Carol Burris, chosen as principal of the year by her colleagues in New York State, has written a brilliant and frightening critique of the state’s ill-planned principal evaluation plan.
As you read her letter to the New York Board of Regents, you can’t help but wonder whether systems like this are intended to demoralize principals and to destroy public education.
What kind of inexperienced technocrats dream up such flawed and damaging schemes?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
For years I have taught the class of struggling students who have little support at home (which is important in primary grades). When they first began talking about value added, my question became who would want to teach those kids? It’s more work and the growth shows less. But they need teachers too.
The real issue is that those students who do well show exponentially more growth than those that do not. Education is a social issue, but it is a part of other larger social issues and cannot be viewed in a vacuum. There seems to be no way to neutralize variables and judge the effectiveness of teachers in a fair and equitable way. The same goes for administrators.
It seems to me that we need to try and address some of the other social issues and see if it helps.
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What do you mean, “unintended” consequences?
I don’t want to sound like a conspiracy nut, but nobody can actually be this stupid, can they? Particularly when those behind such policies use words like “disruption” as if it is a synonym for “improvement.”
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Disruption is an event which causes an “unplanned, negative deviation from the expected delivery … according to the organization’s objectives”
Is exactly what they have planned, you are not a conspiracy nut…after all they did just have a big secret meeting in SC. I still can’t believe they allow us to communicate about this on their internet (oh that’s right they have their own internet).
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Alan,
I agree with you somewhat. I believe there are two three types of the new “reformers”. The first are genuine. They see the inequity and brutal conditions and want to help. Think of the young TFAer. These are the folks with real souls. Second are the pragmatic souls who need jobs and drink the Kool-Aid. These folks generally believe that public schools are awful and “something must be done”. These types usually have little or no exposure to public education, have little success in educational matters and let others do their thinking for them. Think here of the BROAD Academy Fellows. These folks have sold their souls. Notice how they all have the same views on EVRYTHING educational. More like a cult than a philosophy. Third you have the profiteers. The folks who seek profits and power and esteem. These folks know they are in it fir the money and actually enjoy gaming the systems for their own needs. Here think of Eli Broad, David Tepper and other pimps. These are the truly soulless.
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Here’s the crux of Burris’ letter to the Board of Regents:
“You have before you an opportunity to show courageous leadership. You can acknowledge with candor that the VAM models for teachers and principals developed by the department and AIR are not ready to be used because they have not met the high standards of validity, reliability and fairness that you require. You can acknowledge that even if they were perfect measures, the unintended consequences from using them make them unacceptable. Or, you can favor form over substance, allowing the consequences that come from rushed models to occur. You can raise every bar and continue to load on change and additional measures, or you can acknowledge and support the truth that school improvement takes time, capacity building, professional development and district and state support.”
What’s left unsaid is that the Board of Regents might demonstrate some real honest-to-goodness backbone and foresight – and critical intelligence – by abandoning corporate-style “reform.”
They might, instead, acknowledge that education for democratic citizenship is the central purpose of public schooling.
They might commit themselves – and public education – to the core values in the Constitution, such as popular sovereignty, equality, justice, freedoms for all citizens, and promoting the general welfare of the nation.
They might renounce the current corporate “reform” policies of high-stakes testing, charters and vouchers, and merit pay.
And, in a real fit of leadership, they might agree to engage in genuine reform that is not test-centered, but student focused, so that the classroom is” physically, psychologically, and socially safe” and supportive of “the pupil’s health,” thus students are better motivated to learn and to develop what Aristotle called the “character of democracy.”
Ideally, the Board would subscribe to Horace Mann’s view of education as “the balance-wheel of the social machinery” in a democratic society.
(You can almost hear the conservative and corporate howls of protest now.)
My guess is the Board opts for “form over substance.”
For fake “reform” over real, meaningful change.
This is what passes for “leadership” in education…and what too often passes for “leadership” in our country.
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Nice post.
