Governor Cuomo insisted on a teacher evaluation law that relies heavily on test scores. And he got it as part of budget negotiations. A teacher who is rated “ineffective” on the test scores cannot receive an effective rating no matter what his/her scores on observations and other measures. Test scores trump all. Here is a summary of the bill that passed last night.
It makes no sense for politicians to tell school leaders how to evaluate educators. The definition of a profession is that it is self-regulating. Teaching in Néw York will be closely regulated by the state. Local control will pass into history.
Carl Heastie, the leader of the State Assembly, controlled by Democrats, said the Assembly would pass the budget despite their discomfort with the education proposals. What matters most, he says, is an on-time budget.
Consider the elements that may NOT be included in teachers’ evaluations:
“6. PROHIBITED ELEMENTS. THE FOLLOWING ELEMENTS SHALL NO LONGER BE ELIGIBLE TO BE USED IN ANY EVALUATION SUBCOMPONENT PURSUANT TO THIS SECTION:
A. EVIDENCE OF STUDENT DEVELOPMENT AND PERFORMANCE DERIVED FROM LESSON PLANS, OTHER ARTIFACTS OF TEACHER PRACTICE, AND STUDENT PORTFOLIOS, EXCEPT FOR STUDENT PORTFOLIOS MEASURED BY A STATE-APPROVED RUBRIC WHERE PERMITTED BY THE DEPARTMENT;
B. USE OF AN INSTRUMENT FOR PARENT OR STUDENT FEEDBACK;
C. USE OF PROFESSIONAL GOAL-SETTING AS EVIDENCE OF TEACHER OR PRINCIPAL EFFECTIVENESS;
D. ANY DISTRICT OR REGIONALLY-DEVELOPED ASSESSMENT THAT HAS NOT BEEN APPROVED BY THE DEPARTMENT; AND
E. ANY GROWTH OR ACHIEVEMENT TARGET THAT DOES NOT MEET THE MINIMUM STANDARDS AS SET FORTH IN REGULATIONS OF THE COMMISSIONER ADOPTED HERE- UNDER.”
In addition, future state aid is tied to districts’ compliance with the evaluation law, written by non-educators with no knowledge of research or practice:
NOTWITHSTANDING ANY INCONSISTENT PROVISION OF LAW, NO SCHOOL DISTRICT SHALL BE ELIGIBLE FOR AN APPORTIONMENT OF GENERAL SUPPORT FOR PUBLIC SCHOOLS FROM THE FUNDS APPROPRIATED FOR THE 2015–2016 SCHOOL
YEAR AND ANY YEAR THEREAFTER IN EXCESS OF THE AMOUNT APPORTIONED TO SUCH SCHOOL DISTRICT IN THE RESPECTIVE BASE YEAR UNLESS SUCH SCHOOL DISTRICT HAS SUBMITTED DOCUMENTATION THAT HAS BEEN APPROVED BY THE COMMISSIONER
BY NOVEMBER FIFTEENTH, TWO THOUSAND FIFTEEN, OR BY SEPTEMBER FIRST OF
EACH SUBSEQUENT YEAR, DEMONSTRATING THAT IT HAS FULLY IMPLEMENTED THE
STANDARDS AND PROCEDURES FOR CONDUCTING ANNUAL TEACHER AND PRINCIPAL EVALUATIONS OF TEACHERS AND PRINCIPALS IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE REQUIRE-
MENTS OF THIS SECTION AND THE REGULATIONS ISSUED BY THE COMMISSIONER.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I agree with the statement that “It makes no sense for politicians to tell school leaders how to evaluate educators. The definition of a profession is that it is self-regulating.”
The reason that these laws are being passed is because the profession has not been self-regulating and school leaders being in control (to the degree that they are) has not worked. A system that rates 98% of teachers as “satisfactory” is not useful.
Most of the prohibitions and processes are meant to remove the totally subjective from the evaluation because it has been repeatedly abused.
How about NYSUT proposing a comprehensive evaluation rubric and some means for ensuring objective ratings? Personally, I’d like to see evaluation teams of senior teachers that score and document against a rubric, and I’d also like to see growth vs. expected growth on a norm referenced test (which I believe has much more value than comparing year over year on a criterion referenced test).
You are a broken record here John, constantly claiming that the profession refused to self-regulate, which is a lie. plain and simple.
The teacher professional organizations, the national unions, the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, and many state departments of education have been experimenting quite successfully with teacher evaluation for decades.
MA and KY both had portfolio and senior teacher evaluation just as you have wished for that were gutted by NCLB and RTTT.
The whole premise of your repeated comment is that teachers are incompetent, that teacher preparation programs fail to prepare teachers, that administrators and school boards/districts fail to monitor and support teachers in their practice and that is total hogwash.
Data has been created out of whole cloth to support Milton Friedman’s fever dream of free market education, including making the false claim that most teachers are incompetent.
Gerry Bracey refuted this nonsense again and again during his lifetime.
No matter how difficult and punitive the system they throw at us we are rated effective because we are. Constantly raising the bar and setting goals that are literally impossible to achieve like we do here in Florida is all that is left to prove this tired, worn-out, failed theory that conservatives, neoconservatives, neoliberals, billionaires, and ideologues can’t let go of no matter how many times it is proven wrong.
Insanity, thy name is reformist!
He’s not just a broken record.
He’s a broken, uninformed, misinforming record.
He has no clue what he is talking about.
Just one example that tells you all you need to know.
He made the statement above that “A system that rates 98% of teachers as “satisfactory” is not useful.”
That claim indicates a fundamental misunderstanding on John’s part.
The mere fact that “98% of teachers are rated as “satisfactory” does not necessarily mean that the system is not useful any more than saying a QC “system that rates 98% of threaded fasteners as “satisfactory” means that the system is not useful.”
It might not be useful or it might be. One needs the details to know either way. The “98% satisfactory” rating can not alone be used to make a determination of “usefulness”.
For example, if one has determined that fasteners which meet certain specifications for various measurements (within given tolerances) are ‘satisfactory” (for a particular purpose), then a calibrated system that rates 98% of fasteners as “satisfactory” is most certainly useful.
It tells you that 98% of fasteners met the specs. If these fasteners came out of your manufacturing process, it also tells you that your process is running well (within tolerances)
That John is so utterly clueless about something so basic tells us that “discussing/debating” with him is itself “not useful”
It must be comforting to hide in the theoretical. In the real world, people aren’t mechanical parts that meet spec or not. They are human beings, and some are better at their jobs than others, a point that teachers and unions refuse to acknowledge.
That 98% satisfactory included first-year teachers and 30-year teachers, those with master’s degrees and those with provisional certifications and bachelor’s degrees. The insistence on teachers being non-differentiated, and therefore completely interchangeable is why teachers are getting treated exactly like that.
John,
It has nothing to do with mechanical vs human or theoretical vs real world.
It has to do with the fact that it is simply not valid to conclude that a rating system (****any rating system***) is “not useful” merely because it rates 98% (of teachers, fasteners, or whatever) as “satisfactory”.
You simply can not draw that conclusion in isolation without further information.
That’s the whole point. What “further information” could be used to validate whether this evaluation system is accurate?
A rating system can be “not useful” because it doesn’t provide a spread of values. “Useful” here means something different than “valid”.
If some rating system rated doctors as 98% “satisfactory”, it can’t be used to find a good doctor. It can only be used to avoid the worst 2%.
John,
You are talking in circles.
Stop digging.
What evidence do you have that more than 2% of teachers are unsatisfactory?
I find it notable that you are saying the field is not “self regulating” because too few teachers are being found incompetent, and then you critique the measures that would actually represent what goes on in classrooms as “totally subjective”.
But your “standard” is also entirely subjective, and it reflects the Governor’s repeated appeal to “obviousness” that a much greater percentage of teachers MUST be incompetent.
But WHAT valid measures determine that the many more teachers deserve to lose their jobs? And — just to be clear — a standardized test whose cut scores are deliberately set to mark 70% of students below proficiency is not a valid measure.
I suspect the troll would want norm referenced teacher evaluations. Keep firing the bottom 10% until all teachers are above average.
And teach to the standards and to the test like your hair and face are on fire . . . .
John has a very low standard of evidence and truth.
As you can see here , it is not beneath him to call someone a liar and as “evidence” indicate that they claimed something that they did not actually say.
I do not see a high “satisfactory” rating as a problem. Isn’t that the goal? Your argument is ” we will achieve more highly rated teachers by ensuring most teachers are not highly rated”. Sign. The logic of Reform.
