行政改革としての教員評価＝人事評価制度

――日米比較からみる教員評価政策の日本的特質――

抄録

The Purpose of this paper is to clarify the characteristics of national policy on teacher evaluation in Japan, from the view point of the comparative study on those policies in the United States.

To make the comparative view point, this paper analyzed on the following law reforms and policies surrounding the teacher evaluation in the U.S: 1)the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB), 2)the Race to the Top Program (RTTT), 3)the NCLB waiver policy, and 4)the state education policy centralizing the teacher evaluation system. Through the analysis of those matters, the author found that, under the federal education initiatives, most states were urged to amend teacher tenure laws and collective bargaining laws so that students' test scores could be significant evidence to dismiss the “ineffective” teachers. Under the competitive based federal grant and its selection criteria of the RTTT, as well as the conditions to waive the duty of the NCLB, the federal government strengthened its political influence on the teacher policy which had been within the authority of each state and local government.

In order to examine the teacher evaluation system in Japan, the author focused on the political background and the purpose of the new Local Public Employee Act (LPA) of 2014, which mandated all public employers to implement the new personnel assessment system for local public employees including public school teachers. The author clarified that the purpose of the law was to decrease the personnel expenses, and that the law provided the public employers with comprehensive discretion to conduct the assessment, while the law strictly ordered them to use the assessment for personnel decisions and to take actions against the ineffective public employees. In addition to the analysis of the LPA, the author inquired into the personnel assessment for national public employees, which had already been implemented from 2008 and was supposed to be the model for local public employees. The author found that the assessment system was strictly systematized on usage of the assessment for personnel decisions including promotions, pay raises, and dismissals.

Through those findings, this paper examined the similarities and the differences of the teacher evaluation policies between the U.S. and Japan. The similarities could be found in the centralization of the teacher policy, and in the consequences of which those policies transformed not only the teacher evaluation system but whole traditional teacher law system in both countries. The differences of the policies also could be found; while the U.S. federal government intervened into the teacher evaluation system at the expense of federal grants, the national government in Japan introduced the new assessment system with the aim of decreasing the personnel expenses. Whereas the federal government placed the teacher evaluation at the core of the “education policy,” Japanese government introduced it without “educational” policy, but with a policy of structural reform to decrease the national public expenses.