The Study On Stars Assessment (Classification) Reform Of Middle School Teachers' Senior Professional Titles

Since the system of senior professional titles was announced, dispute and reform increased at the mean time. As senior professional titles are getting younger in age, the "thirty-five inaction" phenomenon, which is a feverish subject, has also been a difficult problem of teacher management. Therefore, many places come out with reform plans about senior teachers. In 2008, S city in Zhejiang province announced a new system, stars assessment (classification) system, which separates the senior teachers into 5 star grades (one and two stars mean unqualified employed; three stars mean normal employed; four and five stars mean excellent employed), in order to breaking the lifelong tenure system of professional titles and encouraging senior teachers to get more vitality. However, this system experienced the process of "promote, setback, shelve…reform", and arguments and conflicts increased between education bureau and schools, as well as headmasters and teachers. Obviously, this subject is embodied with realistic significance.The author is a teacher in this city. As an average teacher, the author has accumulated a lot of facts and thoughts with substantial evidence investigations in the reform, such as seventy-nine questionnaires, tens of deep interviews of headmaster, middle-level cadres and relative senior teachers, and finishes the case study in Shuren Middle School of S city. During the investigation, the author also found that the reform of professional titles is a sensitive topic, some teachers just held back their real meanings. In order to add positivism of the study, the author also used lots of archive study and literature cited methods.The preface mainly introduces backgrounds of post-senior teachers' stars assessment (classification) and the study's design methods; the second chapter states the process of reform in three aspects:the problems during the process of reform, every kind of interest and demands, teachers' worry about "side effects"; the third chapter refers to the actual state, management theory, and the professional characteristic of teachers, elaborates the causes of obstacles with empirical study methods, including problems in assessment plan setter and its setting process; the fourth chapter tries to find counter measure and suggestion on pushing the reform continuously, analyses the indispensable conditions of achieving the reform, and suggests the plan-setters should firmly follow the principle of openness, impartiality and fairness, and consider the announced system from the standpoint of teachers' professional development. The author hopes these study make contribution to the system reform of senior teachers' professional titles.