Bruce Baker of Rutgers says that New York state’s educator evaluation system is biased, inaccurate and unfair. Even the consultants who created the system, he writes, acknowledged the high rate of error. But the state says “full speed ahead.” Baker urges educators to “just say no.”

Categories New York, Teacher Evaluations

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Tim says:

December 6, 2012 at 12:48 am

Whoops you left the letter out:

This is the BIG kicker! Not only do Teachers have to evaluated by flawed methodology but administrators are told that they must have their evaluations correlated (matched with) the State Testing scores!!!

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Lehrer says:

December 6, 2012 at 4:58 am

These evaluation systems would not stand up in a court of law. My hunch is we will start seeing lawsuits filed by teachers fired for poor evaluations. Anyone from the ACLU want to take this on? I don’t think our union reps will.

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rratto says:

December 6, 2012 at 6:37 am

Teacher’s livelihoods, the future of every child in the state, and our public education system is at risk due to a flawed analysis, political agendas and greed. Cuomo, King, Tisch, and the entire Regents should be impeached, fired and ordered to resign.

It;s time to take back the conversation

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reality-based educator says:

December 6, 2012 at 7:53 am

Wow – that’s some post by Baker. The fix is in – teachers MUST be declared “ineffective” under this plan in relative proportion to the state VAM or the NYSED will come in and impose their own evaluation plan on districts.

And the NYSED knows the VAM is biased and isn’t an accurate measure of teacher performance.

So does Regents Chancellor Tisch.

But they’re going full speed ahead anyway.

I suspect the UFT will cave to the pressure and agree to this horrendous system.

But given all the points Baker has raised in his three posts on APPR, it seems likely that teachers can band together and sue the NYSED, the Regents and their districts over this fair, inaccurate and biased system.

I wish my union would lead the charge on that, but they’re too busy holding press conferences with Cuomo, Tisch and King declaring how wonderful APPR is and sending out Leo Casey to attack anybody who says otherwise.

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reality-based educator says:

December 6, 2012 at 7:54 am

Oops – I meant “unfair” in the above comment!

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schoolfinance101 says:

December 6, 2012 at 9:10 am

Here’s how it all looks w/my commentary removed:

1) NY State consultant designing measure:

Despite the model conditioning on prior year test scores, schools and teachers with students who had higher prior year test scores, on average, had higher MGPs. Teachers of classes with higher percentages of economically disadvantaged students had lower MGPs. (p. 1)

2) NY State consultant conclusion/recommendation to NYSED

The model selected to estimate growth scores for New York State provides a fair and accurate method for estimating individual teacher and principal effectiveness based on specific regulatory requirements for a “growth model” in the 2011-2012 school year. p. 40

3) Chancellor’s media spin:

The student-growth scores provided by the state for teacher evaluations are adjusted for factors such as students who are English Language Learners, students with disabilities and students living in poverty. When used right, growth data from student assessments provide an objective measurement of student achievement and, by extension, teacher performance.

4) NYSED threat to local districts:

The department will be analyzing data supplied by districts, BOCES and/or schools and may order a corrective action plan if there are unacceptably low correlation results between the student growth subcomponent and any other measure of teacher and principal effectiveness…

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Joe says:

December 6, 2012 at 1:06 pm

It is not a flaw. It is designed that way for school administrative advantage.

Suck up to the administrator and he will assign you better students and thus you receive a better evaluation. Better teaching is not goal. It is making the administrator look good so he/she may step up to a better paying job.

All things being equal, there will always be so many teachers teaching lower levels. Poor evaluations and frustration creates burn out and huge teacher turn over. This results in more people on the low end of the pay scale.

There is also divide and conquer. Teachers will compete for the better classes even if it means to openly become a snitch for the administration.

I’ve seen this all come about before keeping a job was linked to evaluations. In my day, the ones that sucked up to the boss receiveda better classroom, better classes, bigger classroom budgets, etc. Also, the ever so popular, letters of appreciation passed out at teacher meetings.

The ones recognized with letters of appreciation were always the younger ones. In later years, I saw these same suck ups come under the guns of the next generation of teachers as they became older. There is a definite pattern.

If I was to start all over again, teaching would not be my choice. Teaching has changed from a family, to a community, to a business to almost a Stalag in the last 50 years.

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begtodiffer says:

December 6, 2012 at 7:32 pm

I’m just going to keep doing what I’ve been doing for the last seventeen years…focus on teaching my students to believe in themselves.

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psd1971 says:

December 10, 2012 at 8:50 pm

Unfortunately most teachers are too busy teaching to have
the time required to understand how their profession is being
destroyed. Most of us assume this current trend will pass like all
the others and pay it little mind. We jump through the hoops so we
can do what we love-teach.

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