Randi, Dennis, I have a B.S. in Biology from UCLA and have
a M.S. from Texas A&M University. I decided to go into
public school teaching to share my love of science with children .
However, ever since I entered the public schhols in NYS, I have
been placed in the most economically challenged school districts
(South Bronx and now Newburgh NY). My evaluations based upon
observations have been, so far, glowing over the fifteen years I
have been teaching Chemistry and Living Environment, but my
students performance is dismal (especially in Chemistry) because
they either simply don’t care or they were placed in a course that
was above their academic ability. I also feel that my
administrators are giving me the most behaviorally difficult and
academically challenged students and with the new evaluation taking
effect, my tenure will be threatened. At the same time, my district
is giving the honors students to novice teachers straight out of
college or those with the inside connections despite seniority. As
a result, I am very frightened that in two years, I will be deemed
ineffective and my employment threatened. I am 55 years old with
virtually no further prospects for future employment. I strongly
feel that this is all by design to defame high salary teachers and
dismiss them. I told my colleagues when this all was mandated that
we have lost the protection that tenure was supposed to protect,
namely, the firing of teachers that aren’t part of the “good old
boys club” which is patently obvious in my district-those teachers
who went through the district or are married into it (or are lower
in the salary scale) are given the best students and those that are
not of the former are given the worst students. Is there any
recourse I have? I am convinced that the local, state and national
unions will only afford one a token gesture of support to teachers
in my plight for the sake of politics. Can you help a teacher put
out to pasture too soon?
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That is such a tough question. I think every working teacher in NYC who’s paying attention is thinking something similar. I don’t think this system has anything to do with quality. It has to do with firing teachers, and it’s likely people will be hit at random. It sounds like this teacher has got a particularly tough program, and it will depend what sort of plan they have in Newburgh. Is this teacher even being measured by the test scores of his or her students, or is there some sort of building-wide or department-wide plan?
Here in NYC, it’s largely a question of which apples are to be compared with which oranges, and nothing seems to make any sense at all. It’s an awkward thing, to be a teacher working under such a random and nonsensical system.
Sadly, the best I can say to this teacher is this–you are certainly not alone.
I understand exactly what you are feeling. Even though I teach elementary, the boundaries for my school pretty much set us up for failure. We are not a neighbor hood school, with almost 80% of our students bussed in. They all come from the worst poverty ridden neighborhoods around. There are immigrants and refugees, so our ESL population is the majority. I hate the idea of being deemed ineffective as well, when I have students who don’t speak English, students with mental health issues (which is on the rise), so many SpEd students, high mobility rate as well as chronic absenteeism.
But I want to comment on something you said about your union. The main reason behind my union, or association, is to protect my due process. That’s it. In our district, we have ‘The Book’ which is our Professional Agreement with district administration. It’s a hard copy booklet that has been in existence for 50 years. Everything in it has been negotiated between our uni-serve directors, a teacher negotiations team, and a team from the district. We are the only district in my state that has one. It keeps administration from doing a lot of stupid things to hurt teachers or take advantage of us. It does not protect our tenure, which is not your typical tenure like most people would understand, outside the education world. Tenure is an implied agreement that you have a teaching position. That’s it. Unfortunate, but still the fact. Unions or Associations (again I speak of mine) are also involved with protect the profession and students; my work environment is a child’s learning environment. Unless it is different with yours, or any other district, unions can only protect that one aspect – due process – unless you have a written, negotiated contract. It is not what people want to hear, but it is reality.
I feel so bad for teachers like this. They went into teaching with good intentions and now the rules are being changed in the middle of their careers. My best hope for them is that the legal system comes to their rescue, and soon.
As for me, I’m so grateful I retired at a time when this craziness was just starting. And I’m proud that I stood up to it (with the “courage” of someone who knew she was going to retire.)
All teachers who are able and ready to retire should fight this nonsense with everything they have. Hopefully they’ll keep in mind the fact that the vast majority of parents are on the side of teachers.
I think the most interesting part of this letter is here:
My evaluations based upon
observations have been, so far, glowing over the fifteen years I
have been teaching Chemistry and Living Environment, but my
students performance is dismal (especially in Chemistry) because
they either simply don’t care or they were placed in a course that
was above their academic ability.
It seems that the teacher is going through the prescribed motions (evaluation by observation), but these have had little impact on the students in the class. In what sense is this teacher teaching if there is little or no learning going on?
Delete
Linda,
Is student learning irrelevant to teaching? That would seem to be the message of your comment, though it is difficult to interpret one word comments.
This skilled person has spent a decade and a half in front of students that, for the most part, have not the interest or ability to learn the material. It seems to me that these classes have been a waste of time for most involved, including the teacher.
Did you note that the teaching assignments were in the most economically challenged regions with the most behaviorally challenged students? We’re talking about a group that on average does not produce glowing test results for a wide variety of reasons. The administrators seem to have realized that this teacher is talented but faced with an extremely difficult task. From what has been reported about these schools, we can assume that the social service support system for these students is seriously lacking. On average, we know that this environment is not going to produce stellar students. Anyone who has taught a challenging group of students knows that test scores will never accurately describe even one of those students. Their hopes and dreams, passions and fears are revealed through means not mastered by bubbles on an answer sheet.
Slow down. Just because the students’ scores are dismal, doesn’t mean “there’s little or no learning going on”. That is a really poisonous accusation, both for vulnerable teachers and for the “score supressor” students they’re “stuck” with.
With a very stressed and needy cohort, effective and even transformational teaching won’t produce the score profile demanded by the bogus average-value-added metrics. That’s why the corporate reformers have to cheat and lie and cherry-pick.
I’m trying to think of some way to encourage this teacher to rise above this unfair attack, and it occurs to me the first step has to be to tell him how very full of it your smug and cowardly attack on him is.
Thank you. I didn’t have the desire or the energy.
