Carol Corbett Burris, principal of South Side High School in Rockville Center, Long Island, New York, runs a good school. She wants to protect her staff and her students from ill-advised state interference. She wants to keep morale high. She has led the principals’ rebellion against the state evaluation plan. In this post, she reviews the evaluation plan that John King, our state commissioner of education (who has minimal experience as a teacher or a principal) imposed on the New York City public schools:
Recently Commissioner John King imposed a high stakes evaluation plan on New York City teachers. When you look at the plan, you see that the scoring bands for the first two categories, (student growth based on test scores and other achievement measures), are dramatically different from those used this year to evaluate all of NYS teachers with APPR evaluation plans. For example, this year’s scoring band range for Ineffective is 0-2 in the first two categories. Yet NYC teachers will have an Ineffective range of 0-12 in the first two. Likewise, this year Effective starts at 9, but for NYC teachers it will start at 15.
Why? Because the score band that is being used for our APPR scores has serious problems that cannot be addressed through negotiations. For example, if you get the rating of ‘developing’ in all three categories and the scores are on the low end of developing, you will be rated INEFFECTIVE overall.
Here is the arithmetic: 3 + 3 + 58 = 64
Because word problems are all the rage with the common core, let me turn it into a word problem: Developing + Developing + Developing = Ineffective
The 3s come right off the 3012C score band. So where does the 58 come from? Teacher unions negotiate the final 60 points, known as “other points”. So let’s say they negotiated 60 points for highly effective. And they negotiated a plan so that all effective teachers get 59 points. That would leave 58 points for developing teachers, and 0-57 points for ineffective. Bizarre, but the best you could do.
Once again…..
3+ 3 + 58 = 64, D+D+ D = IE because 64 means you are Ineffective.
Now, I wrote about these ridiculous and very unfair bands in February of 2012. But Mr. Leo Casey, then of the UFT, took me to task. And he took Diane Ravitch to task for supporting me. He said that I did not understand. From that EdWize blog…
“Is it really necessary to note that teacher union leaders with substantial experience in collective bargaining know how to do simple math, and would not agree in collective bargaining to scoring bands for teacher performance that would produce such an incongruous and unfair result?”
Well, Mr. Casey, take a look at the plans that have been negotiated around New York State, and do the simple math in all of the plans. Diane and I will be happy to accept your apology.
Despite the fact that this problem is known to SED, they have yet to honestly address it or speak about it. What is the right thing to do? Have this year’s APPR scores not count, and certainly not have them shared with parents. Instead they are hiding their math mistake.
And now we have the Commissioner’s NYC fix. Yes, it fixes the D+D+D= IE. But he solved a problem with a problem. Here are the new bands below.
Commissioner Imposed Cut Scores for New York City
| Growth or ComparableMeasures | Locally-selected Measures of growth orachievement | Other Measures of Effectiveness(60 points) | Overall CompositeScore | ||
| Ineffective | 0-12 | 0-12 | 0-38 | 0-64 | |
| Developing | 13-14 | 13-14 | 39-44 | 65-74 | |
| Effective | 15-17 | 15-17 | 45-54 | 75-90 | |
| Highly Effective | 18-20 | 18-20 | 55-60 | 91-100 |
Notice how the “points” shift over to the Ineffective rows… So let’s run some scenarios. A teacher gets 12 points in growth, 12 in the locally selected measures and their principal is very impressed with their teaching and professionalism and gives them 60/60 points in other measures. WOW! 84 points! That is an effective teacher. Umm, not so fast. Both the NYC plan and the law say that if your scores are in the Ineffective range in the first two columns you must be Ineffective overall. In this case, 84 = Ineffective.
But suppose you get 12 + 13 + 40 = 65. You are a Developing teacher.
Yes, in this score band, the arithmetic is quite creative….
84 can be < 65 in a world where test scores must trump all.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
There will be nobody left to teach except for a few suck ups with incompetent administrators. What a disaster and the union agreed to this? Where’s the table for evaluating administrators including King?
well put Linda !
