Lloyd Lofthouse is an experienced educator and commentator on the blog:
“In the Vergara trial—I think the verdict was bought and paid for in some way—the judge’s verdict was based on unproven theories that a few incompetent teachers would ruin a child’s ability to earn an education. The numbers presented in one theory were one to two percent of teachers could be incompetent—not “are incompeten” but “could be incompetent” because of classroom observations of one man over a period of years.
First, how many teachers can one person observe long enough to form a valid judgement and how long should each observation be? What if the teacher was having a bad day and the other 179 instructional days were perfect?
Anyway, let’s look at a few numbers based on the 2011-12 school year in California:
There were 6,220,993 students enrolled and attending 10,296 public schools. Another 438,474 attended 1,019 Charter schools.
There were 300,140 teachers in the public schools. If we go with the 1 to 2 percent observational guesstimate, that means 3,001 to 6,223 teachers might be incompetent, but there are 10,296 schools, so that means thousands of schools don’t have even one incompetent teacher, but the teachers in those schools risk losing legal due process rights that would allow them to challenge any accusations made against them that they were incompetence.
In other words, 292,917 to 297,139 could be fired for any reason at any time and there would be no way for the teacher to defend the accusations made against them.
If the Vergara ruling survives, every teacher in California would all be at risk of being fired at any moment by an administrator who could be incompetent or be stooge owned by the Koch brothers, Bill Gates, TFA, etc who had walking orders to get rid of as many teachers as possible and replace them with younger, less incompetent teachers.
It’s obvious that Bill Gates is in charge of deciding how many teachers should go, because it is his “rank and yank” system that is part of the Common Core agenda and all anyone has to do is look at the arbitrary numbers Bill Gates set in place at Microsoft to judge how many had to be incompetent and go to be replaced by another crop who had to prove their competence. That anal arbitrary nubmer that Gates must have pulled out of his crotch was 25% with no evidence to support the fact that so many Microsoft employee were actually incompetent.
In conclusion, it’s obvious where this is going. If President Obama’s partner in crime, Bill Gates, has his way, eventually 25% of public school teachers—not just the one to two percent who are alleged to be incompetent without any evidence to support that claim— would have to lose their jobs annually all based on standardized test scores.
If you read the recent headlines, Microsoft will lay off 18,000 workers this year in addition to 12,500 associated with the Nokia Device and Services team it acquired earlier this year. Microsoft has almost 130,000 employes across the world—the number losing their jobs is almost 24%.
How many teachers in California stand to lose their jobs annually and have to be replaced using the Gates “rank and yank” system? The answer is about 75,000 annually. At that annual rate, every four years, California’s public schools would get rid of 300,140 teachers for a complete possible turnover in every school.
This is all based on two unproven theories—with crucial evidence—that both are horribly wrong headed and when implemented they create nothign but havoc and chaos.
What are the odds of one of those 6.2 million students ending up in a classroom with one of those estimated 3,001 to 6,223 so-called incompetent teachers with no proven, accepted, valid method to judge the teacher properly?
Does anyone have an answer?
What about the odds of a teacher ending up with incompetent students who have dysfunctional, incompetent parents? Does anyone have a theory for that number? I think we could start with the number of children living in poverty and/or who have severe learning disabilities.
These numbers might help: California’s child poverty rates for Latinos (31.2%) and African Americans (33.4%) are much higher than the rates among Asians (13.2%) and whites (10.1%). The child poverty rate in families where neither parent has a high school diploma is high in California (48.5%).
http://www.ppic.org/main/publication_show.asp?i=721
In addition, it might help to compare the poverty rates with the on-time high school graduation rates in California (2011-2012):
Asian/Pacific Islander 90%
White 86%
Hispanic 73%
Black 66%
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The judge “could be incompetent”.
That’s a better theory than “bought and paid for.”
not mutually exclusive, though
Lofthouse makes a good number of GREAT POINTS. Love how he ends with a twist addressing the student poverty rate! Should our government leaders be fired left and right based on the number of students and their families who live in poverty?