Teacher bashers such as yourself do not truly want excellent education. The idea seems to be punish teachers as some perverse form of retribution for imagined offenses. Your minds are made up. You really do not want great teachers, only cheap teachers.
Not all schools are failing by any definition. Those that struggle have a clear correlation with poverty and parent involvement.
Anybody in a classroom knows you will never get an effective objective system of evaluation. Rubrics, metrics, algorithms, standardized tests – they are no replacement to administrators knowing the teachers and student populations. It has been tried in business for years which has led to, not a meritocracy, but cronyism and failure.
And let’s not forget that Montgomery County, Md. uses a peer evaluation system that is successful because it allows for due process and staff development while never judging by test scores. This should be the model for the whole country, but it would put Pearson out of business.
I’m going to agree with you John. In addition, I think the problem we’ve been seeing in education has really been the fault of educators, both the teachers and the administrators who were formally teachers. It’s funny how I am saying all this, even though I am completely against charters, vman and any privatization of school services. School evaluation system is horrible, including support staff. Its generic and most people don’t have time to do it properly. When staff have misconduct, while technically there is system in place to deal with it, it is usually cumbersome and many principals just put up with it due to other pressures they are facing. The union should have been working with management to come up with a new system.
Instead of “due process” system that currently is in place and I think is cumbersome, they should replace it with “reasonable process”.
In addition, I’ve worked with administrators and while they have a lot of “content” knowledge, as in they understand what is going on in a classroom and can interpret all the things that go into it, their technical skills are horrible. For example, putting them in charge of units that are IT related, etc. They should serve as an advisory role, rather than management. In my school they are managerial positions and they stink. Then they hire other teachers (some good but most bad) and put them in management positions making 100-140k a year with no experience managing a group of adults or making good decisions. To me, something has got to change. Not sure about the privatization part but something has to change.
What about the fifth and fourteenth amendments to the Constitution.
“In addition, I’ve worked with administrators and while they have a lot of “content” knowledge, as in they understand what is going on in a classroom and can interpret all the things that go into it,. . . ”
HA, HA, HA, Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. That’s a good one.
My experiences in twenty years has shown just the opposite.
hat about the fifth and fourteenth amendments to the Constitution.
Uh? We are talking about firing people, not court of law. There should not be the same standards.
“Reasonable process” sounds Orwellian. Sort of like “we’ll have laws until we don’t agree with them”. Fairness can be cumbersome. It can be so much easier to just get rid of people on a whim rather than actually create a system of justice and reason. My bet is if you were on the receiving end of false accusations, discrimination and harassment, or incompetent management, you would be the first screaming for fairness.
The anecdote you describe sounds more like the goofiness that goes on in private sector companies. There is a reason the Dilbert cartoons are funny. But around here, teachers accused of misconduct are often gone in a week or two. The only ones to drag it out were a couple bible thumpers who wanted to impose their form of religion on students. And they probably vote Republican.
I do not agree on administrators having strong content knowledge. I do have some great administrators who can lead as teaching mentors. But I also had one guy at a past placement that taught phys ed and was trying to critique my trig lesson. I wouldn’t tell him how to coach soccer. I have found colleagues in math are better judges if content.
You are right. Something has to change. We need to stop the national past time of teacher bashing.
Mathvale,
I never said remove teachers on a whim. I said you shouldn’t have to prove “beyond a reasonable doubt” type of situation. I know of many investigations where you couldn’t prove beyond a reasonable doubt but boy if the info was made public, you would have 75%+ of the parents remove their kids from that class. When you have situations where multiple students are saying the same thing, from different years and who don’t know each other, there is a very good chance that it is correct.
One example would be a teacher offering alcohol to a student. This happened to my sister-in-law almost 30 years back. If she had made that accusation, there would be no evidence other than her word. However, a school district should record that accusation, keep it permanently in their main office records, investigate it and if years pass and another student makes a similar accusation who has no connection with the prior student or even knew about it, that teacher should be fired. In likelihood however, that teacher after the 2nd accusation would probably be paid off to quit or retire early. That is how the system is setup today.
A thorough investigation would usually spot a student who made it up.
…nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law;” (5th)
…nor shall any State deprive any person lf life, liberty, or property, without due
process of law; (14) “Due process” not once, but twice. Not reasonable process.
You must be in a city system. High priced managers are not the norm in smaller suburban and rural systems with a stress on the high priced. Frankly, I have seen a trend toward administrators who spent very little time in a classroom with the incursion of the corporate mantra. The classroom for many of administrators was a way stop on the path to administration if they ever taught at all. As the requirement to have significant teaching experience has been reduced, administrators who are effective managers of a teaching staff are much rarer. I would have the same problem with you with administrators with no IT background being put in charge of IT. I seriously doubt that that is a common occurrence in a district that is heavily computerized. Frankly if your experience with public schools is so awful, I am surprised you are not a cheerleader for privatization. You have had nothing good to say about the public system.
What percentage of teacher firings do you propose as a target for annual turnover?
All ratings of human performance are based on judgments.
They are not objective.
They can be consistent and reliable. That does not make them valid. That does not make them objective.
You then recommend a rubric system for evaluations by senior teachers. There is no research to support that method of evaluation, especially if, like the Danielson and Marzano rubrics, you have four or five options for rating each of twenty or more “critical attributes” of teaching.
What we do not need is any one-size-fits all rating system based on the proposition (usually unstated) that excellent teaching in kindergarten can and should be rated on the same basis as teaching an advanced placement course in history, and so on.
Any norm referenced test requires cut off scores that will create winners and losers without providing much information of use on how instruction might be improved.
Your use of the terms growth and expected growth refer to gains in test scores…numbers.. not full spectrum thinking about human growth and development mediated by instruction in school, and by the many Influences on student learning that arise from factors beyond school.
Norm referenced tests do not exist for a majority of teaching assignments. Florida is trying to develop norm referenced tests for every grade and every subject. Think about that –grades for art in Kindergarten, college and career ready or else, same for music, for math, for science and so on…and we are not yet in first grade.
I do agree that it is time for some “back to the drawing board” thinking about qualities of wonderful teaching, but that requires some fresh thinking not just a tweaking of existing policies and practices.
Laura and all,
I don’t know what the right answer is on evaluation, but I know it’s not the previous system, which had zero differentiation, and I know it’s not the new system based on state test scores on one hand and subjective criteria that resulted in almost all effective and highly effective teachers.
The profession has always fought differentiation and continues to do so now. In NY, more than 95% of teachers were effective or highly effective. Do you think that less than 5% of teachers are even “developing” in any meaningful sense of the word? Do you think 42% of teachers are “highly effective” rather than just effective?
Most teachers will acknowledge a set of teachers in their building that they consider very effective. They’ll also acknowledge a few who probably shouldn’t be teaching. But when it comes down to any plan that rates teachers that way, they resist. That takes the form of shooting down any proposal while failing to come up with an alternative.
Will there be problems with any evaluation system? Sure. But, we can’t measure a proposed system against perfection, we have to measure it against what we have right now. And, we have to measure it based on its effects for both teachers and students.
I agree that there have been good pilot studies on evaluation. Which one does NYSUT support? Or what have they proposed? I honestly think they are their own worst enemies, thinking that delaying and pushing back will keep things as they were. Now, they are doubling down by endorsing opt out in a transparent attempt to pretend this is about over-testing of kids rather than APPR.
As everyone here agrees, their strategy is not working out so well so far.
John,
I wonder what percentage of people are terminated annually in the other professions. I mean, are more lawyers terminated annually for being ineffective than teachers are? How about doctors? The percentage of of CPAs, engineers, lawyers, doctors, dentists, etc who lose their jobs annually for being ineffective better be more than the 2% of teachers who are ineffective and, by your estimation, should be fired.
Because if less than 2% of the other professions lose their jobs annually (they are ineffective) AND those professions have the “self-regulating” mechanisms in place you approve of, well, why would we be surprised that teachers have similar ratings?
Or in other words, if 98% of the people in other professions are essentially rated as effective each year by virtue of keeping their jobs, why is it odd to you that teachers are rated similarly?
rockhound, I didn’t say anything at all about firing some percentage of teachers. I’d like to see there be some easier mechanism for this in extreme cases, but I don’t think ranking and then firing some percentage is remotely fair or appropriate.
But since you asked, 1.7% of doctors and 1% of lawyers lose their licenses.
John,
In other words, you have no solution other than throw out what we have how. How reformy. It could very well be most teachers in a system are satisfactory. You do not know and just make assumptions. Before anybody proposes solutions from on high, they should be made to understand the problems they are trying to solve. Right now, we have plenty of self appointed experts who insist they know more than the teachers, and can work miracles if only those pesky educators would get out of the way of learning.
