CommonSenseNY blogger is appalled at how little state officials understand about the defects of the state evaluation system.
He or she writes:
“Chancellor Tisch made an astonishing and appalling statement quoted in this Democrat and Chronicle article about 95% of New York teachers being rated ‘effective’ or ‘highly effective’ under Annual Professional Performance Review (APPR) process. While it is true the entire process is bogus, she is wrong about the reason. A link to a Carol Burris summary of the problems with APPR can be found here. She is an award-winning principal.
“Here is what is appalling about Ms. Tisch’s understanding of the current evaluation process. She states, “The ratings show there’s much more work to do to strengthen the evaluation system. There’s a real contrast between how our students are performing and how their teachers and principals are evaluated.”
“Chancellor Tisch continues to either misrepresent, misunderstand or demonstrate little knowledge about the connection between student achievement and socio-economic and other education factors. Let’s take a quick look at the Programme for International Student Achievement (PISA) since it illustrates the point well and creates a similar context.
“If you believe the critics of American public education, our students perform miserably on PISA assessments. We’ll use math as an example. The claim is “we’ are 35th for so in the world in math. Not too good. However, when controlling for poverty – we happen to have a lot of concentrated poverty in comparison to other developed nations – we move up to sixth.
“The problem with student achievement in New York is high concentrations of poverty, particularly in urban areas. Blaming a bogus and poorly implemented (similar to the implementation of the Common Core) evaluation system for student achievement issues is just wrong.”
It seems that the most “effective” teachers work where the affluent kids live. If they cane to work in one of the state’s big cities, they would probably turn into an “ineffective” teacher.
The lawsuit of a veteran fourth grade teacher in Great Neck was postponed while the state tries to figure out how to explain the rating system. She went from effective to ineffective in one year even though nearly 70% of her students passed the new state tests (more than double the state average) in both years. Something is wrong here.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“It is difficult to get a [wo]man to understand something, when [her] salary depends upon [her] not understanding it!”
Upton Sinclair
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“In order to learn you must desire to learn …”
— C.S. Peirce
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One does not have to have common sense to be a politician. Sadly, the more ignorant they are the greater their belief that their views are impeccable. Those know nots, who know not they know not but are absolutely certain they know when empowered create havoc. Look at our Congress now with about a single digit approval rating and the legislation just passed and one can see the truth of the foregoing.
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I think we need to be really careful about the whole concept of “common sense”. Neoliberalism is carefully crafted to be “commonsensical” to the common man (or woman). As far as education goes, it’s “common sense” that if students are “failing” then teachers are to blame. And it’s “common sense” that our students are indeed “failing” because they don’t “perform” as well as students from other countries on standardized tests. So, therefore, it is “common sense” that such high proportions of teachers cannot possibly be “effective”.
True understanding requires a broad step away from “common sense” to understand the finer points of the issues involved. Once you start understanding the effects of poverty, racism, etc. (not to mention the ability (or lack thereof) of tests to “measure” anything of importance), then it’s “common sense” that the alleged connection between student “performance” and teacher “effectiveness” is remote at best. But that kind of common sense is very uncommon.
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“The lawsuit of a veteran fourth grade teacher in Great Neck was postponed while the state tries to gigure out how to explain the rating system. she went from effective to ineffective in one year even though nearly 70% of her students passed the new state tests (more than double the state average) in both years. Something is wrong here.”
What is wrong is that the teacher in question had access to enough data that she was able to point out a flaw in the system. No doubt the administrators who allowed such a thing to happen have already been reprimanded and mechanisms have been put in place to prevent such a thing from ever happening again.
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Ms. Tisch seems to forget that the (artificially induced) 70% failure rates she is so worked up about are only in math and ELA, and only in grades 3 through 8. Most NY teachers do not teach subjects and grade levels that are state tested and common core aligned. Meryl, please do YOUR HOMEWORK before spouting off. Public displays of ignorance are not becoming.
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Give it time! Common Core science and associated testing are already in the works, and Common Core history/civics won’t be far after that. Imagine a world where corporate interests get to decide what gets taught in History classes!
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