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TRAVERSE CITY ^1ReCORdIEAGLESunday, November 15, 2015 SUNDAY *1.00 DAILY/82.00 SUNDiTESTINGEducators evaluate teacher rating rulesTCAPS' Soma:Teachers should use tests to improve skillsBY MICHELLE MERLINmm e r li n@rec o rd-e ag le. comTRAVERSE CITY — New-statewide teacher evaluation, standards that progressively emphasize students’ test scores earned mixed reviews from local educators, who said they’re an improvement on an earlier bill that required student test scores makeup half of teachers’ performance evaluations.The new standards, which were signed by the governor Nov. 5, require school districts and charter schools to base 25 percent of each teacher’s evaluation score on student achievement data — essentially test scores and assessments.That number increases to 40 percent in the 2018-19 year.Traverse City Area Public Schools Superintendent Paul Soma said using student achievement data for 25 percent of evaluations makes sense, but bumping that percentage up might not.“I believe in informative assessments that help show us where we’re doing well and where we need to improve,”Soma said. “At 25 percent that allows us to do that with teachers without it becoming high-stakes testing.”Soma said teachers should use tests to help them see strengths and weaknesses and improve their teaching skills.That might not happen as much when too much emphasis is placed on a test score.SEE TCAPS PAGE 2AA Century of RipplesNative American culture feels effects of boarding schools decades after system closedBy MICHELLE MERLINmmerlm@record-eagIe.comNotjustarelcSEE SCHOOL PAGE 3ARecord-Eagle/Jan-Michaei StumpPaul Raphael, an elder in the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians, attended the Holy Childhood of Jesus School in Harbor Springs.Paul Raphael was just a kid in first grade when it happened.He attended the Holy Childhood of Jesus Sehool in Harbor Springs —a boarding school among hundreds nationwide that operated for more than a century—where Native American children were sent to become “civilized’' by nuns.The nuns were teaching table manners. One asked: What happens after you butter your bread and cut it into four pieces?“I said, ‘you eat it,”’ said Raphael, a member of the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians. “I remember the nun coming over and smacking me. She smacked me hard and I fell out of my chair.”Raphael was so upset he never did learn the answer; he’d never been hit before. But he did take one thing away from watching nuns abuse his classmates over the next several years: “I knew that if I had kids, I wouldn’t treat them the way they were treating us,” Raphael said.Memories of Holy Childhood and other Indian boarding schools are still fresh in the minds of Grand Traverse Band members. The three-story building in Harbor Springs operated until 1983, long after other Indian boarding schools run by non-natives closed down.
Newspaper Details
Traverse City Record Eagle
Traverse City, Michigan, US
Sun, Nov 15, 2015
Page 1
Full Page
Clipped by
Traverse A.
MI, USA 13 Oct 2018
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