The body of human knowledge and experience stands on the shoulders of giants. We don’t cut them off at the knees and push them over.
If we want great education system into the future, the first step is to listen to teachers, not politicians and billionaires. Mentoring has worked well for thousands of years. Why are we ignoring history? A scorched earth policy in education just creates chaos, churn, and trades one set of problems for another. A smarter approach is to build on what we have.
MathVale,
I’m not proposing a system because I think teachers/unions should propose it. I think the only criteria is that it has to show some differentiation between teachers.
Also, my point isn’t to try to push an eval system or defend any of them. My point is that failure to get behind a good one is what has led to bad ones being imposed.
John,
I appreciate your most recent comment but your OP suggests that we simply devise a system, any system, that achieves the goal of firing a certain percentage of teachers regardless of anything. That’s just silly.
In your last post, you answer your own question. What system would work? You admit ignorance here when Chris in Florida provided a whole series of things that were progressive and done prior to NCLB.
The problem is that standardized tests have an outsized influence on education. It’s a simple metric, that can be easily manipulated and can be used to justify any number of policy choices. (It’s like the common metaphor regarding a hammer. It can be a useful tool but it can also break a window.)
To your last point, judging any human performance is subjective. And allowances should be made. For example, I run a once-weekly after school chess club. I do it for free and everyone is invited. Kids who won’t leave the high school (because no one is home) need a place to be. We discovered that many of our disinterested students were fascinated with chess (for whatever reason). I only had 2 of my 20 regulars in an actual class. The attendance rates of EVERY one of these students increased because they wanted to come on chess days and I established sound interactions with them. Their grades improved noticeably. In any system you suggest, I would receive no positive effect on my rating for this.
So yeah, there’s a reason for subjective allowances.
Twiceborn,
Your complaint is about administrators. Not teachers. And to be honest with you, many administrators that I’ve encountered moved up for one or more of the following reasons: they liked working in a school but didn’t like teaching; they weren’t good teachers to begin with; they wanted a raise; they wanted to become higher ranked administrators (superintendents).
The problem is that administrators in the U.S. self-select. They are not chosen for their great teaching skills but rather because they bothered to get grad degrees in educational leadership.
A second problem is that principals are trained to be building managers, not teacher evaluators in many instances. Teacher evaluation is but one small piece of what an administrator must do daily. (Bringing in outside evaluators is even worse because I don’t want to be judged on the basis of someone watching 3-5 lessons of the 700+ I provide each year. Plus they have no idea what I contribute to the school otherwise.)
Remember, this proposed NY system of evaluation also re,moves every teachers desire to do anything extra. It ALL comes down to the test. Any time a teacher spends not preparing lessons and students for the test is time lost to the testing god. Don’t coach, serve on committees, be class sponsors or chaperone events. They don’t count. At all. Just serve the monolithic test.
Steve K,
No, I don’t think we device a system that results in a percentage of teachers being fired. I think there’s a lot of space between a system that differentiates and that.
I like systems such as the ones Chris in Florida discusses. Which one does NYSUT endorse? My point is that they won’t endorse any because they are hoping to avoid all.
Also, I agree that test scores are not the sum total of teacher value, but neither are they worth nothing.
Regarding your club experiences, it seems unions fight any measurement based on attendance as well, despite the fact that, as you say, teachers are able to influence it quite a bit.
John,
I appreciate the response. I don’t teach in NY. I’m in Michigan where our governor would love such a system. He’s a CEO hard-data guy.
I know that in my district, we re-did teacher evaluation with the inclusion of administrators, teachers, our local union chief and parents.
We developed a system where no one emerged with exactly what they wanted. Our lead facilitator (from an outside entity) asked us to follow the standard of “good enough.” Basically, can everyone live with it?
It isn’t the greatest system but it can be used to make a case against unprofessional teachers. And our union local endorsed it. We aren’t exactly a bomb-throwing union local. I think your issue has more to do with what you perceive as union power and less to with actual teachers.
Steve K,
Exactly, but it’s not really my issue; it’s my observation about why the legislature continues to make laws that enforce lousy systems. They are negotiating with a state union that does not want a system such as what you described, and they are fighting it in every way possible. And, I might add, losing.
I fear the result will be continued lousy eval systems that are unfair to teachers.
“Personally, I’d like to see evaluation teams of senior teachers that score and document against a rubric, and I’d also like to see growth vs. expected growth on a norm referenced test…” blah blah blah yadda yadda yadda…”
Such mendacious tripe. And boy, are you ever Full Of It!
TRANSLATION: Personally, I’d like to see anything “public” and anything “union” be starved of funding, blamed for everything, and ultimately destroyed because I’m an obsessed ideologue who sees teachers as “lazy”, “dumb”, “incompetent” and who live off of my extremely difficult and highly critical to society for-profit employment!
And I hate them because we pay them a WHOPPING $40K to $60K in the year 2015, allow them a few weeks off in the summer while their students are doing the same, and (GASP! How Dare They!) get a pension and can only be fired for reasons of genuine, proven incompetency and/or malfeasance. (Because EVERYONE knows that the only “legitimate” work is for private, for-profit companies; everything else is “fraud, waste and theft!”)
So stop the pretentious, tedious, pedantic, BS lectures that make you sound like a big bag of gas.
Like most so-called “reformers” your REAL motivation is either greed—you see an opening to “make a killing” from the tax dollars we citizens and parents pay to educate our children, while you see it only as “potential revenue” for your company executives and large investors—or a visceral, sickening, antipathy for teachers that probably started in your childhood or when you graduated from comic books to Milton Friedman’s equally bizarre and delusional fantasy-based writings.
Stop the pretense that somehow this garbage being pushed on us by a handful of billionaires and willing shills and functionaries like yourself—please, save the ersatz denials; it’s SO obvious what you are—is somehow “scientific” or “proven”. It’s neither. And deep down you probably know it too. But you apparently don’t care because you want your money and/or your “Ideological Fix of Teacher/Union/Public Sector Hatred”.
I don’t care much for people with your mentality. Stick to Fox “News” where at least the constant echoes will sound just as obtuse and twisted as your own.
Puget Sound Parent,
You are so wrong about me, yet so sure of yourself that I’m not going to bother trying to correct you.
I stuck to facts and clearly stated opinions. You decided to call me a “bag of gas”. What are you, 3 years old?
I’ll forward your post to Wikipedia as a great example of a “straw man” argument. Set it up and knock it down. You don’t even need anybody else in the conversation you are having with yourself.
What’s your plan for teacher evaluation?
The argument is that ineffective teachers make up 3 to 5% of staff and we come in at 4% ineffective. What’s the problem there?
Opps.. I thought it was 96%. 🙂
Honestly, I don’t have a problem with the ineffective ratings. They seem reasonable to me at this point. I just don’t think that 45% should be highly effective and 5% (or whatever it is) should be developing.
I think we should figure out a way to have 20%-ish be consider the best. I also “developing” should apply to teachers who are learning their craft or who have serious challenges in the classroom that need to be worked on.
I also don’t think that year over year NYS test scores are the right way to measure. I also think there are multiple measures that are important, but getting something based on objective assessments is important.
A doctor tells patient to stop smoking. Patient tries, but is unable to quit. Is doctor ineffective? Teacher has student from difficult home situation – crime, addiction, etc. cones to school maybe once or twice a week. Doesn’t do homework. Teacher meets with parent but parent is not able to control child’s ( 16 year old male ) behavior. Teacher is ineffective? The last is not hypothetical – my daughter is a teacher in NYC and this is just ONE student of many. You cannot rate teachers or doctors using patient/student outcomes as the most important market. Why this isn’t common sense to all puzzles me.
rickfrank,
You can’t rate one teacher based on one student, nor one doctor based on one patient.
You can look at averages and see the success rate for implementing stop smoking programs and to what degree the doctors delivering them are successful.
Do you doubt that there are doctors who are more effective at this than others? Or are they all the same?
If different, wouldn’t you want to go to one that has proven results with similar populations? Or wouldn’t you want your children to do the same?
Most doctors do not have diverse patient populations but serve communities that are currrently segregated by wealth. So to judge a doctor by average patient outcome is not valid if we can agree that low income populations served by doctors have less flexible jobs ( no time to go to a luxury like a gym), are more likely to smoke ( just look around at who smokes, again common sense/observation ) and less access to healthy food ( food desert, junk food cheaper than healthy food). Likewise, look around. Just observe. Wealthy neighborhoods tend to have better students. Property tax based funding has a lot to do with how much you can pay teachers , how much you can afford to spend on buildings , etc. So I submit that even basing outcomes on averages is not valid because we as a society are segregated by wealth if not race. And those wealthy people who do live in the city opt out of public schools and have concierge doctors , because who wouldn’t if they could afford it?