I just stamped SPAM to shoo him away.
The teacher does not say dismal scores or argue that e characterization of dismal is incorrect. The teacher provides an explanation based on student inability and disinterest that seem plausible to to me. Do you think there is a lot of learning among students that are disinterested and/or unable to learn the material?
I just wanted to pop in and say “Thank You” for such a good response to the troll. TE really has no interest in public education.
You may be informed as an economist but you are absolutely ignorant when it comes to education.
And I base this on silently observing your comments over time.
You have much credibility discussing most economic themes.
You have no credibility discussing education issues.
Bravo! Standing ovation in my kitchen for you. 🙂
My comment was based entirely on the observations by the teacher that he/she had excellent teaching evaluations based on observation, but “students performance is dismal (especially in Chemistry) because they either simply don’t care or they were placed in a course that was above their academic ability”
I am relying on the teacher’s evaluation of why the students are doing badly, not my own evaluation. Perhaps you disagree about the source of the dismal performance?
Absolutely correct, teaching economist. One of the primary duties of a teacher is to be able to romance his/her students into wanting to learn. Making the subject interesting/relevant is a good place to start. The teacher in this letter is whining because he can’t believe he doesn’t have lifetime employment. Do your job well and you probably will have lifetime employment. If you don’t do your job (well) why should you be allowed to continue to teach? You shouldn’t.
It is much more complex than that and as a retired teacher from Scituate, MA you should know that. Stop manipulating. And you most likely were never evaluated with a large percentage of your evaluation dependent on test scores. Report back to the other thread…many questions were posed to you.
Absolutely incorrect. No teacher has the mandate to “romance” his/her students into wanting to learn.
If a teacher ,or teachers, had the magic touch to positively affect human motivation in all kids, then many of our societal problems would be solved!
And, teachers would be making CEO salaries and CEO’s would be making teacher salaries–or at least should because of the utility of their adding value to society.
Need I continue? I do not mean to be rude.
“One of the primary duties of a teacher is to be able to romance his/her students into wanting to learn.”
We always aspire to that but this cannot be forced; students are autonomous beings, and not every freakin’ kid in the world is going to be in love with chemistry no matter how good the teacher is. Sometimes by the time you reach the kid the year is over and the kid already failed the standardized test the teacher is being evaluated by. Get over yourself and stop imagining school as a simplistic “Stand By Me”-type inspirational tale.
I understand the notion of romancing students into wanting to learn. Lord knows I try. However, it is often a delayed reaction. Sometimes, the romance for learning a subject from a teacher doesn’t kindle until maybe a couple of years later. In fact, hearing years later from former, recalcitrant students who tell you that they later came to value what you taught them is far more gratifying in some ways than those who were appreciative superstars in your classroom. Yet another dimension that VAM flummery does not account for.
Paul,
We need you back in the classroom buddy! Are you making too much at AEI to leave?
Paul Hoss,
Please share your credentials with us. You sound intelligent, and I’d like to understand where you have come from career-wise . . .
One of the primary duties of a teacher is to be able to romance his/her students into wanting to learn. Making the subject interesting/relevant is a good place to start. /end quote
Children have an inborn desire to learn. If that learning is encouraged, they continue to explore their world. Parents, teachers, society can all play a part in whether that child explores their world and their potential.
Do you know what it takes to make a subject interesting? Creativity.
Do you know what it takes to be creative? The Arts. Music. Physical expression (exercise, dance, gesture).
But wait….No Child Left a Mind has downplayed creative expression as it cannot be tested, tested, tested….
…hmmm…we’ve got a problem here, eh?
Hi teachingeconomist,
If you haven’t already, you might want to do some reading up on the growth measures that NY teachers have as 20-40% of our evaluations under this new system. Elucidating stuff. And remember – under the wording of the NY state evaluation system, a teacher who is rated ineffective based on growth measures must be rated ineffective overall. Meaning there are many instances where growth measures can – in effect – count for 100% of the teacher’s evaluation. Would love to hear your thoughts after perusing the articles. Here you go:
http://www.epi.org/press/news_from_epi_leading_experts_caution_against_reliance_on_test_scores_in_te/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/leading-mathematician-debunks-value-added/2011/05/08/AFb999UG_blog.html
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/diane-ravitch/ravitch-why-teachers-should-ne.html
http://blogs.ajc.com/get-schooled-blog/2012/09/05/new-study-on-value-added-models-student-scores-can-predict-later-teacher-effectiveness/
http://garyrubinstein.teachforus.org/2012/02/26/analyzing-released-nyc-value-added-data-part-1/
Best,
Alex
“It seems that the teacher is going through the prescribed motions (evaluation by observation), but these have had little impact on the students in the class. In what sense is this teacher teaching if there is little or not learning going on?”
There is “little or no learning going on” according to the horribly irrational NY state evaluation system, which imagines teachers have direct control over their students’ performance, and beyond that flawed assumption is absurd in dozens of other respects.
You clearly have no concept of what it is like to teach students who have no interest in academics and have not mastered the necessary prerequisites for a challenging subject like chemistry. Underprivileged students who haven’t mastered basic algebra and study skills and reading skills, and won’t do homework: what alchemy do you suggest he use for those students, O teachingeconomist?
Perhaps the “counseling out” those who don’t perform well early, so as to maintain the illusion of miraculous effectiveness so cherished in charter and private schools?
Your commentary on this blog is predicated on an assumption so ridiculous it’s hard to believe anyone can’t see it for what it is. You would have us believe “great schools” such as Harvard, or University of Chicago, or whatever, and their grade and high school corollaries, are great because of the awesomeness of the instruction, rather than the extreme degree of exclusivity those schools thrive on. As if anyone can go to Harvard Medical School and become a great doctor because Harvard Medical School is so fantastic. Your assertions are predicated on assumptions that absurd.
