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The music education profession is faced with two serious problems regarding the (mis)use of data in music teacher evaluation. The first has to do with the quality and kinds of data that music teachers have been forced to use; the second is concerned with how these data are being used in the music teacher evaluation process. The evidence I will use to support this argument will come from two sources. First, I will present a short review of policy briefs targeting the use of data in teacher evaluation in general education. Then, to provide a music-specific context, I will turn to the body of scholarship in music education that has focused on these issues. I will conclude the article by providing suggestions for how we can both use better data in music teacher evaluation and use these data in better ways to inform music teacher evaluation. I will also offer some general recommendations for consideration by music educators and policymakers interested in improving the process of music teacher evaluation.

Are you at a loss for ways to assess your music students? Mitchell Robinson offers some ideas that might help you improve your situation. B hil came home well after 6:00 P.M. feeling more tired and frustrated than he had all year. There had been the conversation with the principal, the three angry phone calls from parents of kids in his band, and then, at the very end of the day, his best trumpet player and set drummer told him they were dropping his class from their second-quarter schedules. All of this occurred as a direct result of the grades Phil had posted that morning after being up until 2:00 A.M. hastily "bubbling-in" numerical grades on the computer-generated forms that the school had adopted only the previous semester.Phil knew he should have kept better records on his students during the term. One of his recurring nightmares involved being called on the carpet over a poor grade and not having any tangible evidence to justify the mark he gave. He always felt a twinge of guilt at report-card time as he eyeballed his students' names: "I think an 85 for Tim should do; he does a pretty good job on the bass clarinet and Mitchell Robinson is a doctoral candidate at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NewYork. An active clinician and guest conductor, he served for ten years as director of bands and as music department facilitator in the public schools of Fulton, New York.Measuring student performance is part of every music educator's job. MUSICEDUCATORS JOURNAL 28 MARCH 1995 29

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