Rick,
All valid points. The models attempt to adjust for this by using growth, as opposed to absolute scores, and by looking at expected growth relative to incoming score and poverty level of school.
If we look at the average change in scores of all students with a particular base score and. Particular level of poverty, we start to get something that IMO is valuable if there wre enough students to constitute an average.
For sure, the models need work, and I think there has to be human element that can adjust for exceptional circumstances.
My point isn’t to defend an evaluation system, it is to say that such a thing has to exist and that I think teachers should be out in front creating it instead of having bad plans inflicted on them.
Agreed that the teachers should have the say. But that get’s back to the argument that some say they haven’t been able to do that – “98 % of teachers are effective” being seen as a statement that they cannot “police” themselves. To get back to the model, I mentioned that only ONE of my daughter’s students had home and life issues affecting educational success. I emphasized ONE because she has many if not a majority (she teaches in a public school in Harlem) with similar situations. She has no “power” to get her kids to come to school. And often they don’t show up. Sometimes they don’t have subway money. Sometimes they’re in jail for smoking a joint. So, now she has to get them all to pass the NYS Regents exam? How is that even possible? It’s not. And she will now be considered in-effective, she believes, given the test counts for 50 % of her evaluation. She went to a good college and was part of Teach For America (which she now realizes is a sham program), and finished her master’s this year and WANTS to stay in teaching and WANTS to stay at this school (if you can believe it). So, NYS may lose a bright energetic young teacher because of this? Ridiculous at the least.
rickfrank,
I’m very sympathetic and respect your daughter’s desire to teach in a challenging situation. I agree that this plan is terrible.
My only position is that, in the best interests of students, there should be some way of knowing whether she (or any other teacher) is doing a good job or not. In the regular workplace, we have bosses or customers who make that decision. In public education, we have essentially no decision made because principals are unable to make any decision other than granting or not granting tenure.
Principals therefore can’t be held accountable for anything either, nor can schools. Accountability is a trade-off; you get more responsibility in exchange for more accountability. When you’re not accountable for larger goals, you end up getting micromanaged. At the moment, we essentially having the legislature micromanaging teachers, which is ridiculous.
Most here think the push for accountability is coming from a desire to prove public schools failing followed by privatization. I’m sure there are some who want it for that reason. But, in my experience, most honestly want what’s best for kids. The two sides are not engaging to come up with something workable.
The result is lousy, but I think as long as both sides point fingers at the other and question their motives, no progress will be made.
John, if you would read the research–especially the statements by the American Statistical Association and a joint one by the National Academy of Education and the American Educational Research Association–you would understand that these are invalid measures. If we measured doctors’ quality by their morbidity, our “best” doctors would be dermatologists and our “worst” would be heart surgeons and oncologists. There would professional development sessions to teach the latter how to get the low morbidity rates of dermatologists.
From Goldhaber’s paper in the AEA issue:
“Several studies (discussed in the following section) that simulate the effects of using value-added estimates for high-stakes purposes suggest there may be significant student achievement benefits.”
The ASA primarily warns that VAM can be misused, but ” endorses wise use of data, statistical models, and designed experiments for improving the quality of education. ”
I’m not defending VAM, but I don’t think it’s as simple to dismiss as you make it out to be. Once again also, you are conflating absolute measures when you talk about “measuring doctors’ quality by their morbidity”. We do in fact compare outcomes for doctors and hospitals using similar models, and I’d dare say that most people in a position to choose do some homework regarding their doctor’s results before getting a procedure done.
The healthcare industry is a good example. They are constantly comparing data with benchmarks to determine whether their hospital has more than the expected number of complications after specific procedures, or more infections, bed sores, etc. Lately, public education is trying to shun data (another word for information, I might add) instead of using it to improve. In fact, you’ve opined that there’s no improvement necessary.
My city’s high school has a 55% drop out rate. That is causing a huge amount of unemployment and contributing to poverty and crime. This vicious cycle has to end somewhere, and I believe birth to 12 education is the most effective place to change it. I think we should be spending a lot more money on this, but I don’t think my local schools would get much better results with just more money.
I might add that the ASA found that “the majority of opportunities for quality improvement are found in the system-level conditions” and I agree with that. That’s why I think the focus on identifying teachers to dismiss is misguided. To my way of thinking, the culture around accountability, responsibility, professional development, and independence are “system-level condition”s that need to change.
John, teachers have always looked at student growth. We just don’t rely on one standardized test to track it. Trying to standardize growth is an oxymoron given what we know about human variability. I don’t need a statistician to cobble together a formula from economic theory and widget production to tell me whether a student is learning. It is an extremely poor method of evaluating the quality of learning and the future potential of a student.
Despite the meme of the failure of public education that has been drummed into the public, the only evidence of failure seems to be in the failure of corporate reform. Socioeconomic status is still the best indicator of test scores. We have documented evidence of the progress from the days when we still valued supporting the weakest within our society. Now we are reversing the gains made and reducing education to a test score.
I agree that teacher’s own judgment is more accurate, though I think only within the classroom. It is notoriously inaccurate outside the classroom, and not even a good measure of whether curriculum items were covered, let alone mastered.
Tests are a blunt instrument, but they seem to be better than alternatives for external benchmarks.
“I agree that teacher’s own judgment is more accurate, though I think only within the classroom. It is notoriously inaccurate outside the classroom, and not even a good measure of whether curriculum items were covered, let alone mastered.”
What the heck does that mean? I’m sorry, John. You have totally lost me.
I think a teacher has a great understanding of how their students are doing relative to each other, but less of an understanding of how they are doing relative to other classes, other schools, etc.
Teacher-given assessments reflect what is going on in the classroom. But, for example, if a teacher didn’t cover a curriculum topic, they would not test on it, and the results would be misleading.
6% of my incoming students have ever passed a NYS exam, yet their report cards are “B”s.
There has to be some type of external measurement to be useful.
Coming from a state that does not have exit exams, I find it a little hard to relate to your system. When I was teaching math to seventh and eighth grade special ed students, I did find it troubling to find out that many of them had not retained or mastered some very basic concepts. Across the board, they could not fluently remember basic math facts. Some time in the past someone(s) had given up and finally just handed them a calculator. That lack of fluency made it that much harder for them to master any math that included an expectation of fluency with basic operations. They could not follow instruction at the same pace as other students and fell further behind. To be fair, some children will always need calculators as crutches. The problem became that they began to rely on them for computation without understanding. “Just tell me the steps!” was a familiar refrain. They tried to keep a menu of algorithms in their heads with little understanding of the meaning behind the procedure. Because I was in a classroom where I was teaching to the needs of the students and not grade standards, I could teach what they needed to master, not what the curriculum said we had to cover. If anyone has ever worked with students who can’t get the right answer on a calculator, estimation is a great way to make sure they understand concepts and can manipulate the numbers to come “close enough for government work.” I knew they understood the concepts when they could at least tell if they were in the ball park. Would they ever have passed a grade level test? Maybe, maybe not, but they learned. Math became a tool they could use outside the classroom. In the general ed classrooms, math teachers required retakes on tests when scores were below a certain level. Extra help was available and frequently a requirement before retaking a test. While there was a curriculum for each subject, teachers often spent extra time on units they developed beyond the required elements. Some topics were not as thoroughly covered. Each class had its own flavor although math had less variability in content. We knew the students mastered the material because they were able to handle more advanced concepts and covered material with greater depth. Information from the high school supported the opinions of the middle school teachers. The same was true for other subjects. Our students did well on more advanced material which would have been impossible if they had floundered their way through the lower grades. No state tests were required to show they were ready to advance through the grades and beyond.
Rating teachers by test scores is like rating doctors only by mortality and then saying oncologists must be bad doctors.
This doesn’t happen in a vacuum. At what point do we hold the so-called most powerful teacher union responsible for their actions over the past dozen years in supporting so many of the concepts of ed deform?
This is EDUCATION by “BOXOLOGY” = Checking off boxes.
(WARNING: The following material maybe unsuitable for those having sensitivities to angry, colorful acerbic writing. Parental Guidance is suggested.)
Some of the representatives from Long Island said they hated this bill in all ways, but they voted for it anyway because it was going to infuse much needed funds into their schools districts. This was an appalling but predictable display of cowardice.
It will be interesting to see how constituents who opposed this bill will think of their elected officials who voted for it.
Specifically: Will money soothe the savage beast, or will the overall policy and its effects on education still keep constituents enraged? THAT is a key question, knowing that money trumps many but not all things in 2015 America.