Lets remember that the latest UFT election less than 20% of the rank and file voted at all to determine union leadership. The majority of the votes came from retirees-that is NYC union leadership for the next 3 years because most of the rank and file is disgusted with the union/the doe/the mandates-average Joe or Jane teacher does not bother with politics because they do not feel their vote will change anything. Any agreement made by this union leadership truly only represents what less than 20% of al, the nyc teachers voted for. APATHY is running rampant in NYC and this is the result.
Thank you, Carol, for giving me some insight NYC’s evaluation plan as it appears to be impossible to get any clarification from the UFT. When I ask, I get mild annoyance and a promise that I will find out in September. I can’t even imagine how many of us will be rated ineffective with this equation. And the UFT spins this like it is a good thing. It just makes me sick.
The union has been compromised in New York as in California. Teachers, we are out there on our own. Better to take your union dues and employ an attorney to watch your back, at least you’ll have some legal coverage.
Agreed, drleopold. The union leadership looked great saying no to Bloomberg back in January. Then, puzzlingly, agreed to let John King be the arbiter of the teacher evaluations.
Mulgrew – “We’ve seen the kinds of plans the state has approved and we are comfortable with them because they are about helping teachers help kids”.
Go figure.
I think a better question for Mr. Casey (being formerly UFT) would be: Why would union leaders with “substantial experience in collective bargaining” sign their members onto such a potentially dangerous, possibly career killing, giant question mark? Appearing cooperative while digging the grave makes half-hearted attempts to fight back out of the grave less than credit-worthy.
Principals and teachers really need to start not missing any opportunity to call their “leaders” out on this utter nonsense. Kudos to Carol Burris!
At yesterday’s faculty meeting our principal said, “All of you start out in this plan as INEFFECTIVE. You must now begin to prove yourself EFFECTIVE, starting with your first observation.” (Sounds like a line straight out of Glengarry Glen Ross.)
Under this plan the burden of proof is now on us. Even the appeals plan features a ‘guilty until proven innocent” motif. After two years of ineffective a teacher is given an appeal where the burden of proof is on the educator to prove himself EFFECTIVE.
So now we are all beginning teachers who must prove ourselves again.
The rating system also abolishes tenure and seniority. Rookies and veterans are all equal.
Each time I read about any new plan to evaluate teachers, they never iseem to include ways they can be used as feedback to help teachers grow. Most seem to be just a club to bash the careers of teachers young and old.
When teachers young and old get rated ineffective next year due to this system, I will ask them if they bothered to vote in the UFT election. If they say no, I will not have as much sympathy for them because these are the same people who when asked the to vote for Julie Canaugh as UFT president, they said “I don’t have time for politics, I don’t want to get involved!” As a union membership we reap what we sow. If we allow others to determined our fate without speaking up for ourselves, then this is what happens. Again I state, LESS THAN 20% of the rank and file even bothered to return their voting ballots, the majority vote came from retirees, many of whom don’t even live in NYC or NYS anymore. That is like European citizens determine the election a presidential candidate (regardless of competency) , because once upon a time they lived in America.
Please count me in as an active UFT member who voted against the UNITY caucus.
I agree that there is a strong element of apathy among the rank and file. In that respect, I have to say that I agree with your “…reap what ye sow” analogy. But there’s much more involved here, ime.
I’ve been speaking with many of my colleagues about distrust in our AFT and UFT leadership and our need for change since long before the election. Here’s what I’ve seen:
1) Nobody was even aware of an option other than UNITY. I mean, “NOBODY”. And they were suspicious of the other caucuses.
2) All of the apathetic teachers were those with many years of service. Not all are apathetic.
3) The vast majority of teachers in our school are young with little service time. They’re so busy trying to meet the standards (coming in early, working through their lunches, preps, working overtime and at home) that they said they really didn’t have the time to take a “conspiracy theory” seriously. They, and even those with up to 10 years tenure thought I was being paranoid. Even when I’d show them literature that would show otherwise (much of which they dismiss before even reading). Basically: they were overloaded and wanted to put their trust in their union and figured that Mulgrew would win, so it was no big deal whether they voted or not. They couldn’t believe that the union would ever sell them out. Too busy and not enough experience in life to know just how bad things can really get if you don’t keep your eyes and ears open.