And furthermore, this is just a fundamentally offensive post. I think some compassion is in order for a teacher trying to help underprivileged kids in NYC learn chemistry, and who is being bashed by a miserably irrational, politically driven evaluation system that no high performing private school would ever dream of inflicting on its teachers.
Jim,
It is the teacher who wrote the letter who characterizes the student’s performance as dismal. Do you have reason to doubt that teacher’s evaluation of his/ her students?
Why continue this back and forth with questions when you so clearly do not want to learn and process information from others? People answer your questions and you completely skip over the response and just pose another question. So why bother? Forget it Jim..it will go on forever and ever….believe me.
How in the world do you teach yourself? It’s just you and your never ending litany of nit picking and always missing the big picture.
I believe I am learning with nearly every posting here, though your single word posts are the most difficult to interpret.
I am concerned though that you think people have answered questions and I have skipped over them. Could you point to one or two answers?
NO! Instead, let’s flip the table.
Tell us what YOU do when teaching economics and a student isn’t paying attention to you, doesn’t understand the concept you are teaching or is unable to earn a passing grade on an assessment.
What does TE do to re-engage this student and set him or her up for success?
Do tell us all how to teach TE…we are all waiting for your advice.
I teach classes of up to 500 students, so I am sure that there are many times a student is not paying attention. I am in the process of flipping the classroom, using as my guiding principle to do in the class the the things that are best done in a group, mostly having conversations about the material and riding those conversations to wherever they lead.
What else would you like to know?
This is an online class or a very large lecture hall?
My online class tops out at about 40. The larger classes are live.
What does live mean? You have 500 people, 1000 eyeballs looking at you in the same room? Breathing with you?
Or they are all on their devices in multiple locations at the same time pretending to be engaged?
All I know for sure now is you have no idea what it is like to teach children who are within feet of you and who breathe, laugh, cry, question, argue, fight, clap, cheer, talk, yell, whisper, read, write, think, and they come back every day to repeat the process all over again with a new concept and the bell rings every 45 minutes and you get another batch.
You have absolutely no idea what we do or what it takes to plan, coordinate, implement, teach and learn. Possibly you are as engaged on an economics blog, where I hope you have more expertise.
250 to 500 in the same room.
Admit it TE..face it you’re wrong. You don’t know what you are taking about. You’re our of your league. You can’t be an expert on everything and you don’t have the skills to teach children. Try to read and learn from the real k-12 teachers. Take a break…play a game or talk to your sons.
I agree that I am often wrong, but I am unclear about what you think I am wrong about in this instance.
Could you concisely point to the statement(s) were I am wrong?
Everything…you don’t get it…you never will. Maybe you can flip a child development class for yourself. Bone up TE.
“Everything” is not very useful feedback. I find it helpful to students when I can point to specific problems with their thinking about economic issues. It would be helpful to me if you could be more percise?
The problem is your track record here. You don’t want to learn and process.
You stalk for one iota of information to then further question because you can’t be wrong.
It is futile. It is pointless. I need to save my energy for 12 and 13 year olds who do want to learn.
Sorry TE I just can’t give it up for you tonight. Re-read all the responses to you in this post. There are several. Read closely…it is a CCS skill.
Again, specificity would be helpful. Specific feedback is helpful for learning. Perhaps just for this post. What did I say was wrong as opposed to things that you simply disagree with?
“It seems that the teacher is going through the prescribed motions”….WRONG…without observations, discussions, visiting the school, talking to the teacher, etc. you can’t make that statement. That’s your assumption based on knowing nothing. It is wrong and I disagree. If you pose a question then once again you are repeating the same habits.
My interpretation of the teachers “glowing” observational evaluations is that the teacher does the form of teaching very well. The teacher’s characterization of the student’s performance as dismal suggests not much learning is going on. I find it hard to interpret the statements any other way.
To be expected by someone with a narrow focus and no k-12 experience. I’m done.
TE: I read one of your posts that directed me to read Cory Koedel’s papers. It was very informative work and it seemed to corroborate my experience as a teacher. The paper that most interested me was evidence leading to the possible conclusion that there was/is a hidden agenda of public school administrators to protect their salaries and pensions at the expense of rank and file teachers.
I say this to you to say that I think we K-12 teachers on this blog have a disconnect with you because we see things from on the ground or from a “workers” perspective and you seem interested in figuring out this whole argument from “above” or from an economist’s perspective.
If that is the case then I apologize for being rude because I think that thinking like an economist is a good thing and it is the kind of thinking we all need to cultivate to avert the privatization disaster (I know, conjecture without evidence) that is bearing down upon us.
I would be interested to hear your take on Koedel’s work on the effect of administrative inefficiency on public education.
If the STUDENTS are bad STUDENTS, either because they are lazy or underprivileged or whatever, THEIR performance is not going to be good. Teachers try to inspire but students are ultimately responsible for their education; we offer opportunities, not guarantees.
What you charter/private folks do is just kick those students out so you can pretend they don’t exist, and voila! the school is “high performing.” Thankfully the nation is catching on to these parlor tricks–not fast enough for my liking, but it is starting to catch on.
Okay, so you don’t know when your students aren’t paying attention because your classes have 500 people in them, and you flip your classes. That’s great! That makes you an authority on teaching struggling high school kids in my book.
By the way, the “flipped classroom” is another ridiculous eduspeak term that merely means assigning reading for homework and doing something more productive than repeating that content via lecture in class.
Once again, I am only working from the teachers characterization of his/her own students.
I agree that flipping the classroom is mostly trying to get students to read the text outside of class. I think screen casting does add something to the experience.
TE
Now imagine if the majority of your students refused to do the assigned reading, and rather than pay attention to you, they talked, or laughed, or slept, or daydreamed through your lectures (despite you best efforts to romance them with the wonderful world of economics); when asked to participate in your discussions, they told you they didn’t give a shit about your corny-ass economics class. Can you imagine if the vast majority of your students were learning disabled, or abused, or neglected, or hungry, or high, or frequently truant. Now imagine TE – your job depends on them doing well on your final exam.