Sounds like there was a lot of “numbers crunching” going on in the “ed reform” camp. After the “ed reformers” take their needed to profit “cut” in their various positions… publishing of common core, high stakes testing, selling computers for testing, PR on a national and local level, consultants, pseudo studies supporting anything that presents students as human capital, TFA donations, common core training programs etc.. there are “monetary crumbs” left over. Some number cruncher decides how much “monetary crumbs” are left in the budget for schools… for building upkeep and repair, to pay teachers, hire teachers assistants etc… Some accountant who is a “Gates follower” and perhaps has an MBA determines that they must fire 25% of the teacher workforce yearly (and of course from the seasoned veteran teacher “pool” because they are “expensive” and because they are going to want the money they put into the system back when they retire – via pensions). So then why not strategize on that pesky thing called tenure and make sure teachers have no due process and can be fired for any reason at all..
So “ed reformers” wanting to continue capitalizing on this profit machine bring forth the Vergara case! Voila.. no due process.. end of tenure… not just for California…soon it will be national. Then in order to ensure that “the expensive teachers”… yes.. the veteran tenured teachers leave (the ones who are not fired in this 25% category)contracts are renegotiated to ensure that new teachers make some salary gains while the veterans lose their pension money in currently negotiated contracts.
The author of the previous article in this blog had a great analogy… that it would be like someone withdrawing $10,000 from YOUR savings account and then returning it back to you claiming it was a raise! Great analogy for what is happening to veteran teachers all over the nation who have contributed year after year a large percentage of their pay toward a mandatory pension fund (and yet the money is not required to be held for them until the withdrawal). Wondering where THAT LAWSUIT is and when it will happen? You know the one where teacher retirement contributions made via mandatory paycheck deductions from teacher paychecks ARE FORCED TO BE HELD IN ESCROW FOR THE TEACHERS and cannot be used to fund all kinds of “whatever” state projects ….
“You know the one where teacher retirement contributions made via mandatory paycheck deductions from teacher paychecks ARE FORCED TO BE HELD IN ESCROW FOR THE TEACHERS and cannot be used to fund all kinds of “whatever” state projects ….”
The guidelines for managing & dispensing state retirement are individual for each state. In TN the state constitution does not permit the lege or governor to use the funds for other state projects. Other states do not have that protection and so you see the problems in FL, NJ, IL, CA, etc where politicians “borrowed” money from the retirement system and never paid it back.
That practice used to be felony fraud. Jimmy Hoffa went to prison for “borrowing” teamsters retirement funds. His defense that he planned to pay it back wasn’t sufficient to save him from prison.
As the Governor of FL, Jeb Bush “borrowed” money from the state’s teacher pension fund to bail out bankrupt Edison Schools. At the time, Chris Cerf was the CEO of Edison. After the tax-payer bail out, Cerf left FL and went to NYC and then to NJ.
The while collar crime of the 1%, with no punishment and no accountability. When the 99% learn to practice the skill set of the hedge funders, at DFER, the nations’ economy will grind to a halt.
Lloyd, this is a good question:
” First, how many teachers can one person observe long enough to form a valid judgement and how long should each observation be?”
Administrators in this CCSS environment have become indoctrinated with the corporate model of fear and intimidation as their management style, and they expect teachers to do the same. They have become too obsessed with performance ratings and data to recognize or understand authentic teaching and authentic learning.
High stakes testing has created a culture of administrators who expect teachers to be authoritarian, emotionally detached, and businesslike, and drill the kids nonstop with scripted information, rather than creating a nurturing learning environment that allows freedom for imagination, curiosity, and self discovery.
Too many administrators base their evaluations on whether teachers are submissive to their authoritarian style, and whether they make (the administrator) look good. They base their evaluations on how docile and obedient the children are, and call punitive behaviorism “good classroom management”. They base their evaluations on how well the kids can regurgitate information back to the teacher or on tests as in “command and response” obedience training for dogs.
