This is a letter from Arthur Goldstein to his colleagues at Francis Lewis High School in Queens, New York. Arthur is chapter chair of his school, where he teaches English language learners. He also had a terrific blog called NYC Educator.
This is what he told the staff about the new teacher evaluation system:
Dear colleagues:
Today our Measures of Student Learning Committee met to decide precisely how thoroughly invalid junk science measures will be used to rate teachers in Francis Lewis High School. We had several choices. We based our choices on the information available to us, which was very little.
Our first choice was whether to use goal or growth measures. We were told that goal measures entailed inventing tests or projects. These tests or projects would then be sent to the insane ideologues at the NYC Department of Education who would set goals. The goals could have been different for individual students, which could mean ringing 170 different bells.
Were you to disagree with the goals set by the DOE, you would have the option of submitting reasons and appealing to the principal, who would either deny your appeal or submit your reasons and appeal to the DOE for reconsideration.
Given the tremendous amount of work we have ahead of us this year, we opted for growth models, although we have little or no idea how they will be calculated. For state measures, some were mandated to reflect individual classes of teachers. In those cases, we opted to have department results reflect the local measures. In other words, your department Regents results could be the local measures. This would reflect not only the exams in areas you teach, but those given by your entire department. For example, if you teach algebra, the results in geometry and trigonometry will also be part of your local measures.
We aimed, in general, to make measures as broad as possible. Wherever possible, we tried to avoid competition between teachers and groups of teachers. We do not want teachers to feel they would be hurting themselves by, for example, tutoring students of their colleagues.
If there was a state exam and individual class results were not mandated, your department results were your growth measure. In those cases, we opted to have the local measure be your department results. In this system, if the state measure was also department results, local growth would be measured by the lowest third of your department results. Because there is no logic, rhyme or reason to this system, we were prohibited from using the same standard twice.
If your subject, like music, art, or physical education, does not have a state assessment, your evaluation would be based on schoolwide state tests. Your local evaluation would be based on the lowest third of schoolwide state tests.
We did not have the option of evaluating what teachers actually do, as the geniuses in Albany and DC, many of whom send their children to private schools where this nonsense does not apply, appear to have determined that teachers teach tests rather than students.
We will discuss this further when we meet on Tuesday and Wednesday. I’m afraid I have no more details than these on this system. However, we will revisit it next year, by which time we’ll hopefully have a better idea on what does and does not work in our school.
Let me be clear—I hate this system and virtually everything about it. But as our union leadership had a hand in writing the law imposing this on us, and as John King had carte blanche to impose pretty much whatever reformy nonsense he saw fit, we are stuck with it.
We will make the best of it, and work to bring sanity in education back to our city and state soon. Sadly, that won’t be happening this year.
Best regards,
Arthur
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This sounds like LCFF in California. No one knows what is going on and it is being done illegally as I busted both CDE and Wested at the hearing in Bakersfield and suddenly the comment period which was supposed to end at noon that day was made indefinate. We are a lawless and unconcerned with facts society. This is the basic problem.
On this note, I am the Principal of both an Elementary School and a Middle School (under one roof). For the Growth Score portion of the APPR, I was deemed “ineffective” (2 points) at the Elementary School and for the Middle School I was deemed “effective” (14 points). Does that make any sense?
About as much sense as my ratings.
I have a pass rate on our state tests of 55% one period…pretty sorry as compared to the rest of the state.
The next period, 100% pass, over 80% exceed (pass +). Way above the rest of the state.
What do I do differently? Which excellent strategies do I employ one period but not the other?
Ha.
What makes this difference?
One period is ELL (VERY recent immigrants) the other is gifted.
How crazy! Now try this one on… in Maryland students will be taught under Common Core curriculum this year but tested on the old MD State Assessment. So there will surely be material that has not been covered. Wow, doesn’t make much sense!
We are a country which has gone insane. We are about to start another war this time with a supposed democrat as president just like the illegal Iraq war without real evidence just believe us. You mean the same people who have never figured out how to give real intelligence?