3) Some (surprising number, actually) of the younger teachers don’t see the value of our union. They take the company line, saying that all the union did was protect bad teachers. As long as you work hard, you’ll have a job, regardless of whether there’s a union or not.
4) Many of the younger teachers (and tenured for that matter) expressed fear of retaliation from the admins if they openly showed allegiance towards the union. They did not want to lose their jobs.
So, from what I’ve seen, there’s more involved than just apathy. I’ve been approached by a number of teachers since the announcement of the new evaluation system. They’re incredulous. “You were RIGHT! How could this happen?”. I’m not very happy about being right, to tell you the truth. I’m still hoping something will happen that will turn this around.
Could it be that facts don’t matter to these people; that the only thing that matters is what one can be
induced to believe?
Had Julie won – what would have changed exactly. Almost all of this was set in place way before she would’ve taken office – would she have bargained a miracle plan with Bloomberg? We are faced with this next year and would have whether Julie won or not.
It is incredulous though that Mulgrew has said that this somehow strengthens teacher protections. The evaluations seem as arbitary as ever, they can only appeal 13% of them, and only on the grounds of harassment, and a teacher can be fired after 2 years in a system with shifting goalposts in the exams, shifting goalposts for school evaluations, and shifting goalposts in the curriculum we deliver and the standards they’re guided by, and, oh yes, shifting tests, including those wonderful field questions.
Just because there are 22 points on a rubric, doesn’t mean an administrator will fairly judge all 22 of them. They can look at what result they want to give the teacher, and assign points accordingly – every lesson has holes in it if you look hard enough – a student that wasn’t engaged, a lesson that didn’t have enough things for multiple types of learners, that didn’t adequately meet every single Special Education student in the room despite intensive planning. Sometimes they can make things up – if they say students weren’t engaged at a particular point that didn’t require formative assessment every step of the way, how is a teacher to “prove” otherwise?
Similarly, they can stack the deck with “repeaters” or “long term absentees” or high amounts of high need special education students. Students that are much harder to engage, need much more intensive work, and can have higher failure rates despite all that work through no fault of the teacher – it’s hard to bat 100.
And now they can do all 22 of those points in 15 minute drive-by evaluations because the MET study said so.
This is a tragedy. Thank you Carol for fighting a battle that isn’t entirely yours.
You have to wonder what planet Mulgrew is on. In the UFT New York Teacher he spins this as a victory for the union. He cites the 22 chores as a UFT coup. He claims Tweed wanted to limit the points to two or three, allegedly the most difficult tasks. But thanks to our union leader we now have 22 points of light so we allegedly can show more of the wonderful things we do.
It’s also thanks to Mulgrew that we have the so called RELICS; tons of useless paper work we have to turn in to support our lessons.
Another great “Victory” he cites is being able to choose if we want six short fifteen minute observations (pop-ins); or one full period obs and three shorties. WOW! That;s like saying you have a choice of the firing squad or lethal injection.
What sort of union leadership is this? Is Mulgrew management light?
It looks like 0 to 64 is like a D when we grade students, and 65-74 is like a C (developing), and 75-90, roughly C through A- is effective, and 91-100 like an A- meaning highly effective. Wouldn’t it be simpler to just say D or below=ineffective, C- to C+=developing, B- to A-=effective, and A- to A= highly effective. Then administration could fire the D’s after two or three years of no improvement, and keep the rest. A bit like Jack Welch’s practice of firing the bottom 10% each year at General Electric. The kicker is that the student test components have to be at 15 for each one in order to make effective. For lots of classrooms that is just not going to happen, no matter how brilliant a teacher is.
I was reading in the NYTimes this morning that 90% of french high school students pass their baccalaureates. I still think direct testing of teachers before they start teaching would weed out the bottom ten percent who may have slipped through their teacher preparation programs would be better than these indirect measures based on student learning. Of course, with the French students, they only have to sit the bac once in their life times. So a “teaching” bac would have to test all teachers the first year, and then only new teachers the second.