So my answer to your question:
Most administrators are no longer capable of evaluating teachers because they themselves are too fearful and obsessed with “control” and “performance” to recognize and understand authentic teaching. They function like “bullies”, and do not recognize the impact of their behavior on teachers or children. The environment created by CCSS has become too dysfunctional for administrators to make valid evaluations of teachers.
Joyce Murdock Feilke: much said that needed to be said.
A small addition: the so-called “education reformers” are literally creating a new rheeality, one in which worst education practices—ensured by worst management practices—become the norm. The Rheeality Distortion Fields that ensue will blind many to the fact that the entire enterprise is a self-perpetuating self-destructive fraud.
Caveat: this is only for OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN, the vast majority. When it comes to the self-proclaimed leaders of the “new civil rights movement of our time” like John King and Michelle Rhee and the rest, THEIR OWN CHILDREN will be guaranteed educational settings that provide the maximum possibilities of genuine teaching and learning.
Remember this posting on this blog of 3-23-14: “Common Core for Commoners, Not My School!”
In its entirety: “This is an unintentionally hilarious story about Common Core in Tennessee. Dr. Candace McQueen has been dean of Lipscomb College’s school of education and also the states’s chief cheerleader for Common Core. However, she was named headmistress of private Lipscomb Academy, and guess what? She will not have the school adopt the Common Core! Go figure.”
The thread of the above is also worth reading.
Thank you for your comments.
😎
One thing worthy of note is that since the American Statitical Association came out against VAM, the latest and most damning in a long series of empirical arguments against it, it is now officially a zombie policy, totally dead but obviously still walking on the legs of its masters funding and influence. The level and type of evidence that exists on the fatal flaws of VAM make the success of wrongful termination lawsuits all but assured in the absence of corruptable judges. This to me is the primary reason that the attack on tenure has been resurrected, it is the only operable weapon left to be brought to bear against the teaching profession and teachers unions. The fact that the opening front in this assault is the court of public opinion is telling. When the botched Vergara decision is overturned which is what I suspect it’s proponents expect to happen, their only way forward is through legislation driven by the rancor of a deceived public. This is why the deformers are rapidly pushing ahead with lawsuits in NY and elsewhere, they want to beat the reversal of Vergara taking hold in the public eye. We already know that the deformers have great access to the political class and can offer them the bribes of campaign contributions. The initial response to Whoopi being tricked into jumping on the band wagon was inappropriate, so we need to politely reach out to her and to any other celebrities that deformers manage to co-opt. Having celebrity “champions” speaking the truth to power on our behalf would be a great thing to get done, especially if we can explain just how badly they have been played to one who is against tenure in the beginning. As we have seen, our strongest supporters are those who first bought into the lies and then were outraged at how they were fooled into acting against their own best interests. These are our ways forward.
Long story short, the “fire at will” resulting from the loss of tenure is the replacement for the constant churn of firings due to VAM. Deformers still insist on only blaming the teachers. They ignore the harm to students of teacher churn because cutting salary costs are the only thing they care about.
Great point the about the deformers getting out ahead of zombie VAM. Public opinion is how policy will change. Fighting endless lawsuits is how the financial industry will slowly bankrupt the teacher’s union. FUD is here to stay.
FYI, Teacher’s College Record published a rebuttal to Chetty et al., that shows the deep methodological flaws in their study. The Vergara lawyers used Chetty to win their case, but in another court, they could easily lose.
http://www.tcrecord.org/PrintContent.asp?ContentID=17633
The last line from that report: ” If they [Chetty et. al.] had, they may not have come off as so selective, as well as biased, citing only those representing certain disciplines and certain studies to support certain assumptions and “facts” upon which their criticisms of the ASA statement were based.
Plain English: Chetty et.al. conclusions are biased and pure bullshit.
Thanks for that link.
Microsoft actually got rid of rank and yank last November because it was destroying the company.
