Peter Greene analyzes the letter written to state leaders on behalf of Governor Cuomo by the state operations director, Jim Malatros. Cuomo has little direct control of education, except through the budget process, because the State Assembly appoints the state Board of Regents. Nonetheless, Cuomo uses this letter to lay out his aggressive, anti-teacher agenda. He wants an evaluation system that will rate more teachers ineffective. He wants merit pay. He wants a vast expansion of charters, perhaps enough to serve “all” the state’s children.
Clearly, Cuomo doesn’t know that none of his pet ideas have no research or evidence to support them. He doesn’t know that rating teachers by student test scores has proven to be unstable and inaccurate. Even the American Statistical Association warned against using test-based accountability for grading individual teachers. But no one has told the governor.
Merit pay has been tried for nearly a century. It has never worked.
Charters have proven to be no more successful than public schools when they serve the same children, and in some states, they are worse than public schools because their teachers turn over faster, are less qualified, and are often paid less.
Someone should warn the governor.
Someone should, but the Governor, like an angry child, clasps his palms tightly over his ears so he can (will) not hear the truth,
The only “truth” this man knows is the demands of the charter lobby, Wall Street’s proxy, and the cash they provide him.
Seems to echo the letter that Cuomo (who repeatedly self-asserts that he has little power over education in NYS) wrote to Tisch in 2011: http://www.governor.ny.gov/news/governor-cuomo-sends-letter-chancellor-board-regents-regarding-performance-evaluations-teachers
He knows.
When are educators going to fight back?
What does it take? What are you waiting for? This is WAR!
One impediment is our lack of first amendment protections as public employees. The envelope of fear that is silencing so many teachers is based on real legal limitations.
Cuomo needs a trip to the shrink’s office to explore what is the source of his inner RAGE misdirected at public school teachers. He is like the bully who is angered by “x” and instead of dealing with “x” finds it easier to kick “y”…. and of course he is trying his best to kick the heck out of public school teachers. Instead of acting like a neanderthal man (apologies to anthropologists), maybe Cuomo needs to explore his misdirected inner rage!
He’s an idiot berating nonagressive, humble teachers. New Yorkers need to get him out.
We tried. We failed. Our efforts have to be directed at the legislators who will have to pass Cuomo’s plans.
The Gov is in office for at least the next 4 years, and short of him resigning, we have to be resigned to the reality of his vile, loathsome governance.
This blog, 1-12-2014, “Daniel Pink Explains Why Merit Pay Fails Every Time.”
Also note my comments that include information re a failed merit pay system for teachers in England in the latter 19th century.
Link: https://dianeravitch.net/2014/01/12/daniel-pink-explains-why-merit-pay-fails-every-time/
Zombie ideas that never die, just keep coming back to life over and over again…
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I just have to say, after reading the many comments on this blog that people are too passive. Personally, I am angry. I was an educator for 25 years. I know the deal. I know what they’ve been doing to teachers, it started about 10 years ago.
My daughter is an educator, I have a multitude of friends who are educators.
This is unfortunately war.
People need to wake up and act. They need real leadership which I believe Diane is providing through this forum.
Governors can be impeached. Are you willing to do the work???
That is the only real question.
While this “reform” is ruining education for all of the non-elite children in this country, it’s also a war on the working class.
I guess I just take this whole thing so seriously, I would chose to act rather than comment.
I am a teacher also, we are acting very passive. We must speak out and see if it is possible to organize teachers to speak up. We must have demonstrations and organize our PTA to work against the governor.
With every pundit and politician a self appointed “expert” in education, they wouldn’t want to muddy the waters with facts, information, research, reality and the truth. They will continue to peddle their falsehoods and lies as long as enough people keep buying it.
The govenor doesn’t care about public schools or public school children…
We will get him, I hope we the teachers union in NY will be his worst nightmare .We must go everywhere he is and make him uncomfortable. He will lose his temper and show his true colors. He is not a nice man.
It is the business round table and the state’s chambers of commerce who don’t care about public schools or public school teachers. In fact this war on teachers is really only about one thing… union busting.
The business culture today is as corrupt as it has ever been in our country’s history. I think that it will take people risking their lives and their lively-hoods to wrest power from the current oligarchy. Are enough people ready to follow into the fray?
Cuomo is a little man who is a useful front man. He serves his masters well.
I realize this is a trivial matter but even as a product of public schools from the Dark Ages—meaning, pre-cage busting achievement-gap crushing 21st century disruptive innovation—I think Peter Greene is very generous when he writes near the beginning of his blog posting—
“I believe Malatras he is not a careful proofreader. I sympathize. I am the king of speedy mistakes, as my readers can attest. But I’m not on the state payroll, writing documents of record.”