“Pop-ins” are inherently disruptive. Why not two hour-long visits? Or even better, why not video monitoring of all teachers all the time. That what the principal, aka Bigg Bubba, can just switch from channel to channel to see what’s going on in her building at any given time. Let’s call that “security tape” monitoring. Technology to the rescue. My church broadcasts its services over the web every Sunday, start to finish. Why not for schools? Then parents too, could look in on their kid’s classroom anytime during the day.
God in the ceiling, sort of concept. All Seeing. It’s a new entrepreneurial idea. I give it away for free. Here’s even a name: OMNOPTICON.
“…I still think direct testing of teachers before they start teaching would weed out the bottom ten percent who may have slipped through their teacher preparation programs would be better than these indirect measures based on student learning…”
Couldn’t agree more. Start at the source.
My pleasure.they have created such a complicated system that eyes glaze over and people give up.But you cannot. That is what they are hoping for. I try to make the big, overarching problems clear. If any teacher or principal gets 3 and. 3, please let me know through this blog or other channels. You should know by summer’s end if not before.
The last I saw and heard the state of NC is following this same method. You could be rated “Distinguished” in all categories, but if growth on standardized tests (via EVAAS) was low, then the teacher could be rated at the lowest level jeopardizing their job if this rating continued over three years.
Test scores rule, real measures drool.
Well NC is more generous than NY. In NY you get two years….
Can you point me to the exact law that states a teacher in NY who gets an ineffective in the first two columns is automatically deemed ineffective regardless of the 60% teaching measures component.
As tough as it is on teachers, it’s just as tough on the evaluators (admins). So much time spent observing, keeping notes, etc. Fifteen minutes to evaluate whether 22 points were prepared for in the planning and implementation of the lesson plan is a lot to ask of an evaluator. It’s going to make it that much more difficult to fulfill the other aspects of their jobs.
This overwhelming work load concerns me. I can easily see a pragmatic evaluator deciding, beforehand, just who is going to get the more thorough evaluation and who will be allowed to “slide” with a quick scoring that was pretty much decided upon, beforehand.
The argument that favors this scenario will state that, FINALLY we have a means of shedding the dead wood. The truly “bad” teachers who have hidden for so long behind the shield of tenure.
The argument against this scenario will state that an administrator can (and will) choose anyone that he or she sees fit to get rid of, regardless of merit.
Hence, the “arbitrary” nature of the evaluations. As for means of shedding “dead wood” – it could also be that this will give a real means by which to get rid of “overpaid” teachers via a contrived form of ageism.
A real problem with this, is that pensions were given as a form of deferred income – teachers accepted pensions IN LIEU of higher compensation. This is a method that allows teachers to make less money. By deferring compensation, to be fired before they can truly cash in on that choice, a municipality can truly maximize its gain from the teachers while minimizing their expenditure – at the expense of their work force.
This will have the unfortunate blowback of making people reconsider the teaching profession whether it’s their calling or not. Who wants to enter a position where they make little (let’s not get into “meritless” pay), can go 20 years in the system, and be fired at a time before they’re ready to retire, but that they’re too involved in the profession to do anything else, but will be “too expensive” to hire and have a black mark against them. Those aren’t minor things to consider.
That’s right. Not a minor thing. That’s WHY all pensions must be defined contribution pensions rather than defined benefit. That way, if a teacher is fired mid-career, he can take his pension with him, as fully vested. The school districts must pay UP FRONT for their pension costs.
Definitely takes it a step further…doesn’t it?
Insidious.
Excellent point, Harlan. This is twice I’ve agreed with you…and in the same thread, no less, lol.
Actually, it’s no laughing matter at all. It’s hard not to see the ramifications, here.
This is so very frustrating. I have been teaching for 35 years and have never seen such hatred and vitriol as now. I work hard as do many others. Why are we being villified? It’s union busting. The “powers that be” want Deltas not Alphas in their work force. I’m hoping once King Bloomie is out of office NYC officials will come to their senses and learn how to work with educators and parents, not against them. Hey, Maybe Mulgrew has the same deal in place that Randi had and that’s why he’s so very ineffective! And yes. I did vote. Always do. But not for this band of circus clowns. (No offense to circus clowns intended!)