Illinois, Nov 9 (THAINDIAN NEWS) In a very radical step, teachers in Evanston- Skokie School District 65 will be evaluated and their pay will be decided on the results of their students.

In an innovative measure the district has started tracking the test scores of students, classroom by classroom, and measuring their progress. The student’s good progress will be directly linked to their teacher’s pay-hikes.

Many people are in favor of data-driven teacher evaluations and many criticize it too, but only time will tell how successful it is. “I think it’s coming,” said Audrey Soglin, executive director of the Illinois Education Association. “In what form, in what shape, remains to be seen. We want to be at the table to help frame it.”

The model of student achievement has been used to evaluate schools, from a long time. But this is indeed a radical step in which the educational systems have started collaborating the results to individual teachers. But at the same time, some critics have been hoping for a change, like the New Teacher Project, a Brooklyn, which is a NY based nonprofit organization that aims to raise the bar for the overall quality of a teacher.

“In a world where teachers are treated as though one is as good as another, you don’t evaluate them in a thoughtful way, and you probably won’t get to the next step — an intervention to get (underachievers) to a satisfactory level,” Dan Weisberg said.