So, I ask, what is the difference with education? Do you see any? After all, it is all being run by the same group of sociopaths. None of this makes any sense. No one knows what they are doing while they make major changes and they say trust us. Why, I ask, should we trust you? What is the basis for that trust? Oh, you mean, I am good now and you offer no proof of such, right?
This is why both of you have this problem.
This evaluation system is only “insane” if you think the actual purpose is to evaluate teachers. Once you understand that the intent is to undermine public education to make it ripe for plucking, then this system makes perfect sense. One of the necessary ingredients to get buy-in for privatization is to demonstrate that teachers are incompetent.
Yes, you are correct.
Right on!
Absolutely. Lots of “indicators” that this is meant to break our educational system rather than improve it. Madison, CT – their study confirmed that using standardized test scores not only is not proven to work, but can have the opposite effect of hurting a school.
There are other ways the system is breaking public education right now. In districts with very weak unions there is the strategy of claiming too “broke” for COLA or teacher salaries while spending heaps of money on testing, testing publications and consultants. In fact, now they are even saving money on “consultants” by forcing many teachers at once to attend a common core workshop and then they are deemed “expert” and must pass on their “expertise” onto fellow teachers at their schools. The blind lead the blind and get top-down directives from the blind. Not good! Meanwhile this county I refer to (and others) has a union that allows 4 years to go by without any cost of living increase and 5 years without lane changes for education experience or years of service. The attrition rate in my county this year .. lost 600 teachers. The teachers hired for the start of this year are all new teachers (am guessing a lot are TFA too). So the county saves lots of money… fewer teachers leaving at retirement and newer teachers with lower salaries …. and the county dangles a new contract that they deem “good”… 2 percent cola (after YEARS without) and a HALF STEP salary increase after years without beginning in January … after YEARS of nothing! The strategy? Given union complicity teachers who cannot pay back student loans or have kids going to college.. are LEAVING in droves. For the county it is pure win because it is not about the kids. It is about economics and bottom line. And.. icing on the cake… with all the new teachers and the common core coming in, students will fail on the tests and even more teachers can be fired. Ughhhhhhh
Absolutely! Well said.
It won’t be a “pure win” for this country when undereducated and ill-prepared children enter adulthood.
This is not teacher evaluation. This is teacher eradication.
This is what I’d like to see:
Teachers would agree to a growth model but would insist that it be done validly. This would require a psychologist to visit each classroom in the fall and find the instructional level of each child. Of course the testing would have to be done individually. Then this same person would have to visit the classroom throughout the year to see how each child is progressing. She’s have to be able to differentiate between school and home learning.
Too expensive? Oh well.
I feel certain that the courts will come to the rescue of teachers sooner or later. In the meantime each teacher should keep a portfolio for every child, showing his progress. Parents, other teachers and administrators should be witnesses to the completion of the tests and assignments that go into each portfolio. Good luck, teachers!
The teacher and the psychologist could then sit down together (highly impractical but necessary) and guess what growth can be expected and how growth would be measured for each child.
It reminds me of what the Nazis did in Auschwitz. Every month they would select strong looking Jews to work for them unloading the bags, shaving hair, and moving bodies into the crematoria. They would give these people hope and lead them to believe that they would survive, but they didn’t. It was just a game. After a month or so, those Jews would be gassed as well, and then new people would be selected to take their place.
This is what teaching will be, and it would probably be more effective for all teachers to “strike” or “quit” until the laws changed. Those in Auschwitz should have fought instead of hoping for something that would never come. Wouldn’t it be better for all teachers to quit at the same time? You are going to get “killed” anyway. Why not take control of when it happens? Don’t cower down to these fascists. Leave the job with dignity! Let those businessmen go wade into the trenches and try teaching. There has to be a better way to make a living than this.
“America has entered one of its periods of historical madness, but this is the worst I can remember: worse than McCarthyism, worse than the Bay of Pigs and in the long term potentially more disastrous than the Vietnam War.”
– John le Carré
John, what is the context of this quote? Thank you.
