New York had the bad luck to win $700 million in Race to the Top funding.
The politicians thought it would help balance the budget, not realizing that the grant would not be available to plug budget holes.
Now we know that principals think the costly, time-wasting evaluation system is useless. Eighty percent find it inaccurate.
Money will be wasted on this invalid system even as budgets are cut.
Some day we will look back at Race to the Top and wonder, “What were they thinking? $5 billion for that?”
Was it intended to demoralize teachers or was that an unintended consequence?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
It seems hugely unlikely that the RTTT-driven statistical chimeras called professional performance review systems will be reversed any time soon. The question is, what can we learn and improve upon to stop this multi-million dollar farce from turning into unmitigated tragedy? Here are three quick thoughts: (1) give our evaluators enough targeted professional development to enable them to reduce or mute (if necessary, gasp, manipulate!) the worst (most foolish?) statistical effects of the newly minted evaluation programs; (2) focus on the creative potential that lies in setting student performance goals based on the Common Core and using teacher-developed assessments to measure progress toward those goals throughout the year (in NY this represents the 60% of teacher performance not directly based on student standardized test scores); and (3) continue to educate parents and community about what experience has verified as enhancers of student achievement and how these factors derive from often non-academic connections among students, teachers, administrators — and certainly the surrounding community. The legislative arrows have all been shot, so rather than trying to extract them directly, painfully, and with great risk of infection, maybe we should spend more time painting the right targets around those arrows.
Can I turn my snarkometer off now or do you really believe what you have written?
Really? If by painting the right targets you mean making them up, as my school is doing in an unprecedented flurry of administrative incompetence, then your “quick thoughts” are coming from the same think tank. Our teachers are so frustrated and overwhelmed with these burdensome nonsensical directives that our faculty meeting was cancelled. Administrators, unable to explain the SLO’s, have retreated to their bunkers.
I’m not sure that now is the time to “make the best of a bad situation.” This is an agenda pushed by a free market model of education. An inappropriate and extremely damaging model of accountability is being applied to public education. The national unions have been using the “go along to get along” approach to try to mitigate the effects of the business agenda. They certainly have not gained the respect of the corporate moguls they seek to appease. The Chicago Teachers Union both enraged and terrified the money men. Someone had the audacity to question/push back against them. We have a long fight ahead of us that is going to involve bodies on the ground. We can’t write a check and have surrogate protesters. We can’t compete with money. We can with our voices.
I reread my own post and was horrified by my vision of “bodies on the ground.” That may be the end result, but I much prefer “soldiers in the trenches.” Thank God I can still laugh at myself.
Jeffrey Bowen, who are you? Please identify yourself.
Surely, you are not a teacher. I hope that you are not an administrator. These principals positively, absolutely have the correct agenda–in these perilous times for America’s students, there can be no other position.
I am a recently retired superintendent with lots of previous experience at the state level lobbying both legislators and the Regents. I don’t disagree with a position that highlights serious flaws and foolishness in the system put in place seemingly to grab about750 million bucks in RTTT funds. I do disagree with tilting at windmills. There are ways around them. Reality is that NYSUT and former Education Commissioner perpetrated this crime on us with NO administrators or schho boardmember in sight. Also reality is that districts without a state approved plan in place shortly will lose collective millions in state aid. It’s time to figure out a practical approach to avoiding disastrous funding losses that will ultimately victimize children and teachers.
an approved plan in place shortly
A crime is a crime. Tilting at windmills may also e characterized as fighting a crime, resisting a bad policy that will harm children.
Diane
I will continue to put my energies into bringing this awful system down even as I seek to protect my teachers from it as best I can. There is nothing that the creators of this system would like more than for us to ‘make the best of it’. The ‘make of the best of it argument’ was what inspired MLK’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail. I am so glad that King wrote that remarkable letter and did not take the advice to slow down and make the best of segregation.
As a New York Principal (and co-signer of the letter) I want to thank Carol for her work. The newest requirement is that all elementary teachers have to take attendance for every subject! What a monumental waste of time! It just keeps taking us away from good teaching with no evidence of improving practice.
Personally, I would rather be caught “tilting at windmills” then be caught sitting back doing nothing as I ‘deal with it”. Perhaps we should enjoy it too? This is ‘Akin’ to pretending that just because it’s policy it must be legitimate.
Thanks to all that refuse to sit back while this latest national ‘social experiment’ is underway. And shame on those who go along with it because there will be money on the ‘nightstand’
What kind of person with any sort of integrity says get use to it? Mitigation isn’t the answer, not at all. Pardon me, but it’s districts willing to sign on to RTTT that got us into this, and it’s districts that will have to get us out. Citizens, all of us, need to scream louder, not use our library voices. As citizens, we have to make it very uncomfortable for those willing to sign on to the likes of RTTT. Remember, when all that money targeted for building data machines is gone, we don’t have to sign up for more. I envision a day, in the not too distant future, when the data software will be lying dormat, gathering dust, with the rest of the foolish initiatives from the past. Let’s not give up now. The night always seem darkest right before dawn.