I too am guilty of the same, but I can always blame auto-correct…
Nah, me too.
Yet I remember when even principals (of all people!) of those dreaded “dropout factories” and “factories of failure” aka public schools would have their newsletters and other staff postings proofread by, for example, English teachers. You know, setting a good example, words matter, and all that…
Massage and torture numbers & stats? Twisted logic? Cheerfully contradict yourself over and over again? Demand that public schools be held to standards you casually violate over and over again?
Cheerio mate, but can’t you even write a very short piece in standard English without making careless and sloppy errors?
Or perhaps, just perhaps, I am setting the bar too high. NY 70% sucker punch, er, rigged failure rate, anyone?
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Someone should tell Cuomo that death is a two-way street. In fact, everyone dies eventually—some sooner than others.
“Charters have proven to be no more successful than public schools when they serve the same children . . .”
Perhaps Governor Cuomo was reading DianeRavitch.net a couple of weeks ago during the discussion on Ohio charters, and perhaps he wondered whether CREDO had done any research on New York schools—specifically New York City, where most of the state’s charters are located. It turns out that they have: http://credo.stanford.edu/documents/NYC_report_2013_FINAL_20130219_000.pdf
If one of his “pet ideas” is increasing the number of charter schools in New York State, it appears that there is a sound research foundation to support that decision.
What does that “sound research” have to say?
LOL!
Hey “Tim”. Where have you been? This nonsense you’re citing from that 2013 CREDO glimpse at NYC charters gave a very qualified, limited indication that SOME students, in SOME NYC charters, in SOME instances, under SOME circumstances, MIGHT “outperform” SOME students in SOME public schools, in SOME categories.
And there are people who would even challenge THAT very nuanced, mild, tepid “pro-charter in some schools, in some places” statement.
And that’s before we even deal with the allegations of cherry picking the data by the cited study’s authors, and the cherry picking that goes on right at the outset when these students are chosen to enter the ersatz, “Show Lottery” which is more a Marketing Vehicle than anything else.
Now, if you think that this snippet in an otherwise extremely very murky to critical assessment of charters is a “sound research foundation” you’re either a paid shill, trolling with the hope you can confuse and deny us, or you’re a very fixated ideologue who only wants the outcome he wants, the truth be damned.
I would recommend reading the study’s methodology (beginning on p. 7) and examining the results for at-risk student subgroups (beginning on p. 21). There’s no cherry picking–every student in a charter is matched with students just like him or her who attend the traditional public schools that he or she is zoned for. As Diane said during the discussion of CREDO’s Ohio study, CREDO has “gained a reputation for balance and nonpartisan judgment.”
Click to access NYC_report_2013_FINAL_20130219_000.pdf
Diane’s claim in this post was that “Charters have proven to be no more successful than public schools when they serve the same children.” That may be true nationwide, but there are differences in quality at the state or local level. Ohio charters lag comparable Ohio district schools while New York City’s charters outperform comparable New York City district schools, e.g..
And of course CREDO’s analysis doesn’t touch on things like parent preference or the cost to operate charter schools. Charters are extremely popular among families and much more cost efficient than their district counterparts. They largely serve a hypersegregated population that continues to be left isolated and marginalized by the district system.
Believe it or not, all of my posts are written for free and are not representative of anyone’s thoughts but my own, and if you think that I’m a fixated ideologue, you probably haven’t been reading my comments carefully or for very long.
Cuomo was so sure he was going to win, he vowed to make the evaluation process more difficult in New York and increase the number of charters BEFORE the election, just before, in fact. I warned people NOT to vote for him, both parents and teachers.
When the “reformers” comment on the low numbers of teachers who are ineffective and the higher # of highly effective, what they are saying is that bosses (Principals and Asst. Principals, Superintendent’s, ) cannot accurately judge the very people they hired. They need some outside data to REALLY get to to the heart of the matter. Thank you Bill Gates. Besides so many teachers have no tests in their grades or disciplines, so the whole thing doesn’t hold water.
In business, there are a percentage of slackers. Teaching is no different. Most teachers, a high percentage 95% are effective and so much more. Principals can judge their teaching abilities. Everybody knows who is a star teacher, who does their job, etc Teachers are among the most dedicated professional people I’ve ever worked with. In addition, there are things that can really not be measured, as you know.
However, this isn’t really what this reform nonsense is about. False claims ( testing, etc) justify this reform nonsense to the voters. People in general, have not shown much interest in education in this country. Many people don’t really understand what a charter school is or does, I know they’ve asked me. That is why it’s easy to to put together this so called education reform.