In the year leading up to the Common Core implementation, our district’s professional development consisted of a lecture room full of teachers listening to a person read through the ELA and Math Common Core Standards. I spent that year searching for useful information that would help my colleagues and I understand and implement the standards. At that time, the NYSED website directed me to websites of other states who were further ahead in “unpacking” (love that new buzz word ) the Common Core Standards. Utah, North Carolina, Arizona…. thank you for the information NYS could not provide. NYSED, after all, needed to spend most of their energy securing baseline data and preparing to assess how well math and ELA teachers would implement the CCS.
On to the year of implementation…principals came in our class and evaluated our teaching ( important)…teachers spent hours filling brag books, I mean evidence binders, with pages of information these overworked administrators could read from cover to cover so they would be able to evaluate each teacher’s level of professionalism. And teachers administered tools to measure growth and achievement. Sorry, NYS, but this piece of APPR is destined to fail ( and create a slew of lawsuits). A super secret NYS ELA Assessment is not the same tool as a teacher-produced final exam. How do you equate growth and achievement in science to growth and achievement in art to growth and achievement in Chinese to growth and achievement in adaptive PE? You can’t and you shouldn’t.
Utah’s implementation is a disaster, so I’m not sure I’d thank us….
The “brag book” (evidence binder) requirement is the most professionally insulting aspect of APPR here in NY. Teachers are being forced to use valuable time to maintain a written log of
phone calls and emails, time spent sharing ideas with colleagues,
instances where they extinguished negative comments made by other teachers, and any other act they can think of that demonstrates their professionalism.
We have 10 to 12 hours of actual free time, per week, outside of instructional hours. Wasting any of this valuable time to maintain evidence folders is completely counter productive. What a joke,
Personally I refuse to lower myself; I now line the bottom of my bird cage with the Marzano rubric.
Good for you. As in medicine these days. Everything must be documented.
If teaching a course that has no formal state exams (Regents/CCSS/Grade 8 science), teachers have to write or construct their own pre (formative) and post (summative) tests. Even in art, music, tech, and phys-ed – classes that are primarily physical skills classes.
The formative exams in every subject have become a laughing stock to students. Many fill out scantron bubble cards without even looking at the pre-test. Some create their own “art” using dot patterns. The validity of these pre-tests is non-existent.
An even bigger joke is the 20 point band system used to earn HEIDI scores.
I’m a High School Librarian. My position has been shown to bring up the scores for an entire school. However, I am going to apparently be measured on something like this where I will be judged against the lowest third of students’ progress (presumably in math and english – for the entire school) and, I’d be measured against all grades and all subjects for Social Studies, English, Math, and all Sciences.
I am a supportive pedagogical position concerned with projects and resourcing classrooms for crissakes. I can make things better but I can’t raise overnight all of the scores for all students, especially our lowest third, all in one year, based on tests no one has seen (or will see), based on curriculum that’s completely brand new and that I haven’t had time to digest for even one area, and is then incorporated to an evaluation system that I have no experience in using to improve my teaching.
Staring at this evaluation system where the 40% that I can be fired on, is almost completely out of my control, I am now trying to leave teaching. I’ve had it. I can’t take it, I can’t cut it anymore. I work hard, I care about our students. I’ve always had satisfactory evaluations. I always got the accolades of my colleagues for the grants, value added programming, and depth of knowledge I bring to the school.
I do not know how I can plan to survive this system. It feels like the deck is stacked, and I don’t see how I can take control of my own position to bring quality education to children. We’re going to evaluate art teachers based on math scores (and me for that matter though I have more direct impact in that area than they do).
It means that all of a sudden all classes are going to have to gear themselves towards reading, writing, and math. It seems like that would take the joy out of music class if they’re doing excessive math rather than focusing on learning to play instruments or sing. PE can be focused on chemistry related topics and nutrition rather than students learning about fair play and loving being physically active.
I’m done. I hope I survive after this school year – I’m planning an exit path. Let TFA have the profession. Knowing what I’d have to do to really make a difference using this information and how it will be used against me, I’m placed in a position where I have to support programs I don’t believe in because they will bring up scores but not improve education, or, I do what I know is right, and hope for myself and my family that my school ends up improving in the immediate short term (as in, within 2 years).
I can’t risk my family’s well being on this. I just can’t.