Trust me when I say that the NY State pension system, which has always been well funded because of our state constitution, is the very next target Cuomo and friends will be aiming at. He will defund the pensions of every civil servant, save for the police and firefighters (a plutocrat’s best friend), by allowing municipalities to borrow money to pay for pension fund dips instead of laying out money from their own direct coffers.
All of one’s “That cannot possibly happen in New York State” sentiments will soon have to morph into “It’s actually happening in New York State.” I’m personally practicing my southern and midwestern accents because one day we will be a right to work, low tax, low wage, low income state like many in the south and midwest. I know that sounds a bit like being a snotty northeast New Yorker, but sometimes, there’s something good about being a snotty northeast New Yorker.
In principle, I hope the state and national education unions do not collapse, but in practice, it would make excellent sense because – HELLO – they have not been pushing back from any of this reform movement beginning with NCLB. But they have been taking our dues. And COPE? COPE has been the rope they have used to hang us in New York State. The state and national unions have cooperated with the reform movements exchange for a “seat at the table”, when all along they have been dishes on the menu. How many time have we heard that beaten-to-death but true cliché?
Critics were not kidding that Cuomo wants to transform New York State into Wisconsin.
And now boys and girls, here’s an except from a new fairy tale I’m writing and illustrating. Please notice the author’s tone, craft, and structure:
“Moo!” said the residents who voted for Cuomo.
“Woo-Hoo!” said Cuomo.
“Hooray!” said Mulgrew.
“Not so bad, but not so good!” said Weingarten.
“Kind of not so good!” said Magee.
“Too late!” all five chorused together, as they held hands and pulled the covers over themselves as they snuggled warmly in the big oversized bed one frosty, chilling night. The residents who voted for Cuomo, later on that night, were restless and could not sleep. They got out of bed and left to go home to think some more . . . .
I thought THIS would have been an interesting alternative path to take:
1. The bill does not pass.
2. Neither base nor additional money comes into the districts.
3. Districts are literally crippled and paralyzed to operate.
4. The ultimate mayhem and chaos arises from a decimated school system.
5. Children and parents are left without proper resources to continue a free and appropriate public education.
6. The pressures would have been so great that politicians would have had to put pressure upon the governor and the Regents to change their tune.
7. Cuomo’s and Heastie’s ratings would have plummeted even more, ensuring that they not get elevated to any other political position in history.
8. Emergency legislation would have been put in place that would have funded the schools properly without any of these draconian measures.
9. Lots of harsh drama with politicians caught with their pants down would had to have reached mainstream media, let alone alternative media because it sells a paper (or am I waxing too optimistic here?).
9. The overclass would actually have learned, practically through shock therapy, that listening to constituents really does matter.
Alas, none of that happened.
Next steps anyone?
Personally, i’d like to know that if I have to register with the state very five years to let them know I work for a public school (when they have so many other officially systematized ways of knowing that and my ratings) do I have to PAY a FEE to the state each time I register, and if so, how much will that fee be?
Don’t you love capitalism?
It will be fascinating to see if parents and taxpayers will still push back as they have been or if they will be numbed by the anesthetic administered to them as money comes into their public schools.
Stay tuned. Excessive testing without any consequences to children did not seem to work in the past. If Albany gives the same tests but lower the threshold of passing so that many more children perform well, it can turn around and declare, “You see? The new system is working well! You have nothing to be concerned about!”
Stay tuned. This has to play itself out, all of this new legislation. Better test scores by adjusting the cut-offs, reduced or eliminated pensions that will look as thought taxpayers are saving money, union busting and watered down or eliminated collective bargaining rights, teacher and principal turnover increased to about 15% or more every two years . . . .
Y’all fasten yaw seat belts, y’hear?
Brilliant Rendo!
That’s an unfair comparison to Wisconsin! Our teacher evaluation system is much more flexible and less driven by standardized tests than almost any other state.
Stiles,
I have nothing against Wisconsin in, which puts out some of the best Halvarti dill cheese in the world. And I worship those protesters who gathers en masse at the capital to demonstrate against Scott Walker’s changes to collective bargaining. We should ALL be like that.
I was being colorful in my essay; I’m not completely in an “objective” category, I would suggest.
I’m right up there with you in solidarity.
Completely understand. I was born in NY and it was where I started in the profession. It is sad to see the mayhem as Cuomo undermines a previously strong system of public education.
We have our own problems in Wisconsin, but I wouldn’t trade them for what is happening in NY State now.
If you want to stay a snotty Northeastern state, :), you had better not throw your union out with the leadership. Do you really think that you have a chance in hell of having anyone pay attention to you if you let your union self destruct? My, will you make the big boys happy! You are asking to be a low wage, no benefit, “right to work” state if you bust your own union.
Many who come here to read and to post are observing from the outside looking in. As bad as this sounds to you, as angry as this may make you feel, I can tell you that from the inside it feels like I’ve been personally violated.
It feels like rape.
Do I sense a little change in tone from earlier in the week Marshall?
No NJ Teacher.
Betsy,
You have every right to feel angry and violated, and I am not telling you how to write. But can you really connect the two? If you can, I am worry if you have had some terrible experiences in your life.
Correction:
I am sorry you . . . . .
Many years ago I had a good friend who suffered from PTSD after being raped. In order to try and understand and help my friend, I did a lot of reading about the psychology of rape. While there continue to be different opinions and some controversy regarding the underlying psychological reasons that a man might decide to use his physical power to make someone else submit against their will, some of the major underlying reasons for this kind of anti-social behavior are:
Revenge: Some men rape in order to take revenge from a specific person in their past. The need
for revenge can be generalized to a group, who then become the target for that revenge.
Rejection: Some men need to validate their identity and their manhood by proving their power,
especially their power over the person or persons who have rejected them.
The need to feel superior: In particular, the need to feel superior to women pushes some men, who
have doubts regarding their own masculinity, to try and dominate others through the use of force
(rape).
Having never personally experienced rape, I apologize if my reference to feeling raped seems to make light of the serious nature of being the victim of such abuse.
And, what about the lawlessness that enabled a principal to set up a teacher to be raped?
She worked through her PTSD by:
* suing (because the union did nothing) and won at the cost of years and allure savings. * working with state Montana Senator Testor to bring anti-bullying laws to the education workplace.
* testifying for the “Lawless” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfNxj-O1DiI documentary, and in Congress,
* writing this book, (which is about to hit the presses and is a MUST READ for anyone thinking of becoming a teacher.
But, what about the trauma to all of us, the tens and tens of thousands of career professionals that were removed by the most heinous means possible so the schools would fail.
VAM and PARCC are the second assault, and what all of you are experiencing now, is a direct result of the MEDIA SILENCE ON THE ASSAULTS, and the media rant about bad teachers.
This could not continue if the truth was out there, because the hidden tragedy to so many Americans is testimony to the power of the oligarchs. So, continue fighting VAM, and fighting the newest tactics, but what teachers face now is the RESULT of the total lack of scrutiny or accountability — THE ABSENCE OF ANY CONVERSATION HERE AND ANYWHERE OF THE scandalous deprivation of due process, for those of us who once taught in public schools!
The media has been silent although the sites which I have posted here, over and over, tell the tale for years, of the first assault on teachers.
http://endteacherabuse.org/
VAM is the second assault — and it is here because the FIRST worked so well, and remains to this day HIDDEN. I wrote this a decade ago.
http://www.speakingasateacher.com/SPEAKING_AS_A_TEACHER/The_Insane_War_on_Teachers_and_Democracy.html
and Betsy Combier’s site chronicled the debacle in NYC. http://nycrubberroomreporter.blogspot.com/2009/03/gotcha-squad-and-new-york-city-rubber.html
http://parentadvocates.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=article&articleID=7534
and there is a decade of LENNY ISENBERG (who is suing the union) and who created Perdaily to report this
http://www.perdaily.com/2014/07/former-ctc-attorney-kathleen-carroll-lays-out-unholy-alliance-between-union-and-public-education-pri.html
http://www.perdaily.com/2014/03/has-utla-rank-and-file-been-told-that-im-suing-utla-why-not.html
and Francesco Portelos reporting his descent from his classroom. He is SUING, too,:
http://protectportelos.org/allegations-against-me/
and I wrote this a decade ago, but I am nobody, a mere teacher, but one of themes successful in the nation, according to the LRDC (Univ of Pittsburgh) researches for the real, National Standards research.
If you know my story, then you know why VAM is a ‘snap’ for these corrupt entities that control our public schools.
http://www.perdaily.com/2011/01/lausd-et-al-a-national-scandal-of-enormous-proportions-by-susan-lee-schwartz-part-1.html
Betsy, no need to apologize.