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Outstanding. I do not think that the “reformers” counted on educators examining their evaluation formulas with such a high level of critical analysis and, yes, EXCELLENCE. Every educator should keep a copy of Carol’s post because, to varying degrees, the same misguided reasoning in being foisted upon educators all over this country. Thank you for pointing out flaws that I had not considered.
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Intention is in the “I” of the intender.
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Thank you again Carol. I just hope this time around a majority of NYC principals will have the courage to sign it. Walcott and Bloomberg are so upset with the proposals made by the Democrats running for mayor, that Walcott is holding a special meeting of all administrators to review the accomplishments of Bloomberg. I am sure these men and women would rather be getting a cavity filled than have to sit through those lies.
Diane,
I was hoping to read a blog post of the debate you recently moderated. I was wondering
why Quinn wasn’t at the debate? And what if anything surprised you most??
The debate is now on Youtube..
For those who want to skip all the introductions, start the video at 6:50.
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“If the leadership of the school is removed due to an ineffective VAM score, who will want to step in, knowing that receiving an ineffective score the following year is nearly inevitable?”
Carol, I found your appeal to be comprehensive and fair. Thank you for so many critical points.
Diane, thanks always for featuring Carol.
With regard to what Carol wrote above, the answer is simple:
Those who ultimately step in under this model, which I think IS very intentional about removing education as a public trust, will be from private charter school management companies, and, at least in New York State, will no longer be subject to the same APPR system that engulfed the principals and faculty in the first place.
The rules are set up to give charterization the freedom to do away with current paradigms, and that includes an elimination of much of the APPR system that caused the harm that triggered the usage of a private management company. It is not so cyclical because the pattern gets broken once the charter takes over. So far, very close to 20% of the nation’s charter schools easily and legally are required to be closed due to poor performance, but the agencies that monitor and regulate them turn their heads away in the name of deals that have been struck behind closed doors that revolve around money.
And please let’s not forget how this impacts the way principals view and treat faculty; see:
http://thetruthoneducationreform.blogspot.com/2012/12/this-is-test.html
So who, Carol asks, will step in?
The answer is obvious.
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Carol,
It was indeed a pleasure reading your essay. So much has been written by outsiders who don’t really get it. You get it because you are on the inside looking out, feeling the pressures. Teachers and administrators both get it because they have to weight these outsider imposed pressures vs the real needs of their students. The regents who run the state ed dept, along with John King are also outsiders. They are not principals or teachers. I know a regent personally. He is a great guy, a true believer in the education we want, but he feels too inhibited politically do do more than state an objection or too.
As for Regents exams….they have always been a joke. They are among the longest tenured standardized exams in the nation and have always varied in scope, value, and validity depending on subject and year. These tests by committee have often consisted of questions too long and too cumbersome for many students to do as well on as teacher and school based assessments. For decades, passing rates have been determined primarily on tutoring and test prep rates than actual learning.
Now that jobs are being decided on the outcomes of these tests, which hardly matter in both Scarsdale and Ardsley High Schools, because of the high pass rates in both schools, ( I taught in the former and live in the latter’s district. My kids went to schools in both.) perhaps we can do more than choose not to follow these “regents” test based outside imposed VAT and APPR judgements. Perhaps we can instead look at them and demand the more authentic assessments not just the professionals deserve, but more importantly, our students deserve.
Sometimes being on the defensive allows one to turn to the offensive stance that should have been taken long ago.
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I must admit that I’m beginning to be persuaded that the agenda of all these states with VAM’s for principals is to move kids to charters. It seems clear that many principals will be ousted via opaque algorithms that will alienate many good people. Once these principals and their schools are ‘objectively’ identified as failing, the charters, who are not subject to these VAM systems, will be able to pick up the pieces
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Sometimes, a school succeeds in spite of the principal, not because of him/her. It is impossible to give direct credit to a principal for the school’s achievements. I speak from experience. A principal who is vindictive, plays favorites, has high levels of absence, who makes assumptions (both good and bad) about teachers, and who doesn’t even know thoroughly that which she/he is evaluating is a frightening entity. Yet … somehow a district achieving Excellence with Distinction for five years straight somehow emerged. Give credit where credit is due.
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