This desire to churn the teaching workforce is not just a push from Bill Gates and lawsuits to dismantle unions.
Six economists/statisticians brought together at the Brookings Institution offered a similar plan. These number crunchers said that district-wide VAM (value-added) scores should be used to determine the most effective teachers, irrespective of the subjects and grade-levels they teach.
This proposal is efficient and absurd. It is based on the assumption that a district’s value added scores are so highly correlated with “non-value added” measures that employment decisions for all teachers can be based on the performance of teachers with value added scores.
Under this system, all teachers would also have a composite evaluation based on multiple measures such as end of course test scores, observations, and student surveys. Even so, the teachers with VAM scores would determine the employment fate of all teachers. How is this conclusion reached?
Here is the magical thinking: “For example, we would assume that the correlation between observationally-based ratings of teachers and value-added (scores) in math would be the same in history, where value-added measures are not available.”
In other words, the statisticians freely invent (impute) a missing metric for the history teacher by assuming a math teacher’s rating on a classroom observation protocol can be used as a substitute for the history teacher’s missing value added score.
Those inferential leaps are just the beginning of a larger plan that would make all teacher evaluations “comparable” without any distinctions in grade level, or subject, or conditions under which teachers work.
The Brookings policy articulates principles for dismissing up to 25% of teachers in a district, on the assumption that this action plan would increase test scores and be “fair” to every teacher. The only exception to this formula might be for teachers of exceptional children. This case of econometric thinking ignores the educational, ecological, and substantive importance of different job assignments. See Corerelation, Para 5 in http://www.brookings.edu/research/reports/2011/04/26-evaluating-teachers
The Brookings paper is not radically different, (except for the 25 % churn) from a USDE plan for all teachers by a collective VAM for a school, but limited to one of the “priority” subtests such as reading or mathematics. In Florida, for example, the school wide VAM in reading or math is assigned to art and other teachers of nontested subjects. In other words, the curriculum and instruction that really matters is narrowed to the three R’s.
The use of a collective VAM focused on reading or math is a rapid and cost-effective way to meet federal or state requirements for teacher evaluation. Moreover, in 2014, a U.S. district judge ruled that evaluators in Florida are allowed to disregard a teacher’s job assignment in rating performance. The judge ruled that this practice is legal, even if it is unfair
Teacher ratings based on a collective value-added score are likely to increase in states where Common Core State Standards (CCSS) are adopted and tested. The CCSS call for all teachers to improve student proficiency in English Language Arts and mathematics.
Although the American Statistical Association has denounced the practice of using VAM for rating individuals, that measure is unlikely to disappear as a tool for churning the workforce.
In the Obama/Duncan/McKinsey & Co. “RESPECT” project, for example, a teacher can only be judged “highly qualified” by producing more than a year’s worth of growth (gain in test scores) in three out of every five years. Teachers without that designation have shorter up-or-out criteria to meet.
This stack-ranking system, like the Brookings plan, banishes job security and churns the teaching workforce by insisting on one-size-fit-all criteria for “effective” teachers. http://www.ed.gov/blog/2012/02/launching-project-respect/
Michael Clark: yes, as spelled out in a Vanity Fair article of August 2012 entitled The Lost Decade” under the subtitle “‘The Bell Curve’”—
[start quote]
By 2002 the by-product of bureaucracy—brutal corporate politics—had reared its head at Microsoft. And, current and former executives said, each year the intensity and destructiveness of the game playing grew worse as employees struggled to beat out their co-workers for promotions, bonuses, or just survival.
Microsoft’s managers, intentionally or not, pumped up the volume on the viciousness. What emerged—when combined with the bitterness about financial disparities among employees, the slow pace of development, and the power of the Windows and Office divisions to kill innovation—was a toxic stew of internal antagonism and warfare.
“If you don’t play the politics, it’s management by character assassination,” said Turkel.