Oh Arthur and Diane, when is this insanity going to stop? The fact remains that the bulk of the rank and file that will be starting school this Tuesday in NYC have not an inkling of a clue to any specifics of this evaluation. They will feel as if a tank ran over them. Their union leaders in UNITY have done little to nothing to help them truly understand all this as well. Now I have heard some say that is because the Union doesn’t fully understand it themselves. Shame on them if this is the case for it is in fact the union (UNITY) that helped give birth to all this insanity.
For what it is worth, no one understands the teacher evaluation plan. No one. Not the state. Not the Regents. Not the union. Not the experts. It is dancing in the dark.
Then Da Vinci was right. “”The supreme misfortune is when theory outstrips performance.” Because depending on some of the choices NYC schools will have to make, good teachers may suffer just because they are in a low performing school while poor teachers may shine because they are in high performing schools. The whole thing sounds like “luck of the draw” to me. It’s either that or we have entered a dystopian novel where the present will suffer only to hopefully let the future try to understand our mistakes. The problem is that real and honest people are involved here. Honest, hard working teachers with mortgages and family. Honest and hard working teachers with rents to pay. Honest and hard working teachers who dreamed of making a difference who now have loans. Honest and hard working teachers with plans to grow a family. Your reply confirms the absolute absurdity of the whole thing. If no one understands it, then how in the world did it come to be? Is everyone who participated in this confusing mess idiots? As a native New Yorker I can only ask: what neighborhoods did these people grow up in? Who raised these people?
Are they evaluating librarians based on test scores? This is news to me. I actually know English teachers who want to become librarians to escape being judged on test scores, etc. Is this really happening? Very bizarre. Are they going to judge the nurses based on sick days? The football coaches based on wins? What will they think of next?
Yes, it is happening, I assure you it is.
The only “light in the dark” for librarians is a slim possibility that under “guidance documents” that they released, anyone who is not a teacher of record but a pedagogue, does not need to be evaluated. However, the letter of the law says they do – and no one has said that librarians are immune as they are hired and paid as pedagogues.
However, even if that’s the case, your teachers who are planning on becoming librarians should pursue something else.
We’re ALSO fighting on that the City has requested a variance (otherwise known as a waiver) from the law requiring a librarian in secondary schools under a proposal for “equivalent library services” – http://blogs.wsj.com/metropolis/2013/08/21/city-librarians-push-back-to-protect-jobs/
If we don’t get killed under evaluation, we may get killed under the threat that principals can get rid of us at any time since who will want to hire a tenured librarian when you don’t have to and it may make it hard for you to remove them (though excessing would then be very easy to do).
Here in NY, all 8th grade science teachers are being required to use the Intermediate Level Science exam administered in May (lab) and June (written) as their summative state exam. This test has been administered since 2001 and is, get this, a THREE YEAR
CUMMULATIVE test covering science instruction in grades 6 to 8. To top it off, at the Questar scoring center, many of test raters were not even science certified.
Interesting article in the Guardian: Poverty saps mental capacity to deal with complex problems, reducing the IQ of persons worried about finances by as much as13 points. Wonder what that does to kids in poverty taking meaningless tests, and in turn the educators who will be judged by the test scores? Link: http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/aug/29/poverty-mental-capacity-complex-tasks
What dis-ingenuity for self-identified reformers to continue to chirp that teacher evaluation by test scores is the civil rights issue of our time.
I’m a simple person Diane, but has anyone on earth asked the creators of this evaluation how they would feel to have a good portion of their own evaluation based on how well the man or woman they share a similar occupation with but is independent of him or her would make them feel. It seems that an honest answer from King, Union leaders as well as politicians etc. would yield a common sense answer that will show just how absurd this all is. Why has no one asked that specific question?
Concerned, what makes. You think that any of this evaluation is connected to common sense? Or that you could get a straight answer by asking a direct question?
