoming combative. Because teachability will take them further than talent ever will.

Pretty crazy that I still have to convince people that it is IMPORTANT for students to learn their basic addition and multiplication facts. Relying on fingers to get the answer cannot be the goal. We can teach conceptual understanding AND fluency at the same time. #iTeachMath

Keep going. ❤️ #autism

Educators have ZERO control over any of these. 🤔👇 Stop placing ALL the blame on teachers and schools.

So true! 💯 🌐 teachergoals.com

it's time...

Best leaders don't demand; they develop.

👏👏👏

The “just teach” crowd has no idea…

This is your friendly reminder for 2025 that EVERY public school teacher should get “6 in 5”. A guaranteed 6 figure salary by year 5 of work. Plenty of time to weed out the ineffective teachers and great for retention.

It’s sheer insanity to expect teachers to implement both differentiated learning and standardized testing. We must choose one or the other; you can’t effectively support diverse learners while enforcing a one-size-fits-all assessment system.

Make some noise for public education!

Principal, you are the thermostat!

Can't administrate excellence!

When addressing the teacher shortage – we need to address that there is also a teacher respect problem. At @USEDgov we are focused on the ABC’s of teaching – giving teachers Agency, Better Working conditions, and Competitive salaries. It’s what they deserve.

Teachers, you should be paid as if our future is in your hands, because it is.

I rarely see anyone in math education take aim at this. To offer changes to math education and NOT addressing this is a cause for concern.