At the center of the cultural problems was a management system called “stack ranking.” Every current and former Microsoft employee I interviewed—every one—cited stack ranking as the most destructive process inside of Microsoft, something that drove out untold numbers of employees. The system—also referred to as “the performance model,” “the bell curve,” or just “the employee review”—has, with certain variations over the years, worked like this: every unit was forced to declare a certain percentage of employees as top performers, then good performers, then average, then below average, then poor.
“If you were on a team of 10 people, you walked in the first day knowing that, no matter how good everyone was, two people were going to get a great review, seven were going to get mediocre reviews, and one was going to get a terrible review,” said a former software developer. “It leads to employees focusing on competing with each other rather than competing with other companies.”
[end quote]
Link: http://www.vanityfair.com/business/2012/08/microsoft-lost-mojo-steve-ballmer
Laura H. Chapman: you wrote—“This proposal is efficient and absurd. It is based on the assumption that a district’s value added scores are so highly correlated with “non-value added” measures that employment decisions for all teachers can be based on the performance of teachers with value added scores.”
From Audrey Amrein-Beardsley’s RETHINKING VALUE-ADDED MODELS IN EDUCATION (2014, pp. 45-46) re how the use of VAM affects non-VAM measures. The following are all quotes from teachers re a VAM system in the Houston Independent School District called EVAAS® [Education Value-Added Assessment System]:
[start separate quotes]
“Here’s the problem. No principal wants to be called in by the superintendent or another superior and [asked], ‘How come your teachers show negative growth but you have high evaluations on them? Are you doing your job? I don’t understand. Your teacher shows no growth but you have [marked them] as exceeding expectations all up and down the chart?’ Now it’s not jus this [sic] data over here that’s gonna harm us, it’s the principals [who are] adjusting our data over there to match the EVASS®. So it looks like they’re being consistent.”
“Well my evaluations were fine, but, of course now they have to make the evaluation match the EVASS®.”
“They’re not about to go to bat [for us, although] a few of them will. But most of them are going to go in there, and they‘re going to create a teacher evaluation that reflects the [EVASS®] data because they don’t want to have to explain, again and again, why they’re giving high classroom observation assessments then the data shows [sic] that the teacher is low performing.”
“Our principal pressures us. You bet she pressures. If you don’t [make EVASS®], then it goes against you in your PDAS. In a roundabout way she finds a way to put that against you.”
“My boss had to got to the district superintendent and explain why we needed to be kept, when ultimately the data showed that we weren’t good teachers. [However] you’ve got other good teachers who are being thrown under the bus because of this system.”
“One principal told me one year that even though I had high TAKS scores and high Stanford scores, the fact that my EVASS® scores showed no growth, it would look bad to the superintendent.”
[end separate quotes]
[PDAS = Professional Development and Appraisal System and TAKS = Texas’s Assessment of Knowledge and Skills]
So much for human judgment and expertise to balance out, or correct, VAMania. *See also comments by Old Teacher below.]
Thank you for your comments.
😎
Thanks for reminding me to look again at Audrey Amrein-Beardsley’s very important work on the phenmenon called the “spillover effects” from one metric to another. VAM remains the “gold standard” no matter what the American Statistical Association says. What they said was too late to stop the hard-wiring of that farce into federal and state policy, aided by a huge publicity machine and a bunch of statisticians more interested in building a cash flow and/or reputation that acknowledging it is a stupid way to evaluate teachers. No reliability, no validty…and that goes for Danielson, and the 7C’s student survey both loved by people like Bill Gates who want all teachers to engage in direct instruction to fit the test and “targets” that will pump up the numbers.
Only mass nationwide walkout of ALL educators will bring the entire assault on public education to a screeching halt.
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.
Frederick Douglass
Stop fearing,……………..start FIGHTING!
