Will the Courts Save Teachers?

In the next few years, thousands of teachers across the United States will lose their jobs. It won't be because of shrinking fiscal resources or because these teachers voluntarily chose other careers. Instead, the cause of these massive dismissals will be the markedly toughened teacher evaluation systems recently established in all but a few states.

It's difficult to overestimate the potential demoralization stemming from such impending dismissals. The relaxed conversations that typically take place in a school's faculty lounge are being replaced by tense speculations about fellow teachers' evaluation status. Will this year's friends be at the school next year, or will they be scrambling for another job—or even another profession? And the adverse impact on teacher morale is particularly potent when teachers perceive that the evaluation procedures used to judge them are unfair.