For many of us teaching in poor urban school districts, in drug and crime ravaged neighborhoods; places where despair, hopelessness, and apathy have a stranglehold on educational opportunity, we don’t have to imagine the above scenario – we live it and breath it on a daily basis.
If my students were doing that I would say there is no learning going on in my class. That is no different than what I said about the situation the letter writer describes. Would you
say there is learning going on?
If there is no learning, what is the point of teaching?
TE: I’m sure that the “dismal” label the original teacher posted has to do with the STANDARDIZED test scores, not actually what the students have learned. Standardized test scores, as our good friend Dwayne posts, are problematic for a number of reasons.
Don’t go blaming a teacher simply because he has a huge number of challenging students. That is not his fault, but the state, via its stupid VAM system, thinks it somehow is, and therefore he’s a “bad” teacher. You’re just piling on to a flawed evaluation system. Lay off the guy.
A quick internet search only turns up the NY Regents Exam in Chemistry. Do you think that is the exam the teacher was thinking about when talking about dismal performance?
The point of teaching in a public school is about providing opportunity. Scores can be “dismal” – but that doesn’t mean your not reaching some students.
Yes, the NYS Chemistry Regents test is what they were referring to. Why?
It would be better not to have to guess that when the teacher talks about dismal performance on the regents exam. Are you the author? Is that how you know that exam is what the author was referring to?
More importantly, and not related to the teacher in any way, why are students that are not academically advanced enough being assigned to a class in which they can not learn the material? In what sense do they have an opportunity if they do not have a sufficient foundation? It seems to me that we are pretending these students have learned chemistry when they have, by the teacher’s own assessment, not learned it.
All high school students in NYS must pass regents exams in order to graduate. Chemistry Regents is typically taken in the junior year and fulfills the requirement of one credit in a physical science. the completion of 1200 minutes of lab work is a pre-requisite for taking the test.
Required Regents exams in NY include, Integrated Algebra (9), ELA (11), Living Environment (9 or 10) and 2 year Global Studies (9 and 10). Many other Regents exams are available for an advanced regents diploma. These NY state HS exams have been in place since 1866.
I did not write the Chemistry Regents, yet these exams are written by current and/or former teachers
“I also feel that my administrators are giving me the most behaviorally difficult and
academically challenged students and with the new evaluation taking effect, my tenure will be threatened. At the same time, my district is giving the honors students to novice teachers straight out of college or those with the inside connections despite seniority.”
My first thought when reading this is that the school has it right—give the academically challenged students to experienced teachers instead of the novice teachers. Experienced teachers will be better equipped, with all their bag of tricks and understanding of students, to be of better service to those students. Unfortunately, too many times, experienced teachers feel they’ve earned the right to teach only the honors students.
On further reflection, though, I can see how this system is designed for easy gaming. This teacher said that “those with inside connections” are getting classes with students that will likely perform well on assessments being used for evaluation purposes. In this case, I can definitely see where a lawsuit is just waiting to happen.
Teachingeconomist .. you are speaking out of your league – totally. A newcomer to the English language will sit in that chemistry class and will very slowly learn to speak English. While he or she is learning English, concepts in Chemistry are being taught. He/she is grasping at 10 percent of what he/she hears because he/she does not understand English. Sometimes that student will be pulled from Chemistry class to get supplemental English lessons by the ESL teacher and other times there might be an ESL teacher in the class assisting. Other times the chemistry teacher is in the class alone trying to teach chemistry but is also needing to scaffold for the English language learners. So that teacher is pointing out vocabulary, having picture support as he/she speaks and so on. In another classroom, there is a class entirely of native English speaking higher performing learners who are being taught chemistry. Both teachers are teaching chemistry but one teacher’s task is vastly different from the other. Success in a class filled with newcomers to the language is very different than success is to AP chemistry students. If you do not understand this possibility, you really should spend some time in the title one classes in your area so that you understand and do not judge the comments. I did not even mention behavioral issues and a host of other learning issues that teachers juggle with. And yes, principals who do not like a teacher or want to balance their budget and get rid of a high salary teacher just have to “game” the classroom by selecting who sits at the desks.
I depend entirely on the teacher’s diagnoses of the reasons for dismal performance. If language was an issue in addition to student ability and interest, I would have hoped the teacher would mention it.
KyTeacher:
IMO your first thought is accurate. Handing novice teachers difficult learners is outrageous and guarantees failure of both the students and the teacher. Assuming that experienced and effective teachers have earned the right to teach easy students is bizarre and makes no sense.
Your second thought is an empirical question. The teacher writing this letter may or may not be accurate in his or her fears about gaming the system.
Similarly, the question of shedding high cost teachers is also an empirical question.
Let’s do a thought experiment, assume the teacher is no longer a very good teacher for whatever reason, what kind of letter would he or she write to his/her Union rep?
Highly paid teachers are being targeted! It is not just happening is in NYC and Newburgh, it’s happening in wealth districts. Teachers are being moved to new courses and grade levels in hopes that the transfers will “encourage” early retirement.
The more common problem I see is that any NYS teacher who has state assessments is feeling it in their APPR scores. The test scores, as reflected in the APPR scores we just received are dividing staffs into two groups. When we received our 60% scores from the Danielson Rubric a large number of teachers who give state assessments were rated Highly Effective. After the 20% state test scores and 20% MAP scores were added in NOT ONE was rated Highly Effective!
First Grade Teacher:
You are making a very important assertion. What evidence do you have that shows that such manipulation is actually taking place?
It’s not a manipulation. It’s a statement of fact based on the staff at my school. The 30% drop in NYS test scores has resulted in NOT ONE of the teachers with NYS tests as part of their APPR being rated Highly Effective. Mathematically they would have needed a perfect score coming out of the Danielson portion of the rubric in order to stay Highly Effective.