Dear Lloyd,
Everything you say makes sense, and I hope you will forgive me, for pointing this out, yet again, but my experience informed me, as it did the tens of thousands of veteran teachers who experienced the FIRST assault on tenure… the one that was hidden, and still remains the greatest scandal of our times.
http://www.speakingasateacher.com/SPEAKING_AS_A_TEACHER/No_Constitutional_Rights-_A_hidden_scandal_of_National_Proportion.html
… because– simply put and absolutely the reality— in the 1990s, Americans who happened to be teachers were being already deprived of due process by the UNIONS, who simply looked the other way, as they did in NYC the largest district in the country.
This was in the nineties, Lloyd MORE THAN A DECADE AGO, before Duncan honed the narrative — ‘evaluating ineffective teachers by testing the students”. The final assault , step 3, is the Vergera decision! An insane premise has been validated by a judge, and it was exactly what “they” were waiting for — a perfect talking point for all those who wish to end any teacher’s career in order to save salary, pension and benefits that an educated, experienced professional deserves.
But the ‘rubber-room’ was the TEST PROJECT to see if it would work… if anyone would notice that the schools were being systematically emptied of the veterans by simply accusing them of anything, with no proof, and by delaying any trial for years. By the time any teacher made it to a ‘hearing’ kids had move don, teachers had come and gone, parents who knew the value of that educator were gone… that is why our CONSTITUTION demands a ‘speedy’ resolution.
That first assault worked beyond the wildest dreams of those intent on ending public education. The media sold the lie that the schools were failing, when all they needed was smaller classes, and better support for the professional in the classroom. All this was ongoing
as the media sold “dead-wood”, so the VOICE OF THE TEACHER (like mine) would be SILENCED, and thus, with the removal of the professionals the schools would fail… and be replaced by Charter schools.
https://vimeo.com/4199476
Let me make the first assault, crystal clear, as I have done over and over, here and everywhere for 16 years: the CONTRACTUAL grievance procedures — as outlined in the little white book I have in front of me– “AGREEMENT BETEEN THE BOARD OF EDUCATION OF THE CITY SCHOOL DISTRICT OF THE CITY OF NY, AND THE UNITED FEDERATION OF TEACHERS were not followed.
In my case, if the contract had been followed immediately following the claims of a child that I cursed at her, there would NOT have been a need for a grievance procedure… but due process ended the moment they sent me to the teacher’s jail, the district office, with not a word about WHY!
It was SIX MONTHS more before I could discover the reason for my removal. Why? NO CONTRACTUAL OBLIGATION TO explain, and no charges put forth. None. It was six months later, that the superintendent of the district wrote a LETTER, saying that I and been found guilty of CORPORAL PUNISHMENT based on this allegation of cursing.
Lawless! Talk about due process, my story and every teacher’s story is what was going on in NYC, and then in LAUSD THE 2ND LARGEST DISTRICT IN THE COUNTRY. Does anyone see the PATTERN! Event he same people…Cortines that failed poop from NYC ends up there.
To continue with the timeline of that first assault on DUE PROCESS…. six months later, I filed a grievance, and 4 MILLION DOLLAR LAWSUIT… WHICH GOT THE ATTENTION OF THE D.OE. I was allowed to return, but my room , my research and my library, ALL the materials that I had generated for my famous curricula, studied by the Standards…was gone… I filed a grievance. It went NOWHERE. I should have sued… this was THEFT!
HAD THE CONTRACT BEEN FOLLOWED FROM DAY ONE, the child’s mischievous allegation would have been uncovered in a MEETING with the principal and the mother, and I would have returned to prepare my students for the upcoming NYC reading exam. The parents went crazy when I was gone, because every year since I wrote that curricula the kids were at the top of the city on the exams. They called the district office, they wrote, the screamed… to no avail. WHY?
The conspiracy to end tenure was real and in its infancy, and if a teacher such as I was, could be removed by the simple expedient of denying due process, then it was fuel steam ahead.
Had any of my grievances been followed, an investigation would have allowed me to see evidence, and present rebuttal, but my voice, as guaranteed by The United States CONSTITUTION, had been silenced, as were the voices of ALL the teachers that I met in that rubber room.
