NYT: Teacher Ratings Get New Look, Pushed by a Rich Watcher

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/04/education/04teacher.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=a23&pagewanted=all

It sounds like Bill Gates is putting a lot of money behind an effort to determine why some teachers are more effective than others, and how all teachers can become more effective in their teaching.

The most interesting part of the research project he is funding is the use of digital video of classrooms. The project plans to take 24,000 hours of videos, or something like that, to analyze effectiveness of teaching. Experts will watch the videos and a system for evaluating teachers' effectiveness will be created.

As the article mentions, the main difficulties will be: Are video analyzes as good as a human observation of a classroom? Also, is the privacy of the teacher violated when a video is distributed to "experts"? Who will be responsible for managing these videos?

The project is promising, but needs to proceed very cautiously.