Parents and community leaders are being alerted to troubling new language that is being inserted into teacher performance evaluations by public schools in Denver, Colorado.
The Denver Public Schools' new evaluation framework calls for teachers to be evaluated on how well they encourage students to challenge the dominant culture and work for social justice.
Ben DeGrow of the Independence Institute says that is out of line.
"A lot of work has been done to update teacher evaluations, but with this particular action DPS [Denver Public Schools] has taken a left turn away from what the primary focus of that law is and added the idea of pushing a political agenda onto the teacher evaluations," says the education and labor public policy analyst.
Aside from the concern over the left-leaning political agenda of the evaluations, DeGrow wonders what school administrators will be looking for in trying to evaluate performance.
"Will it be taking students on a field trip to an Occupy Denver or Occupy Wall Street event? Or on the other side, would it be taking students to a Tea Party rally or to a more conservative event?" asks the spokesman.
DeGrow says the Institute is hoping parents will begin to demand more of a commonsense approach to teacher evaluations.