Sitting there, –when I first found myself in that storeroom closet that was the rubber room, often crying in frustration and fear– I met Pi Lian Tu, a enormously successful teacher of bilingual ed, whose Chinese immigrant students; IN ONE YEAR under her instruction, these new immigrant 4th grade kids SPOKE, READ AND WROTE English well enough to pass the city test, for ENGLISH SPEAKERS. BUT NONE of the test results that documented the success of her years in practice were presented at her hearing3 YEARS AFTER HER INCARCERATION in that awful room. Nor was the testimony of the parents allowed. Only the principal spoke at her ‘hearing’ and Miss Tu herself was never allowed to speak in her behalf… I have the hearing papers (Tu. gave them to me) but I WAS THERE. Seeing the truth, I eventually settled by retiring… and THEY got the result they desired… a veteran teacher with full credentials who was successful by every measure could have tenure BROKEN.
Now, the want to legalize it.
So, keep writing, Lloyd, and explaining the fallacies, the inaccuracies, and outright lies, but informing your understanding should be the reality of the assault on due process that came before. (and if you have any doubt about it, go to Betsy Combier’s sites where she brilliantly chronicles the first assault, or go to the NAPTA site and just read the stories of teachers across the country who were taken down in that first assault… see the trauma in their experience… and by the way… for the hundred thousand of us Americans who fell in that siege, the trauma was real… so why is the media ( which loves human interest stories) not covering our enormous loss?
I met her, this tiny woman, red-eyed from sleeplessness, and cover din a nervous rash, luring over the pile of ‘documented’ incompetence letters in her file, trying to refute them… as if this was possible. But we did not know that then.
You see, NOW, with the third arm of this assault on Due Process finally before the eye of the public, the novice teachers KNOW something is rotten, when they complete probation and are attacked for ‘ineffectiveness’ thanks to bogus, subjective ‘documentation’ and harassment by the principal. None of us, back then knew, We were BLINDSIDED. Even Dan Rather ‘s reaction was “That’s unbelievable, Susan.” It was…unless you were at the top of your career and fighting the newest allegation… that I had threatened to kill the principal. I have it all in writing… and Lloyd, RANDI AND ADAM ROSS SAW ALL –my documentation of lawlessness, years later…. but THAT is another story
To sum up, thanks to Vergera, a corrupt decision will once and for all, deal the FINAL BLOW to tenure– and to any justice for the professional who makes the mistake of choosing teaching as a career.
I hate auto-correct!
I agree with your assessment of history with one exception: Many more people today know what is happening, though as you say they are mostly unaware of what has come before so we are repeating it. That being said, the difference today is that teachers and parents are far more informed about the issues, not enough of them to be sure, but enough to make a difference. You may yet be vindicated in spirit, though that’s worth little enough at this point.
Observations be darned, my administrator in Clark County, Nevada has stated that they are directed to make sure their observations line up with test scores. After all, they reason, if test scores aren’t high, you can’t be much of a teacher. Low test scores will become the new scarlet letter for teachers, and eventually, for students.
What makes the using of reading test VAM even more ludicrous is that it induces schools to pile on the reading strategy instruction –which doesn’t really work. Rich content makes good readers, but few are brave enough to take this slow, indirect approach when threats of career ruination loom, so spurious quick “fixes” rule the day. Thus “reform” degrades education. Thanks Bill Gates, you genius.
One wonders….at what point in time are [so-called] “teachers” today going to quit making excuses for their failings and, instead, actually work to CORRECT them? In light of their “accomplishments”, don’t they realize that the public is getting a little tired of the “don’t blame me” stuff?
You think? I love your thinking. Her wis something to add to it from someone in LA who saw it coming and wrote this along time ago
http://www.perdaily.com/2014/03/lausd-teacher-kilroy-was-here-and-retribution-wasnt-far-behind.html
http://www.perdaily.com/2014/02/lausds-treacherous-road-from-reed-to-vergara–its-never-been-about-students-just-money.html