FGT:
You said:
“Highly paid teachers are being targeted! It is not just happening is in NYC and Newburgh, it’s happening in wealth districts. Teachers are being moved to new courses and grade levels in hopes that the transfers will “encourage” early retirement.”
This is what I referenced. I made no mention of APPR.
Two staff members in my wealthy suburban school were transferred to vastly different positions, both at the top of the salary scale, seven veteran teachers also at the top of the scale retired. I don’t think it’s manipulation. It what district do when they want expensive teachers to retire. It’s nothing new but it’s another tool to save taxpayers money. No one cares if you are a good teacher or not. The bottom line is the only thing that matters.
I don’t know about the transfers, but I would expect a large number of retirements in the coming years. There was a large increase in teachers beginning in the early 1980’s and the national teaching staff has become increasingly older. Here is an article about the demographics of the teaching profession: http://www.gse.upenn.edu/review/feature/ingersoll
TE:
The article is useful background. However, FGT essentially has to provide information on the age structure of the teachers in her district in order to determine whether there is anything noteworthy in the fact that 7 teachers retired.
FGT:
Hold on, aren’t most teachers who retire at the top of a seniority driven salary schedule? How many teachers are in your system?
The two who were transferred – did they retire? What made their new position different from their current position?
FGT:
If your school district is around Boston then I know it very well. It is very wealthy and quite beautiful. I hardly see transfers from one school to another in this district as a hardship at all. The schools are quite close together. 2 out of nearly 160 teachers being asked to transfer is not particularly remarkable.
Based on local newspaper reports, the folks you described as retiring had all reached retirement age with 30 plus years of service. Again if it is the district I am thinking of, it is extremely unlikely that anyone was forced into retirement
Teachers in this trouble. Contact lenny@perdaily.com. He has over 600 in the data base now. I had this audited by the State of California for teachers being falsely accused of child abuse for whistleblowing and principals stealing student impress funds. The audit is on the Calif. State Auditors website and is Oct. 1997, 96121. It is worse now than then and now many who are nearing the “Rule of 80” at LAUSD which gives you lifetime benefits and are at the top of the salary scale are the targeted individuals and class of people both. It is not fun these stories, especially when you have heard as many as Lenny and I have. I consider it a win that their psychological damage does not get worse. I used to think they could be made whole. That was a fantasy as with a soldier with PTSD. Not much different really.
Esteemed colleague, what can I say to encourage you to put all thought of your own vulnerability aside, and teach the students in front of you as though we lived in a world where your care of them would be valued, for as long as you can?
I do know what it’s like to be broke, without access to medical care, and unable to give my kids the things they needed. Some of my dearest friends are facing now the thing you fear most, unable to find work at all, with all their talent and knowledge cast aside. I’m counseling you to face that possible future without fear or flinching, to stand your ground and teach.
This is a time of crisis for these kids in front of you, too. They’ve been cast aside enough, maybe this is the year they’ll luck out and walk into your classroom.
A year is beginning. Put aside everything external, and choose what you’ll answer to, then answer to it. Screw the evaluations.
And by God, we’ll have your back, and we’ll get there as soon as we can with help.
WOW.
The best move you could make would be to a better school system. The union won’t protect you, my brother just lost his job in a different profession.
Outdo the system. Move to a smaller district with a negotiated requirement of 4 classes of honor students. With your seniority in the sciences, that should be easy to do.
If not that, move to a private school for 2 years, and then move back, again negotiate for 3 or 4 classes of better students.
Praying for you,
Wayne
Moving districts is not usually an option. He would then have to return to an entry level pay scale and be considered a novice or provisional teacher.
I think you mean moving states, but even than, most states recognize prior teaching experience.
I am with you chemtchr! You tend to be the voice of reason in just about every blog and you have a razor for cutting through all the statistical BS.
Remember, my Aggie friend, this is not about you, it is about jerks who want to make more money on Wall Street and keep Microsoft stock from tanking. They want to strangle public investment in public schools so their charter school and digital learning buddies can take nice vacations. VAM is all about making money for MIcrosoft and Pearson, it has nothing to do with your performance.
Isn’t it also about the students not learning chemistry?
It seems to me that we might seriously consider not teaching chemistry to students who have neither the interest or ability to learn it (the teacher’s characterization of his/her students, not mine) and think about teaching classes in which students will be learning.
TE, Are you Bill Gates? Your persistence in questioning the obvious, insistence on being right, and inability to see things from another’s perspective remind me of him and students I have taught who were on the autism spectrum (except their fascination was with harmless things like owls and Hello Kitty). You clearly have NO idea what is happening in public schools. Develop some empathy; logic alone will not get others to listen to you.
Where am I insisting on being right?
Teaching Chemistry is pretty tough, teaching economist! You should teach in our friend’s classroom and see how far “romancing results” takes you. You sound very much like Jim Heckman and I bet your students are very well motivated! If you are Heckman, you love VAM and Democrats for Education Reform! You probably do anyway if you aren’t.
TE:
That was exactly my thought. Chemistry is demanding for even motivated and well prepared students. Is Chemistry a graduation requirement in NYS?
I am puzzled by the reactions to your earlier comments. The only data we have about this teacher’s situation is the information in the letter. As written it raises questions both about the Newburgh system and this teacher.
I would need more evidence to assume that the Newburgh School District is operating as this teacher asserts. He or she may be right, but simply saying that they are trying to get rid of more highly paid teachers raises a question but proves nothing.
What grade levels, ages, subjects have you taught? How many years? What settings, city, town, rural, city, suburb? Certification? Specialties? Extra curricular? Dual certification? Clubs sponsored? Teams or activities you have coached? Professional organizations you belong to? Please give us all your k-12 credentials.