Beware of the new teacher evaluation systems that tie student scores to teacher employability, especially with standardized tests scores. Read all six steps to potentially getting slammed in the reformy evaluation systems:
http://thetruthoneducationreform.blogspot.com/2013/05/getting-slammed-six-easiest-breeziest.html?view=snapshot
If the policy-makers were merely diametrically opposed in argument to what we know to be the truth, then the differences could be overcome. But the conflict is not really intellectual, though it is couched in such language. The conflict is based upon and fueled by their absolute malevolence, and no amount of dialogue, no matter how well-crafted and researched, will alter anything. They have no good-will and we are wasting ourselves in an effort to penetrate their willful ignorance. Still, it is a wasteful endeavor that must be undertaken for the record.
The APPR in NY will NOT survive in a court of law. As I’ve posted elsewhere, many administrators are privately referring to this mess as, “No Attorney Left Unemployed”
I cannot make this stuff up…our school told us that we will evaluate foreign language teachers based on their students’ performance on the ENGLISH regents.
Goldstein’s evaluation scheme sounds like a bunch of mental masturbation to me.
I am sick to my stomach over this APPR plan in NY. I just received my score, and I am two points away from being “effective” as a teacher. I scored 58/60 on my instructional practices which is effective. I scored effective on my local measurement, and I scored developing on my state measurement which was the ELA 7th grade exam. My students, as well as many others, tanked on the exam, so because of that, I am now a teacher who has to have an improvement plan. What should my plan include? More test prep? Teaching kids how to bubble in circles? This whole plan is absurd. I know I make a difference in children’s lives. This testing obsession is ruining education, our children, and our teachers. I come in early, leave late, work at home, volunteer for a million things, and yet am now deemed developing by some politically driven evaluation plan. Cuomo should come in and do what I do on a daily basis. He would get eaten alive. I’m actually questioning whether I can teach for the next 20 years. It’s all I’ve ever wanted to do, but this APPR garbage is effectively forcing out some of the best teachers I’ve worked with. I may be next.
Jen, we who give standardized tests are in the same boat.
LISTEN to me! I know there is something at least pro-active you can do. Contact Carol Burris or Sean Feeney of New York Principals. They are collecting data and anecdotal data of teachers in NY State who have just received their evlauations for the first time.
Yours is a CLASSIC TEXTBOOK example of the hideous lies and injustices of this new junk science system. Write down your situation and literally send it to John King, every member of the Board of Regents, and Merryl Tisch. Send it to EVERY newppaper, local and national, hardcopy and online. Send it to your local and even the stinky NYSUT union.
Carol and Sean can be reached at:
burriscarol@gmail.com
scfeeney@newyorkprincipals.org
I am getting my evaluation results this Tuesday, and I would not at all be surprised if I face this same situation as you.
DON’t despair!!!!!!
If you want, I will personally e-mail Sean as well to let him know that he may be receiving an e-mail from you. I’m sure if you want to submit it anonymously to him, he would not mind that either.
Hang in there. Most of us are in the same boat.
Thanks so much Robert. I will email them both. The ELA teacher I work also received the same scores. She has been teaching for 17 years, and this information has effectively caused her to decide she will be leaving the profession in a couple months. She is a phenomenal teacher. Just in my building, which is 7th and 8th, over 7 people are being put on a TIPS plan. I could go on for hours about all of this, but I will try to put together a cohesive statement for Carol and Sean. Thanks again.
I agree with the one who said we all (the entire country) should have gone on strike when this was first implemented. Are we a nation of the educated or of dumb sheep?
Tom,
Ditto for the entire country, which is in critical need of a labor movement and major strikes and boycotts to bring back fiscal and social justice. Otherwise, we will morph more strongly into Edwardian England . . . .
Most in the U.S. so far are “Sheep going to the slaughter.” They had better wake up. History is here again at the door if we do not learn from it.
The Assistant Director of Technology (yes, that’s right, assistant…there’s money for an assistant director of technology) sent an email on the use of social media. We were told that political blogging is an extension of our classrooms. Can things get any more Orwellian? No one even said, “Boo” about this email. Before we received our NY state report cards, our principal instructed us, “Not to share this information with your colleagues, it’s confidential.” What she was reallynsaying is, “We don’t want you to know how many of you will be on TIPS because then you’ll all get together and make trouble for the administration.” That’s EXACTLY what we should be doing!