Our fight is a fight for public education, the way we will educate future generations and the way we want to be treated, in this country. The powers currently in office think “we the people” are stupid and are moving forward with yet another agenda of greed through this education reform, but you all already know this.
It’s how to reverse this trend that has my interest, right now.
We need to move forward (armed with facts) in helping the children of this country succeed. We need to vote for ANOTHER party other than the ones out there. We need to learn how to get folks out-of-office, who don’t FIT OUR agenda, an agenda for a free America, not one imprisioned by greed and controlled by a few very wealthy individuals. We need candidates who are ( dare I say it ) for the PEOPLE.
Mostly, I wish people would remember that there is power in numbers.
We are powerful.
This blog has helped people gain more insight and come together in unity on an extremely important issue facing this country, right now.
Now let’s roll.
The expert witnesses from Harvard who testified in the Los Angeles based Vergara trial said they guessed from years of observations that 1% – 3% of teachers were incompetent. The judge ruled that guesstimate was enough for 100% of the teachers in California to lose their due process job rights.
Governor Brown said he was going to appeal that verdict.
In 2012-13, there were 295,093 teachers in California’s 10,366 public schools teaching more than 6.2 million students.
If we only use the high 3% guesstimate, that means there were 8,853 incompetent teachers leaving at least 1,500 schools without even one incompetent teacher to fire.
The word that comes to mind is BULLY. Cuomo is a bully.
Which is very odd…..tragic, really.
I mean here we are… our schools and our families trying to deliver the message to our children that bullying is wrong. And, here’s our governor, the bully.
And, make no mistake, that’s how most people perceive Cuomo. That’s how he behaves. And he seems to revel in his bullying, too. It’s sick. And, this is the man who wants even more control of our public schools? Over our kids’ lives? Cuomo, the so-called “Prince of Darkness.” Darth Cuomo. Our own mini-Nixon, as someone on this blog so aptly described him.
I don’t know how much it costs to buy space on a billboard. But I imagine a huge one towering over the Route 87 N approach into Albany. Cuomo’s glowering puss, his shark-like stare. with the words, “Stop the Bully! Protect Our Kids!” Boy, I’d kick in money for something like that.
I imagine Cuomo sitting in the backseat of some huge SUV speeding up the highway. And, then he spots it. The billboard looming over his state, his capital, his highway. Yup, he’d see his own big, ugly head, with the truth written there in huge letters for all to see. He would explode. The doors would blow off his SUV. He’d flip OUT.
Good.
John, you wrote:
“I don’t know how much it costs to buy space on a billboard. But I imagine a huge one towering over the Route 87 N approach into Albany. Cuomo’s glowering puss, his shark-like stare. with the words, “Stop the Bully! Protect Our Kids!” Boy, I’d kick in money for something like that.”
And so would I! What a terrific idea. We CAN do this! Can you spearhead this? Or can you find someone who can, like a recent retiree or an “empty nested” parent with some time on their hands and justice in this soul?
PLEASE do this! Thank you for this superb idea. I promise $100 bucks or more once you’re ready to launch!
Thanks. I’ve always looked at billboards and thought, hmmm… And, if was ever going to do the billboard thing, now would be the time. I looked up billboards in Albany just now and saw that a relatively small one went for $1,250. So, the really BIG one I envision must go for much more. Funny thing is, the $100 you mention was the same number I had rolling around in my head, too.
I’m quite a distance from Albany….though maybe if I get an invite to the governor’s New Year’s Eve “open house” I’ll be up there soon. I did put in the official application for the event…..we’ll see…
Now every time I see a billboard I’ll be thinking about this….it’s one of those ideas that will stick in my brain for quite a while….
Take care
Carla & Lloyd Lofthouse: actual math and critical thinking, oh my…
Count me in!
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This blog. Posting: “The Statistical Error at the Heart of the Vergara Decision.” It’s worth the time to read the comments on the thread of this posting.
Link: https://dianeravitch.net/2014/06/13/the-statistical-error-at-the-heart-of-the-vergara-decision/
[start entire posting]
Jordan Weissman, a business correspondent for Slate, read the Vergara decision and noted that the judge’s conclusion hinged on a strange allegation. The judge quoted David Berliner as saying that 1-3% of the teachers in the state were “grossly ineffective.” The judge then calculated that this translated into thousands of teachers, between 2,750 and 8,750, who are “grossly ineffective.”