Linda:
All the questions that you just asked are absolutely and totally irrelevant to an interpretation and analysis of the letter the teacher sent to his Union President. The letter is what it is. You seem to have some magical way of knowing more about the situation than is evident in the letter. If so please share.
So here is what I have been trying to find out about the Newburgh School District.
What is the budget trend for Newburgh School District over the last five years? What has been the funding level for the High School(s)?
How many teachers teach in the high school over the same period? What is there profile in terms of tenure?
How many students attended the high school over this period?
How many teachers have been dismissed each year over the last 5 years? What levels did they teach and how much tenure did they have?
How many HS teachers took early retirement during this period?
How many grievances from teachers at the High School were there over the same period for staffing decisions.
This I think is the basic information needed to evaluate the teacher’s letter. Unfortunately this data does not appear to be readily available. Last year the Newburgh School DIstrict budget increased by 3.7% but without a detailed breakdown this information is of marginal value.
Okay so you have no K-12 credentials or teaching experience. Got it! Good to know.
Linda:
You have asked these questions of me before and I answered them at that time. My background is irrelevant to analyzing the letter. How come you don’t understand this rather simple point?
Do you actually know something about this particular situation that is not in the letter?
@paul,
I am honored to be confused with Jim Heckmen who has both won a Nobel Prize in Economics and been praised by Dr. Ravitch as an economist who “gets it”, but I am not he. I am an untenured faculty member who teaches at a large, nearly open admission, state university.
Thank you, Paul. Let’s see how I can do with this particular concoction of BS.
Teaching economist, you keep saying you’re relying only on this teacher’s description, but that’s not true. The teacher speaks of being evaluated by student test scores, and then cries out that their performance is dismal. Anyone who wants to understand him realizes he’s talking about their dismal performance on tests.
It’s you who make these leaps:
“had little impact on the students in the class”
“little or no learning going on”
“a waste of time for most involved, including the teacher”
If that’s not ugly enough, listen to yourself reach for new heights:
“we might seriously consider not teaching chemistry to students who have neither the interest or ability to learn it …”
Who is this “we” of whom you speak? Your cheaply and airily put yourself above the real person who reached out from this real (and important) quandary. Have you been teaching chemistry to any alienated and under-resourced adolescents? Are you in a position to decide what courses we offer them, then? We aren’t. They come into our lives as they are, still children, and we into theirs.
So, I need to address you, to help get this vital discussion past your sabotage.
Colleagues, we must seriously consider teaching every child as much as we can, of whatever subject we are teaching, in a way that will be helpful and useful to that child. Notice what a weak mind this person has, who is feeding his ego on society’s failure to support you or your students, in our true mission of teaching the kids in front of us.
Don’t listen to this guy, he’s trying to poison the discussion. We have to reinvent our own assessment of our students, free of their VAM scores, and out from under the smug contempt of “economists” like this one.
And the teacher does not blame the test with not measuring the good learning that is happening in the classroom, the teacher says that the students did not have the ability to learn the material and or interest in learning it. If the exam was in accurately measuring the chemistry learned, I would hope that the teacher would mention it and support that view with evidence. As it is, I have to take the teacher at his/her word.
Do you think we should be attempting to teach chemistry (or any other academic subject for that matter) to students who are “placed in a course that was above their academic ability”?
Yes, I’m asking the teacher to look at test-based accountability differently, and not let it turn him against the children in front of him.
I’m asking him to ignore you, “economist”, because you’re trying to trap him with word games, to prevent the discussion from breaking free of the distortions you project into it.
And, again, the children are in crisis. I’m asking him, and all of us, for a willingness to make sacrifices for them.
See Bernie not so simple..it’s only simple to edudilettanates, like you and TE. Having
K-12 experience and credentials does matter…it’s that simple Bernie.
Is having experience teaching first graders more relevant to high school than having experience teaching college freshman? It has always seemed to me that there is a larger difference between a six year old and a seventeen year old than the difference between a seventeen year old and a nineteen year old.
Chemtchr’s advice to the teacher certainly makes sense if you make some assumptions about the teacher’s mind-set. However, the comment does not address the main thrust of the letter only the teacher’s somewhat negative view of his students.
You said:
See Bernie not so simple..it’s only simple to edudilettanates, like you and TE.i Having K-12 experience and credentials does matter…it’s that simple
Your comment makes no sense. Where have I suggested that the situation is simple. I have suggested that it is precisely the opposite in that more data is needed to understand and evaluate the letter.
You focus on standardized exams. Does New York administer standardized exams in chemistry?
Reblogged this on luvsiesous and commented:
The perils of teaching, unions, and of course, politics.
One of the biggest problems facing teachers is the politics of the work place environment. Teaching attracts many people who just want a job for life, job security. Unfortunately, too many people with that mindset “do not play well with others.” They play politics, they promote their favorites, and sometimes good people lose.
How do we address this? How do we provide good teachers the opportunity to move forward in their careers, and encourage the bad teachers to move out?
First, pay does not affect morale. Otherwise, the US Army would have much worse moral, and they do not have a minimum Bachelor’s Degree. Sometimes, judges give criminals the choice of “Join the Army or go to Jail.”
Instead good morale is built by trust, teamwork, and integrity during difficult situations.
Schools have the difficult situation. How do we encourage school leaders to build the integrity and teamwork they need to overcome the terrible morale?
Wayne
PS, also do some light interviewing with parents at the parent teachers groups. Parents always want the better teachers teaching their kids …. Reach out to the parents by tutoring their kids who are being taught by the weaker teachers …. tutor the younger students, so their request for you in the following years will pressure the administration.
This is not just happening in New York. This is happening across the nation. It is most definitely deliberate. ALEC at work, people. Wake up. Good luck to the teachers who are nearest to retirement. Try to remember to breathe as you deal with this stress. Become politically active – it is our only hope.
We may not be attorneys, but educators owe it to themselves to learn as much as they can about employment law and education law. Don’t just rely on the union or even attorneys themselves. If you have to hire a legal professional on your own, be an informed client.