Serious Question….. Have NY politicians considered the burden on our welfare system when thousands of teachers across the state get in line for their unemployment checks in a few years?
No they have not nor should they.
Teachers are not legally entitled to unemployment, and even if they were, being fired for incompetence does not qualify your for unemployment. This is civil service law.
What I do see happening is thousands of great teachers eventually losing their jobs, downsizing their already modest middle class lifestyles, and moving onto os some other work that will hopefully pay them at 35% to 50% of that they were earning.
Remember that the organism wants to survive for the longest amount of time in the best way it knows how and is able to. That is a generally theory in psychology. That’s why we adapt.
As far as consequences to children, lt’s not even go there.
Long term consequences to society over the next 10 to 15 years? Let’s not got here either. At least not for now.
Personally, I know when I lose my job (because the system does not seem to be sustainable for teachers like me who teach low income ELLs, despite my very high test scores on both local and standardized assessments and highly effective ratings), I will move on, but I will always fight for public education, whether I remain in the field or not, retired or not.
I dont’ mean to sound glum.
Thanks Robert for the clarification on unemployment. I guess there are going to be a lot of overqualified burrito rollers in NY state in the coming years.
Is this NY law? Teachers in my midwestern state are eligible for unemployment just like everyone else.
Outcome:
Sacrificial lamb(s) on each staff who will be weighted down with the students who don’t attend and/or don’t perform well. Save the rest of the teaching staff.
Said teacher gets the joy of suing for being intentionally put in that position.
Said sacrificial lamb may very likely be a higher paid teacher, probably in an untested area assuming all bad teachers have been pushed out at this point.
Wrong:
Teachers will have little legal leg to stand on, and they seldom can afford quality and in depth legal representation.
Sherri Lederman’s case will be colored, I think, but this new legislation.
Lederman’s husband is an attorney. Most teachers would be challenged to be able to afford good legal representation especially after losing their jobs.
It will be interesting to see what happens as teachers and other pedagogues leave the profession to get out of harms way. I would counsel education graduates to consider very carefully what school and/or population they choose to teach. How much money will the state have to put into the budget to lure them into the profession. Sadly, the children are the ones that will be hurt.
So true. I can not honestly recommend teaching anymore to future graduates. The ranking systems are arbitrary and demoralizing. Teachers are no longer valued. Pay is barely above the poverty level and not enough to pay off student loans.
To answer your question, if there is an exodus and shortage of teachers in America, the politicians and business leaders will simply lower standards and import H1b labor from overseas.
Ah yes. When I lost my last teaching position, the H1b teachers were retained. Although I got on well with all the teachers even the kids complained about a teacher who spoke with a heavy accent trying to teach them reading with a heavy emphasis on phonics. She could not pronounce the sounds herself.
Reblogged this on the realm outside of asana and commented:
I’m a 6th grade ELA teacher in Westchester Co. & I am scared!!
Denise,
Don’t get scared; get “activist”!
Rendo is totally right. Usually reading these comments helps incite me to action.
No, politicians have not considered the burden on the welfare system or any other system. In the United States, we act after something goes wrong, we don’t think ahead.
Today, I feel like crying.
I am a retired teacher of 25 years, I loved what I did, truly but left because of the nonsense. My daughter is a teacher, ( highly effective, I might add), as are many of my friends.
They (the politicians) are making history. The aim has nothing to do with education, testing or children and we all know that. The Unions have been complicit and THEY know that.
Where to go from here?????
First step:
Follow the Solidarity Caucus of the UFT.
We need to reinvent our unions. Run for office. Get elected. Go against the grain. Keep vocal and snuggle with your constituents and convince them to be brave and ballsy.
If you are going down, is it not better and more dignified to do it while trying to fight than trying to give in?
Robert Rendo: you reminded me of a POV that has been expressed in various ways…
Perhaps this will not be to the liking of some viewers of this blog, but there is that famous quote [there are slight variations] by Emiliano Zapata:
“Es mejor morir de pie que vivir de rodillas” [It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees].
Others may prefer Benjamin Franklin:
“We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.”
Why so important to take a stand now? The self-styled “education reform” movement focuses on aspirational [and chimerical] short-term gains that ensure long-term real world pain and destruction. The disasters are a feature, not a bug, of rheephorm policies and actions. The consequences? Read the comments of NY mom and educator below.
The train wreck is not coming. It’s here. And it’s obvious. And it’s gathering force.
And worst of all, it’s a predictable and avoidable catastrophe.
Starve the testing beast. Opt out.
😎
You’re so crazy, Krazy . . . .
But I don’t think you are right on this one. Opt-out will eventually be outlawed with harsh tax and penal consequences for taxpayers and parents. Child tax credits will be taken away, aid to families with children who have IEPs, withholding of tax refunds, you name it. It’s like the ACA: of you do not comply, you will be penalized financially and owe money to the government.
The ONLY thing we can do in 2015 fascist America is to continue to hound our elected officials, demonstrate peacefully, and boycott. . . . You cannot be penalized for doing those things.
I have connections, and I am telling you – hint, hint – that opt-out will eventually be outlawed. There’s too much ideology and money at stake to not do so from Albany’s POV.
Yeah! Hound on!
It’s surprising how thes comments target Cuomo. Many LI and NYC teachers either voted for him or stayed home because I did not see any push from either LI unions or the UFT to get out the vote for Teachout.
The real problem here is a lack of strong union leadership. Now I can only pray Chicago votes out Emmanue because I am giving up on NYC teachers to get off their a$$es and slam the UFT and Weingarten out of office. And the way to do that is to vote in the next election. Less than 30% of in service teachers voted in the last UFT election and retirees controlled the vote. Total apathy leads to laws like this.
In 1998, I was awarded the EDUCATOR OF EXCELLENCE AWARD by the NYS English council, a prestigious award. My resume is here.
http://www.opednews.com/author/author40790.html
Today, if evaluated by the rubric adopted in NYS I would be lucky to have a job… oh, I forgot… within a few months of the award, I was in the rubber room falsely accused of …well…nothing… no charges were ever put out! My job was over, and my reputation in shreds! Can you spell LAWLESS?
However, six months later the superintendent of NYC district 2 found me ‘guilt’y of ‘corporal punishment’ for she said ‘cursing a child’. No investigation, no hearing… total lawlessness, and the union hack told me to sit down when, upon being read heR letter, I was incredulous and objected.
I filed a lawsuit, (my attorney cost 25k) and this put me back in the school (where I had written the entire seventh grade English curricula– one which had put that school on the map).
But, I was no longer teaching in my classroom, the one that brought Harvard and the Pew national standards research. That had been trashed and all my books redistributed and my research and eight years of materials trashed..along with my reputation on the east side of Manhattan, despite by 4 time inclusion in Who’S Who Among America’s teachers.
I am telling youths, not to feel sorry for me…it was 16 years ago… but to demonstrate that THE FIRST ASSAULT on teachers was so successful, that ‘they’ decided to go on step farther and invent VAM, and skip the need to create moral or criminal charges.
Read this because it explains it all.
http://citywatchla.com/8box-left/6666-lausd-and-utla-complicity-kills-collective-bargaining-and-civil-rights-for-la-s-teachers
Now I was ‘teaching’ in a closet, where 6 kids a period came to … well… hmmm…I had no curricula or materials, or books,, but none the less, the principal observed me, often, and now found me incompetent, so those charges were put out, despite the fact that I had been filmed and vetted as a cohort for the standards. This woman a phd, who as director of curriculum and point man for the New Standards research , for which I WAS THE Cohort… took my work around the nation. Often, upon returning, “she had told me how my work was a sensation….now she spit in my face, saying “that was then, this is now!”
Do you see? Do you get it? Before VAM a vicious administrator could could destroy a teacher in a variety of ways because the law of the land, the sixth amendment did not exist for Americans who are teachers in places where no one uphold the rights of teachers… the job of…hmmm…THE UNION, ever since collective bargaining gave that right toTENURED TEACHERS.
Tenure is NOT a guarantee of a job for life. It is just a guarantee that a teacher cannot be treated like an ’employee at will’ and can be fired with no explanations.
So, maybe VAM is a better way then being shot down like a dog.
Great LA article! Thanks!
Thank YOU for going to my links.
Truly this is a sad day for education in NY. Someone told me recently that the NYS Dept. of Ed. is concerned that in about 5 years there will be a teacher shortage. This makes sense because the numbers enrolling in teacher preparation programs are significantly down and many teachers are retiring the moment they can. So, how is this to help increase the number of teachers? Or is this the plan? Eliminate certified teachers and replace them with anyone with a BA (TFA on steroids). Unfortunately, I think our so called leaders believe that anyone can teach. Just hand any person with a BA a scripted program and they can be a teacher.
