Teacher evaluation - 'a source of shame'
San Francisco
''The normal procedures for evaluating college teaching are so shoddy at the intellectual and the practical level, that it is hardly surprising that teaching is rarely rewarded in an appropriate way.
''That these procedures are intellectually sloppy is a reflection on both scholars and the administrators of the academy, and that their methods of application are also slipshod tells us something more about the true value system of the academy which is not to its credit.
''Had colleges spent 1 percent of the time on this problem that they have spent on internally funded research in the sciences or the humanities, we would now have something to be proud of instead of a source of shame.''
That's what Dr. Scriven wrote for the introduction of this monograph, published by the National Council of States on Inservice Education, and distributed by the National Dissemination Center, Syracuse University, 123 Huntington Hall, Syracuse, N.Y. 13210. And now for an excerpt from his conclusion:
''Personnel evaluation in general is a difficult field and one that is usually done with shocking incompetence, as one can readily discover by studying the forms used by the White House, or by large corporations, or the Armed Services.
''If it is to be improved, presumably the academies should be the source of the leadership. It is they, after all, who do most of the relevant research and interpretation.''