For starters, become very familiar with all of the written board policies, particularly as they pertain to your due process rights and procedures. Don’t be surprised if these policies are boilerplate writings that the board took from a state school board association, and don’t be surprised if your school’s leadership is oblivious of the policies and procedures. Learn about the process of due process for tenured teachers, and don’t be surprised if it doesn’t seem as “impartial” as one might hope (i.e. school boards appointing the hearing officer, for example).
If this teacher believes he/she may experience an adverse employment action based on his/her age (for example), he/she needs to document everything! This is especially important if the “reason” given for an adverse employment action is merely a pretext for the actual reason. Age discrimination (over 40) is a violation of Title VII, and Title VII violations may not be easy to prove (even with substantial evidence). Also, be aware that federal courts do not have subject matter jurisdiction over Title VII complaints unless the complainant has received a right-to-sue letter from the EEOC. (And don’t expect the EEOC to pursue your case.)
Be aware that employment laws do not require employers to be “nice.” An employer’s actions would have to consist of something that actually violates a law in order for a complaint to have legal merit.
If the teacher is a member of a union, he/she should make sure a representative is present at any meetings related to possible employment actions. The folks at unions are generally good people, but don’t be surprised at their possible limitations. I’ve spoken to union staff attorneys who were not even familiar with things such as a Loudermill Letter, constructive discharge, Faragher and Ellerth, or Oncale (to name a few).
It’s better to take it upon yourself to learn as much as you can now instead of having to learn about these things while you’re going through an ordeal. Be as informed as possible so that you can be an informed client should the unthinkable happen.
Document everything!
Learn about tenure laws as well, but keep in mind (at least as far as I’m concerned) that tenure means nothing.
Joe:
This is excellent advice. Employment contracts and employment law provide rights to all parties.
Joe, this is the best answer to the letter writer’s dilemma.
Enough said!
Wow, I feel exactly the same way, however I teach first grade and feel that I often get the low performing students, and those with behavior problems. I too have fifteen years in the district and fear for my job security along with the mountains of data and paperwork that is duplicated, over and over. feeling set up!
Sent from my iPad
Ask your union’s help to document a pattern of assigning the lowest scoring students to more senior teachers as a way of dismissing older teachers. You may be able to help assemble such evidence in your own building. There is strength in numbers.
Ask for and document requests for assistance to help students succeed and to help parents and/or mentors help their children succeed. Ask local businesses, service clubs, Boys and Girls Clubs, minority organizations, ministers, and others to offer after school tutoring and enrichment activities for students (this also enlarges the constituency of folks who will come to your defense if needed). They can also provide students a ‘connection’ for possible future jobs and careers and help students understand how their instruction connects to their life after school.
Ask financial titans (Mayor Bloomberg are you out there?) to provide needed classrooms resources including laptops, software, and tech support for each student in your classes. Also ask for funds to host a free meal for families of your students to show them what your instructional plan for the year is, how you will communicate with them (ask them for the best way to communicate with them), ask their assistance, and invite them to communicate with you FREQUENTLY. Some parents did not have a good experience when they were students and need to feel school is not their enemy if you are to have any luck enlisting their help and support. Some may not be able to help their kids with homework, but let them know that’s okay and how to gain needed extra assistance for their child.
Ask a computer company to donate lessons for parents on how to use their child’s school laptop so that the parents can gain computer skills of their own and understand how to help their child.
See if your union contract has language for class-size maximums and class composition (not too many different languages in one classroom). If not, ask that they make such concerns a community and negotiations issue and enlist support from parents and other community partners including the police department. You can’t be alert to every child’s dysfunctional signals if there are too many kids in the class. Be sure assignment of special ed. students to your classes does not exceed legal maximums and document school inability to meet accommodations needs, timely case conferences, etc. Special ed. scores can be your undoing otherwise.
If your students need but can’t afford medical and dental care, perhaps a local university has medical residents or interns or future dentists who might provide some services free of charge as part of their university experience. Transportation would have to be arranged, but hopefully a local business booster will reimburse the school district for monthly or more frequent school bus transportation to the university to gain services.
If parents (especially homeless parents) can’t afford a cell phone or land line, ask the phone company to install a toll free phone line at the school which parents could call from a phone booth without charge to make sure they can contact the school whenever they want. Your union’s national and perhaps state offices have tips for how to help students from homeless families succeed in school. Their websites can lead you to helpful resources.
If your state or school district has alternative education classes which tap into students’
particular gifts and interests, learn about them and help students enroll in them so that they learn to LOVE school because they find something at which they’re successful.
If your students are so poor that they’ve never had a birthday party, schedule a once a month day to celebrate birthday party for all the students who had a birthday that month. Recognize and applaud them. Ask local churches and/or businesses to bring cupcakes for all and a small gift of some kind (pencils or pens with the student’s name on them).
If parents are so poor that they’ve never had a picture of themselves as adults, ask someone with a camera to take pictures and a local pharmacy to donate development of pictures to give to parents. A local church did this for poor neighbors here, and adults broke down in tearful gratitude, saying this was their only picture and whenever they died, they would now have a picture for their obituary. Pictures seem so uneventful for middle class families, but sadly, they are like once-in-a-lifetime-gold for poor families. If this was done at school for parents, grandparents, and school neighbors, it would be a real public service and build LOTS of good will toward the school. MORE than half the battle of getting kids to perform in school is to win parental support. Things like this could help win such support.
Ask your colleagues for tips and techniques to deal with situations confronting you.
Someone somewhere has faced the same situations before and has experience to share. Your union probably has a state or national on-line resource on which to pose questions and gain solutions from teachers across a broad area.
Be your own, your students’, and their families’ best advocate. Hopefully somethings here will work for you and will trigger more thoughts of your own. You can do this, and you’ve already taken the best first step by asking for assistance. Good luck.