The only way I think this can be stopped is if enough parents opt-out of the test. No data, no evaluation.
They will make do with whatever data is available. If New Jersey paid $108 million for PARCC and fifty percent of kids take the test, their voodoo math calculations will be exorcised on the existing data. They have no scruples. Has anyone seen any credible claims issued by Pearson as to the reliability and validity of these tests? They are exerting extreme efforts to preserve the secrecy of the questions.
cross posted at http://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/New-York-s-Outrageous-New-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Cuomo_Diane-Ravitch_Evaluation_Evidence-150401-752.html#comment539496
with this comment
Go to my author’s page: http://www.opednews.com/author/author40790.html
for a look at my resume so you will realize when you read my experience below, that this VAM which Cuomo is enshrining, is the SECOND assault to remove the professional pedagogue (i.e. teacher) from the practice (i.e. classroom).
Perhaps, it is kinder then doing what they did to me, because, you see, ‘tenure’ while not granting me a job for life, did offer sixth amendment rights to due process… which in NYC did not exist because the union looked the OTHER way and did not do its duty as per contract.
The rest is copied from my commentary here, above.)
I am going to make what seems like a very obvious point to me…
IMO, one of the most effective criticisms by many of the opponents of the now-vanished Soviet Union—in this case, I refer to the free-market fundamentalists fighting now for charters, vouchers and privatization of public education—was precisely this sort of formal, top-down, undemocratic, self-destructive and delusional regulation and control.
Just goes to show: they didn’t object to the actual insanity—
No, they were jealous and envious of it.
Any wonder, then, why I call the business plan that masquerades as an education model aka “education reform” the Potemkin Village Plan for $tudent $ucce$$?
The more things change, the more they stay the same…
Just my way of seeing things.
😎
Indeed.
This is Lysenkoism in all it’s glory
“Cuomounism”
Lysenko didn’t have squat
On Cuomo and his VAM
Cuz science it is not
And really just a sham
Is it time for a STATE WIDE strike? or NATION WIDE?
Heastie got rolled. He’s new and weak, and Cuomo used him.
The teachers unions lost, no matter what Weingarten and Mulgrew say.
This is very bad for the rest of the country, because New York is one of the few states in which teachers might seem to have the power to protect their rights as professionals.
Good luck to the billionaires and profiteers who want to use market efficiency and meaningless numbers to fire teachers and thereby “improve” education.
Too bad that’s got nothing to do with what makes education better. But by the time they figure that out, they will have moved on to another distraction.
“The Era of Arne Err”
This decade, let’s be clear,
Is “Era of Arne Err”
No education here
Just testing, VAMs and fear
Hee, hee. it is April fools day, after all…because in NYS I witnessed how NYSUT attorneys defended Pi lIan Tu when the principal listed a plethora of false allegations, and was allowed (with no penalty under perjuery at the kangaroo court they call ‘hearings’ in nYC) to say anything she wished, whereas this wonderful, beloved and incredibly successful teacher was not even given a chance to SPEAK.
Nor did the union attorney allow her to enter the results of the standardized tests which proved her students were at the top of the city on ESL tests, nor could she call the parents who lined up outside the DOE to testify on her behalf.
The union hee hee hahahahah!
Boy are people bamboozled.
http://www.opednews.com/articles/BAMBOOZLE-THEM-where-tea-by-Susan-Lee-Schwartz-110524-511.html
Just do not get me wrong.
I am all for unions! What has happened has occurred because powerful unions are gone for workers in this nation, but in NYC the union needs a renewal from within!
I want a union that works… don’t you?
There is an amazing article in Atlantic Magazine http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/04/why-workers-wont-unite/386228/ which discusses “Only One Thing Can Save Us: Why America Needs a New Kind of Labor Movement” By Thomas Geoghegan.
Above all, Geoghegan “looks to worker organization as a force for political change. He heralds it as the route to counterbalancing the power of elites by spurring democratic participation, and securing representation for the interests of workers (and the middle class).
His book and this article summary, tells the history of the 20th century as the work force changes as the jobs did, and union membership fell sharply even in parts of the economy where it was once ubiquitous, such as the manufacturing sector. He says: “By the early 1950s, more than one-third of all workers were union members. Unions also mobilized people to vote in support of government measures that served to redistribute wealth (such as notably high taxes on the upper income brackets in the postwar years, and regular increases in the minimum wage). To a large degree, the labor movement created the economic stability, social independence, and deep confidence in the promise of mobility that we associate today with being middle-class. Labor’s sclerosis left it ill-prepared to grapple with the structural and political changes of the 1970s, as the global position of American manufacturing faltered.”
“The dynamism and expansion 100 years earlier, which had stoked workers’ sense of their own strength and capacity, gave way to stagnation and fatalism, and a resigned timidity at work.”
” Today, strikes have almost vanished from our economic landscape: in 2013, a scant 15 strikes involved more than 1,000 employees each (down from 187 in 1980, the year Reagan was elected). Unionization has fallen sharply even in parts of the economy where it was once ubiquitous, such as the manufacturing sector.
Unions could do little to assuage a mounting, very realistic fear among working-class people”
He points out that:”Civil servants such as firefighters, postal workers, and teachers have found it difficult to counter the widespread perception (fed in large part by constant attacks from the right) that they are protecting their own wages and comfort at the expense of others. In the context of economic decline, whatever limited power labor might possess breeds resentment more than admiration.”
Did you know that about one in 10 American workers today, is self-employed ? (the most rapidly growing groups in this category are maids and housekeepers, carpenters, landscapers, and hairdressers—a far cry from the farmers of yesteryear). Part-time workers make up 17 percent of the labor force.”
“Nurses and teachers might seem to have little in common with low-wage, blue-collar, or temporary workers, whether farmhands or clericals. Still, Geoghegan sees these unions as important and relevant examples of a willingness to depart from the mid-century template for collective bargaining. Any real revival of organizing, in his view, is bound to require a jettisoning of older models. There is little alternative, given the right-to-work laws on the books in 24 states and the hostility toward union-election campaigns: winning a majority vote is an uphill battle even if many in the workplace want a union.”
That is a battle I will fight because I saw what happens when the union is absent!
So much for the Democrats, who they used to be, and what they have become:
http://www.eclipsemill.com/robert-rendo/#jp-carousel-416
Not mentioned is that the law now requires an “external” evaluator which will be accomplished by either administrator swapping or by using a highly effective teacher within the school (or finding money in this new budget to pay people to do it – nevermind who will pay traveling costs for all of these people now criss crossing the state to do observations).
Let’s look at THIS part of the proposal – first it logistically pulls administrators from all over the state out of their schools to “help” teachers they aren’t paid to help and away from helping students and teachers in their buildings. With a teacher, it is depriving a highly effective teacher’s students of their highly effective teacher. Wouldn’t it be ironic if that teacher then became ineffective because they spent so much time evaluating their peers.
There are scheduling conflicts all over the place with this not to mention no agreement statewide on what needs to be in each evaluation so teachers AND administrators (including apparently all teachers who might some day be highly effective) are capable of competently rating teachers.
And what is all this agita for?
Read this chart carefully – a teacher under observations will ONLY be ineffective if their test scores are ineffective – the most an observation can “do” is drag a teacher down to developing (which I’m not fully sure of what the ramifications of “developing” are repeatedly).
The only meaningful effect of an observer is if a teacher is developing on test scores, then the observer is the “tie breaker” between developing and ineffective and only if the observer writes ineffective. They can also knock any teacher down from Effective via test scores to developing overall with an ineffective – meaning the only power the observer has is to grant an ineffective.
Anything else they give will be negated. We are going to waste a hell of a lot of people’s time and energy training for and administering this program all to focus on that column on the right hand side and the ineffective box in the crosshairs of developing scores/ineffective observer.
There is nothing addressed as to what is in the observation, will it be prepared in advance, do the observer/teacher need to share subject areas, what if the teacher is observed teaching a class outside their subject area even if they have classes that are tested and in their license, nothing about training, preparation, not even a pilot.
Nevermind the issue of how much supervision does a school need to participate in this “administrator/highly effective teacher trading program” – what if a school only has 1-2 administrators? What if they are called to do an observation and either the teacher calls in sick, or their fellow administrator calls in sick leaving the school without an administrator.
I don’t see how this program succeeds based on just “trading” administrators without hiring people whose exclusive jobs are going around evaluating teachers they know nothing about and are utterly unaccountable as to the accuracy or validity of their “observations”.