Weissman called Professor Berliner and asked where the number 1-3% came from. Dr. Berliner said it was a “guesstimate,”
He told Weissman, “It’s not based on any specific data, or any rigorous research about California schools in particular. “I pulled that out of the air,” says Berliner, an emeritus professor of education at Arizona State University. “There’s no data on that. That’s just a ballpark estimate, based on my visiting lots and lots of classrooms.” He also never used the words “grossly ineffective.” And he does not support the judge’s belief that teacher quality can be judged by student test scores.
Dr. Berliner mailed Weissman a copy of the transcript to show that he did not use the term “grossly ineffective.”
Weissman then called Stuart Biegel, a law professor and education expert at UCLA, to ask him “whether he thought that the odd origins of the 1–3 percent figure might undermine Treu’s decision on appeal. Biegel, who represented the winning plaintiffs in one of the key cases Treu cited, said it might. But he thought that the decision’s “poor legal reasoning” and “shaky policy analysis” would be bigger problems. “If 97 to 99 percent of California teachers are effective, you don’t take away basic, hard-won rights from everybody. You focus on strengthening the process for addressing the teachers who are not effective, through strong professional development programs, and, if necessary, a procedure that makes it easier to let go of ineffective teachers,” he wrote to me in an email.”
[end entire posting]
Additional point: FLERP! pointed out that the phrase “grossly ineffective” smacks of legalese. And to emphasize re David Berliner: the 1-3 % was a “guesstimate” that he “pulled … out of the air” that was not based on research.
Last point re David Berliner’s testimony. Go to Jan Ressenger’s blog of 6/16/2014, “David Berliner—Witness in Vergara Courtroom—Denies He Called Any Teachers ‘Grossly Ineffective’” in which she notes:
[start quote]
In Weissman’s inteview with David Berliner, Berliner explains: “In hundreds of classrooms, I have never seen a ‘grossly ineffective’ teacher. I don’t know anybody who knows that that means.” Berliner told Weissman that he believes test scores are not a good way to evaluate teachers. Teachers “might do the things well in the classroom that don’t show on an exam, like teach social skills, or inspire their students to love reading or math.”
[end quote]
Ah, the rheephorm version of the Golden Rule: “He who has the gold, makes the rules.” And makes the definitions.
Or to put it in the terms of one of those non-informational texts with which David Coleman is unacquainted:
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” [ALICE IN WONDERLAND]
The spin, hype and selling points of the self-styled “education reform” movement fall apart at the slightest application of facts, logic and decency.
Thank y’all for your comments.
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To Carla
December 22, 2014 at 6:21 pm
Here is the best advice from Teacher Rendo Robert:
“Put up your dukes, everyone. A herd of water buffalo can beat the crap out of the most vicious of lions and tigers . . . . . . Power in organized numbers.”
Carla, the real reason that Vietnamese Communists can win the 30 year-war against American is because they got helps from both Russia and China for weapons and foods. Most of all, communists apply sneaky strategies like digging a long tunnel, or sniping from on trees’ and mountains’ top, with the help of southern gullible patriots, uneducated/fearful farmers, middle men doing business for self-gain profit, and prostitutes to attack randomly on American soldiers and commanders.
As a result, since you call out for action, I suggest a solution in which American people must eliminate all bad insiders such as union leaders who are corrupted; must fight for the Due Process and Tenure protection; must boycott the appointed style in superintendent position and all Board of Education members seats; must demand legislators’ accountability; must have independent Supreme Court judicial system that is composed by people who are three generation born, raised, and educated throughout American Public Education System from K-12 to Higher Education regardless of race, classes, and parental background.
Hopefully, with some solid aspects, Public Higher Education will nurture the best leaders of all field to serve society meaningfully. I must be a dreamer because the rich and the power hunger are NEVER considerate. They are bully, whereas the poor and the weak are labelled as lazy and a burden. In the mean time, the not rich, not poor but smart and strong enough are able to fight back for their needs. Some will sacrifice their own needs for a greater cause – humanity, but most will submit their dignity in the return of the meager fame and fortune. That is a reality. Back2basic
I’m still rollin’! I don’t want to stay back and pontificate. I’m moving full steam. Hope someday you’ll do the same.
When I do write it will be about moving forward.
Women would never have gotten to vote if we said, “there’s nothing we can do about it”
The way children are to be educated, in this country is about to change drastically.
It reminds me of a story by Isaac Asimov called “The Fun They Had”.
Read it! You will then know the future of education, in this country.
Thank you all.
I read the story, Carla. Found it just now. It’s kind of cool. And, the fact that it was written in 1951 is amazing, really.
Of course, we’re not only changing (very rapidly) how we feel about technology. Technology shapes how we think and feel about ourselves, as humans. That point came across loud and clear in the story.
“The Fun They Had”. It makes me wonder about the quality vs. the quantity of “fun” we have in our culture now……