TE
Now imagine if the majority of your students refused (or were unable) to do the assigned reading, and rather than pay attention to you, they talked, or laughed, or slept, or daydreamed through your lectures (despite you best efforts to romance them with the wonderful world of economics) and when asked to participate in your discussions, they told you they didn’t give a shit about your corny-ass economics class. Can you imagine if the vast majority of your students were either learning disabled, or abused, or neglected, or hungry, or high, or frequently truant. Now imagine TE – your job depends on them doing well on your final exam.
For many of us teaching in poor urban school districts, in drug and crime ravaged neighborhoods; places where despair, hopelessness, and apathy have a stranglehold on educational opportunity, we don’t have to imagine the above scenario – we live it and breath it on a daily basis.
If a student does not try what do you call that. When my son went to high school studying was over, now he not only runs a health club he is the guy who fixes up those others make a mess of. Can’t expect that out of everyone. There is always a percentage you will never get through to as that is normal as 8-9% of the population of the planet tests positive for having sociopathic tendacies. This does not mean they will become serial killers, just that they really could not care about you and can have a smile and drink with you and be friendly. Ever noticed many of the serial killers as to how soft and vulnerable they look sometimes?
You must also remember that is the administration which sets the tone of the school district, superintendent and board of education are responsible for every school in the district. They are the ones who set up teachers such as the one who wrote that. As my friend Lenny says “I am teaching a senior history class and they send me someone who cannot read at the 5th grade level. How are they going to learn when they can hardly read and cannot comprehend the lessons as there is no background or basis for such?” Who let that happen? Why the superintendent, top administrators and ultimately the board of education as they were elected by the people to take care of their business and that is the “Real Education” of our youth.
N.Y. Teacher is on the money. They put the teacher in those schools in an impossible position. I say that if you have a district like LAUSD with rich and poor the way to fairly compare the teachers is to sent the Brentwood teacher into the inner city and the inner city teacher into Brentwood for the same amount of time and see what their personal scores look like then. I am willing to bet that the Brentwood teacher moved into the inner city scores will sink like the Titanic and the inner city teachers scores will soar if they are equal teachers. All environment. Deasy’s phony PHD is why he makes decisions like this, he is a phony. Those who run this game on us and especially our youth are phony’s. They talk with two or more tongues. How is it that we found 3 sets of ADA for LAUSD on the CDE website? One a 100.000 different on ADA which is what you are paid by. Think about that one.
Actually Teaching Economist brought up a real question. What is wrong with that? I disagree with him a lot, so what. He has his view. I also get hard. We need an open forum. I want to hear his opinion. I do not want to become a True Believer who never listens to all. You never know what gems you might find. Reject what you do not like and suck up what you do. After all, I work with a family with over 115 years of continuous civil rights. In fact they put on the larges Martin Luther King Day Parade in the U.S. Teaching Economist, I want to continue to hear your opinion in this soup of ideas. This is how you learn.
Seeing as how the teacher was writing a letter to his/her union leader, most NYC teachers are making assumptions about the context/background information that is probably fairly accurate. Those of us who have similar experiences to draw upon as k-12 teachers can relate to this post more intimately as well. Futhermore, in a letter to his/her union leader, there is no need for this teacher to add all the details that TE suggests should have been included. The union leader is the audience, not TE. The union leader probably knows exactly what the teacher is talking about. TE does not have the background to make accurate assumptions about what this teacher was conveying. ( I guess that tells us about the pitfalls of the decontextualized nonfiction CCSS is promoting.)
I agree that in a letter to a union representative there can be an assumption about a fair amount of background knowledge. As a blog post, however, this assumption is not valid.
Most have guessed that the dismal performance statement is about the students score on a standardized exam, Some posters, like Louisiana Purchase, have assumed these exams are state written and part of the new effort to use VAM methods to evaluate teachers. Others speculate that it is the Regents chemistry exam, written by high school chemistry teachers in the state of New York and part of a high school graduation process that is almost 150 years old. Do the experienced high school teachers of New York write an exam that does a reasonable job measuring student learning about chemistry? If so, what should we conclude about the amount if learning going on in the classroom? (Duane can post his Wilson post below)
Fuzzy Logic.
The preservation of privilege requires the exercise of power.
Power, demands inequality, as superiority rests on subordination.
Conformity, is usually calculated with an interest of power, as it’s fondation.
The Government sets standards (Conformity).
The Government mandates Public “Education”.
The Government is the employer.
The Government is the “Executive Committe of Capital”.
“Economics” is essentially the Priesthood of Capital. The dominant “Theory” at
any time, reflects the interest of Capital. See income distribution for results.
The Alchemy of changing Apples (K-12) is a Sisyphean task, as the apple
falls close to the tree.
NoBrick:
This is way too cryptic for me.
The only way to get through to those who do not want to learn is to make it interesting enough for them and to make it relative to their own lives so as to make it personal and that they want to find the answer and how to get there. My son did not care in high school probably as they were in a box and he did not fit and yet he is very successful once out on his own. Of course, a lot of that is probably due to his riding motorcycles in dangerous places since 3. At 8-10 we had them 2 feet from 200 foot drops. Think that doesn’t make an effect on your character and make you dependent on yourself. It sure does as you are responsible for your own life. This is not a normal happening. We need to make school more relevant for as many students as possible. That means the teacher has to have enough “Real Flexibility” to modify the way they teach to educate those students in front of them in that class at that period. It could be different for every class if they are different classes with different interests. Don’t true capitalists in their other lives control what they make to the needs of their customers? Not in education. Schizophrenic is what they are. In the aerospace and hot rod world all that matters is what works as performance tells the outcome. In education ideology on the privatizeers side is all important not reality. If they were in a drag race and they lost by 2 seconds they would say they won. They live Orwell.
George:
You may be right, but I think your analogy applies to both sides of this discussion.