This is similar to the type of “observation” system used in NYC for ATRs except applied en masse and in many cases the administrators used were intentionally a “gotcha” squad – people chosen for their willingness to see the negative in every classroom. School systems might go that route too just so where possible they can rate ineffective highly paid teachers – after all – now the observer has no stake in what that teacher does for the school. A district administrator on high can collude and determine where they can “save money” and try their hardest to put those teachers in positions where they will be rated ineffective.
For all of this air though, the observations are mostly toothless, remove highly effective teachers and administrators from their schools where they are ostensibly needed, to administer an observation that is mostly toothless, but gives districts on high the power to dole out observations outside the control of principals making principals responsible for hiring within their school, but to have next to no power in evaluating how those hires are doing – just to “support” them.
I am beyond words with just how stupid this system is.
Test scores are officially all. Principal knowledge counts for almost nothing. And the “impartial” observer who will probably be anything but is meaningless except if they grant an ineffective. Who wants to bet the “observers” will be under pressure to grant a percent of “ineffectives” if they want
Ah, the matrix. Thank you for sharing this. It does appear that test scores are now the only real evaluation tool. So let’s talk about this wording
Prohibited
“D. ANY DISTRICT OR REGIONALLY-DEVELOPED ASSESSMENT THAT HAS NOT BEEN APPROVED BY THE DEPARTMENT; ”
Does this mean that teachers outside 3-8 ELA and math and Regents courses will now have a state-approved test? Current wording is district-approved. So now everyone will have to use a test from a state-approved test such as the PSAT or AP or IB or ACT suite of tests or PARCC. I don’t think PARCC is dead in NY, just “tabled.” By the way, the math and ELA modules are built to align with PARCC. Module 4 always covers material for the next grade level. Next up, moving high school exams to April so teacher test scores can be obtained by the end of the year.
To cap off the lunacy:
The state education department “shall determine the weights and scoring ranges” and “set parameters for appropriate targets for student growth” for the required and optional components and subcomponents of the rating system.
In science and engineering these are referred to as “fudge factors” for good reason. They are there for one reason and one reason only: to make it so that you can get the output you desire.
This whole thing would be comical if it did not affect so many people’s lives in such important ways.
The clowns are clearly running the show.
The state controls the difficulty of the test, the matrix to convert raw scores, the cut score itself, and now the growth measures for effectiveness that it can tweak (with noone knowing the formula) till just the right politically acceptable number of teachers are found ineffective.
Nevermind that the State Department was to blame for the “dumbing down” of the Regents for a decade that made things seem all good before adopting tests that are “truthful” and are now all bad. Clearly they don’t make mistakes on a mass level. And now that potential for mass mistakes is responsible for the livelihoods of 100% of the teachers in New York State.
And they can change it yearly, apparently without legislative input of any kind so voters can’t say a damn thing about it.
The only way to get at education now is en masse voting for assembly members who will appoint board of regents members who will then vote for a Commissioner who will do whatever he wants (and probably what will elevate his political capital the most).
Send in the clowns. The idea that teachers are somehow responsible for their success or failure has been completely removed from their hands, dependent on student scores on a single test day (and if you want to avoid that you can optionally add more tests so the district can have the blame for overtesting), and completely subject to the political whims of those at the State Department of Education which has absolutely no politics or politicians at all no-siree and none that answer to voters.
You got it. I can’t wait to see those numbers.
Even more disconcerting is the growth score criteria that NYSED will develop by June. This is the true danger zone. This will jeopardize all teachers in ways that were never before imagined. Working in a high needs district will not doom a teacher any more or less than teaching in Byram Hills. If they simply expand their “growth band” system, sign up for the class action suit sure to follow.
This whole mess is so cumbersome and difficult to implement that no one will be surprised when the due dates start getting postponed. Leaving us all in limbo.
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Texas Education.
I suppose this is a term of art, but I do like the phrase “OTHER ARTIFACTS OF TEACHER PRACTICE.”
I think that means no more projects. I did some great stuff with those, but they are much harder than just taking the observations.
“VAMs are Craps”
To judge a teacher, roll the dice
The VAMs are craps, and job the price
To keep a teacher, roll a seven
When coming out, or roll eleven
A 2 or 12 will crap them out
And also 3, the lousy lout
When point’s established, a 7 roll
Sends the teacher down the hole
But point repeated ‘fore a 7
Keeps them in the Seventh Heaven
The VAMs are mathy as can be
And oh so fair, as you can see
An on time budget trumps all–why? The outside assessors–are you kidding me?! I am sick and tired of hearing about our “broken” schools–parts of society through poverty and inequities may be broken; schools, students and their teachers ARE NOT. Also sick of “accountability”somehow equalling standardized test scores: I am accountable to my students, colleagues, supervisors and school community at large by coming to work everyday, having a great lesson, caring about my students, assessing their work, conferencing with them and providing outreach by contacting their parents and guidance counselors when necessary. And this performance daily will be assessed by the scores of a test created by others and a one time visit by an outsider–exactly how?
Well, Mikey likes the agreement, and some of the teachers at NYC educator have a thing or two to say about “punchy Mike Mulgrew’s analysis.
http://nyceducator.com/2015/03/why-budget-agreement-doesnt-suck.html
What is so unspeakably sad about this budget, this law, and this discussion is that it is all negative and punitive. The topic is about how to fire teachers, how to root out bad teachers, how to punish teachers. Does anyone think that this public rhetoric builds respect for the teaching profession? Does it convey respect for an incredibly hard and socially important profession? Is the goal to close down the profession and let amateurs take over? Or to put all the kids online and dispense with professional teachers?
Small consolation, but I believe there is a $20,000 bonus payable directly to teachers rated “highly effective” by the state.
And where is the money for THAT going to come from?
And for someone who “leads teachers,” you seem to have no clue that teachers don’t do this for the money. But being told that teachers are the cause of everything that is wrong with the nation is hard on teachers.
Jeez, I’m just passing along a piece of information. I didn’t say anything about whether I think it’s a good idea or not.
Apparently $20 million is being appropriated. Its a one-time bonus with advantages going to highly effective teachers that work in high needs districts and in high need subjects, presumably math and science.
Utah has had a “bonus” program for certain math and science teachers for nearly 10 years now. The test scores have not budged. This does nothing for anyone, and simply adds a layer of competition, which can doom a school. No one will want to take struggling kids and assigning classes will end up like a sports draft. Schools need collaboration, not competition.
John, if that’s the case, the state owes me $40K . . . .
Starting next year :-). And, as others have pointed out, I’m sure there will be a lot of fine print.
Cuomo the VAMpire is angry because NY state Castlevania is under siege by troops of ‘wolfvine’ teachers and he is short of blood…
In the text of the NYS budget:
“FOR A TEACHER WHOSE COURSE DOES NOT END IN A STATE-CREATED OR ADMINISTERED TEST SUCH TEACHER SHALL HAVE A STUDENT LEARNING OBJECTIVE (SLO) CONSISTENT WITH A GOAL-SETTING PROCESS DETERMINED OR DEVELOPED BY THE COMMISSIONER, THAT RESULTS IN A STUDENT GROWTH SCORE”
This seems to mean that art and music teachers will also get some weird simulacrum of value-added measures.
I can imagine the rubric:
Student uses x number of colors in painting -> score y
Student can sing in tune for x measures -> score y (I’d fail that!)
I’m looking forward to glowing reports of increasing scores on the art and music student growth scores.
Commissioner of the NYS DOE is the new defense against the dark arts position in NYS.
I am a NYC retired teacher!! I don’t understand why Gov Cuomo is trying to attack the teachers and make it even more difficult for them to do their job!
I worked in NYC for 25 years and I looked foward to coming in and actually being able to teach. Teachers today are controlled and they are simply puppets with Gov Cuomo as their leader!!
This is so very sad for all teachers!!
I made a short video titled “In Defense of Teachers” highlighting the simplistic nonsense of judging teachers on their student’s standardised scores http://wp.me/p2S7eH-uf
3:38-cx: …test your students
Is your teacher training poor or is that the corporate mantra? (I don’t know. The programs in the U.S. vary, but there are many strong programs. In the U.S., I am inclined to believe that the amount of support that beginning teachers receive is more problematic.)
I don’t understand the last slide on phonics. It means different things to different people. I think it is really a discussion that should be separated from teacher bashing and over testing. I’m guessing from your screen name that it is very important to you (and rightly so!)
I hope you have had the chance to share the video widely among your colleagues. I’m sorry that Australia has been infected with (another?) bad idea from the U.S.