In her invaluable blog called VAMboozled, Audrey Amrein-Beardsley discusses Florida’s decision to release teacher data evaluations to the public.
While she does not question the decision to make the ratings public, she explains that the ratings are fundamentally flawed.
My view: the ratings are so flawed and so misleading that they should not be made public. They are not only inaccurate, but the release of this flawed data is demeaning.
In what other profession, in what other branch of public service, are job ratings made public? Do newspapers print the job ratings of police officers and firefighters?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Do newspapers publish the evaluations of their employees?
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WHY WHY WHY! This is one of the most disgustingly INVASIVE practices that states are engaging in, and HOW on God’s green earth can ANYONE justify this???? This is like a bad reality TV show…. of course, I think ALL reality TV shows are bad… they all rely on human humiliation. What a dystopian nightmare!
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So agree
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Just a wild guess, but this could end badly for the defendants in the teachers’ lawsuits about the badly flawed Florida evaluation system– it will add to the damages. Guess the state isn’t worried.
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Lawyers..listen up..you can make so much money on this one..
I already know of teachers who are keeping detailed notes….videos……preparing for the lawsuits that are inevitable..
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US has had a long history of disrespecting teachers in many ways. Yes, there are millions who do not participate, but people in power have not missed opportunities to disrespect the profession. It is suspect of deep emotional hate of teachers by them. Emotionally stunted but harmful to teachers and children. Finland and other civilized countries can probably not relate to this. I do not think we will improve our condition anytime soon. We have an obligation to speak up, and stand up. The $zill support by CorpEdReformer$ is making it a Mt.McKinley task. We have to be up to the task. The US ought to be ashamed of tattooing our teachers and flogging teachers publically. And, spending $B to prove that they hate us. Any psychologists out there with explanations for such hate?
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Regarding Ms. Snowden’s remarks.
Do newspapers ever even ask for evaluations from their READERS on the quality of their journalism? Or publish them? I have never seen it as she remarks. AND of course as she says, the feedback from their employees even?
During the “automobile” crisis many years ago and so very many corporations of various kinds were having a terrible time a book was written and a TV documentary made on the corporations which were successful even then. The successful ones were the ones which valued their employees. One part of the documentary showed an owner or head honcho who was so effusive it was almost nauseating as he praised his employee for work done. How often is that kind of thing done now, in schools or even in the workplace. AND I am not talking unions. I am talking about plain people working often in horrific circumstances for wages on which they can barely exist, let alone “live”.
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I think teachers should have to wear a special symbol – perhaps a red apple? – on their clothes so they can be easily identifiable. And perhaps in the near future it will be necessary for them to live in special, um, camps together. And those are just steps, of course, hardly the final solution….
Sorry, I know I’ve probably just set some sort of Godwin record, but I’m tired of the scapegoating – whether teachers, Muslims, blacks, poor people – none of whom have any power in this nightmare fascism we’re living. If we don’t wake up soon, we might as well start practicing our straight-arm salutes.
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Great Post.
Maybe a Brand on their forehead.
1-apple-Poor
2-apples-Poor plus
3-apples-Average
4-apples-Better than Average
5-apples-unattainable …unless you teach others to teach..ooops..I mean test…
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The Jax Times-Union is following the L.A. Times into the gutter on this, but please make clear that this was NOT the decision of the Florida Department of Education but a judge’s decision in a case where the FDOE and the Florida Education Association both stood on the same side to defend reasonable teacher privacy.
The day of the judge’s ruling, the FDOE was considering appealing the ruling. I haven’t heard anything since.
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I smell like a rat kept by Jeb Bush and the ALEC. It’s a state that authorities are turning everything irrational into rational since the Zimmerman brouhaha.
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This began way before Zimmerman.
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FOIL the Times-Union’s employee evaluations?
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Even if you make the argument that we’re public employees, where are the evaluations of all the consultants that the edu-reformers pay billions to? Why are teachers and administrators the only ones subject to this – remember when Mayor Bloomberg claimed he didn’t have to evaluate his staff formally because he did so on a daily basis?
This can’t have positive results – at best it will make people feel fuzzy about some teachers, but it will make countless others victims – both their livelihood and reputations ride on those evaluations and they will not disappear once they’re out in the open.
Florida already pays teachers horrible salaries and bad benefits – who in their right mind would want to risk working in a high needs school in this environment?
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Enough! Do we blame the weatherman for bad weather or doctors for cancer? Children. are not widgets nor circus dogs as politicians would like the public to think. Rather than blame teachers lets really look at what ails us … Poverty
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This is all so very sad. I simply don’t understand why this oppressive attack on teachers. In all seriousness, I am heartbroken for my profession and can’t believe the number of administrators who are willing to carry out the deeds that are so mean spirited and suck the life out of their teachers. I know I feel sucked dry.
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Good morning, class. I am Common Core teacher model 4819Jv2. I am rated highly effective by the Common Core Curriculum Commissariat and Ministry of Truth. Pull my string to begin lesson CCSS.ELA.RI.9.4b.
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Today we will find the surface area to determine the amount of Tinfoil we need to cover the turkey we bought for dinner..
Next we will measure the turkey’s….height…width…depth..
We will then take a field trip to the grocery store to determine the volume of the pan we will need to cook the turkey..
This is real world….ns.88…333.4.5.1.b.c.d…444.567…
At the end of today;s lesson..we will have a 10 question quiz as practice for the State-Turkey-Test…
Make sure you bubble carefully.
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Love it..Puppet on a String…
or is it now a Rubber Band about to snap and boomerang…
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The self-styled “education reformers” quite openly and arrogantly apply one standard to teachers and quite another to themselves. Holy EduMetrics for Thee, But Not for Me.
Just one illustration of same taken from an article in the LATimes, 10-28-13.
Title and subtitle of article: “L.A. schools improved, but Deasy fell short of ambitious goals —
Supt. John Deasy, whose annual review will be conducted Tuesday, failed to meet many goals he set for himself. Even so, school board members and civic leaders cite long-term gains.”
From the opening three paragraphs:
[start quote] On the eve of discussions over his future, Los Angeles schools Supt. John Deasy can count on broad support from the civic elite, but by his own yardsticks, his performance fell notably short this year.
Deasy set ambitious and specific targets to measure progress in the nation’s second-largest school system — and in category after category, he failed to hit his marks, even though L.A. Unified maintained a long trend of gradual improvement.
He didn’t reach goals in eight of nine academic categories measured by test scores. He also slipped behind in his targets for boosting the graduation rate and in attendance for students and teachers. He shined, however, in two categories: reducing the number of instructional days lost to suspensions and in the percentage of students who feel safe at school. [end quote]
Link: http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-lausd-deasy-20131029,0,2199450,full.story#axzz2j57NzKVh
How is this not an “F”? How is this not so “ineffective” that he should have been terminated immediately? If he had walked his own talk, he would have fired himself!
I refer the viewers of this blog to a posting by Jersey Jazzman earlier this year where he reminds us of the wit and wisdom of Bill Gates in a TED talk:
[start quote] Until recently, over 98% of teachers just got one word of feedback: “Satisfactory.” [end quote]
Link: http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2013/05/bill-gatess-ridiculous-ted-talk-part-ii.html
This from the management guru of “Won’t Stack Down” — er, stack ranking aka forced ranking aka rank-and-yank aka burn and churn? Also known as the poison pill that wrecked Microsoft.
But not to worry. Numerical hardball with the teachers, non-numerical softball with fellow edufrauds.
Really? Yes, Rheeally! LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy didn’t just get a “satisfactory” — here is a personnel evaluation by none other than the US Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, taken from the same LATimes article referenced above:
[start quote] U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said in an interview Monday that the “marriage” between Deasy and the school board should continue “for the sake of students.” And, taken in proper context, he said, Deasy’s performance has excelled. [end quote]
Ah, the self-styled education rheephormers of this most cage busting achievement gap crushing twenty first century. Who knew that they had already been identified by someone who didn’t even make it out of the dull twentieth?
“Some people are born mediocre, some people achieve mediocrity, and some people have mediocrity thrust upon them.” [Joseph Heller]
😎
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