Peter Greene makes a stab at explaining what Andrew Cuomo doesn’t understand about accountability.
First point is that you keep your promises after the election is over. Cuomo promised to delay high stakes attached to test scores in teacher ratings. After the election, he changed his mind.
The second is that you use tests to learn what’s happening, not to confirm what you believe. Cuomo thinks lots of teachers are failing, and he won’t believe any measurement unless it confirms his prior conclusions.
What Peter doesn’t explain is why presumably intelligent people like Cuomo think that teachers alone are responsible for student test scores. What if the student never does his homework or pay attention in class? What if the student doesn’t speak English? What if her mother has a fatal illness? There are so many variables over which the teacher has no control. Experience has shown that the various teacher evaluation models are fraught with instability and error.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Perhaps he doesn’t believe all of this either.
The US Department of Education has proposed that teacher education programs be rated by the scores of the students who are taught by the graduates of those programs.
It is not valid to use student scores to evaluate teachers and to use that “so-called” data to rate the teacher education programs for the following reasons.
1) LOW RELIABILITY OF VAMs:
a. Value added modeling cannot be accurately used for a small sample like a single class. The aggregation of student test scores to derive a score for an individual teacher has been wildly unstable, assigning scores to a given teacher from year to year or even from class to class that are improbably different.
b. VAMs cannot adequately account for every factor outside of a teacher’s instruction that can impact how students do on a test because there are too many other factors affecting students’ scores.
c. Research shows that whatever teachers’ impact is, standardized tests account for only 1-14% of student variability on the tests.
d. Attaching high stakes to evaluation led to the distortion of the processes that were being evaluated.
2) STUDENT HOME ENVIRONMENT:
a. Studies since the 1966 Coleman report continue to show that nothing affects student achievement as much as the student’s home.
b. Differences in background or the amount of support a child receives at home affect test scores as much as the teacher and the school.
c. Families in poverty cannot provide the support and enrichment that are available in middle class communities.
3) WORK CONDITIONS:
a. Favorable work conditions predict higher rates of student academic growth far more than VAMs.
b. W. Edwards Deming, the business management expert says, “It is the structure of the organization rather than the employees, alone, which holds the key to improving the quality of output.”
c. Anyone who knows schools understands that the school environment explains much of any apparent student and teacher “success”. The social conditions, the school’s culture, the principal’s leadership, class assignment, and relationships among colleagues are all important in determining teachers’ success.
4) CLASS COMPOSITION:
A teacher’s effectiveness is directly affected by the composition of the class assigned to that teacher even within the same school. What kind of academic background do the children have? Are their goals aligned with the school’s goals? How cooperative are they? How well behaved or self-regulated are they?
Ignoring these factors and the research supporting them is an injustice to students, teachers, parents, and communities alike.
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Sadly, in the worst case scenario, older teachers who are plagued with poor administration will get difficult classes – therefore, low value added scores and poor evaluations. They will be able to get rid of older teachers and reduce costs in this way. It is all so unfair to teachers who try very hard and do make a difference with difficult classes.
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That is a Subset of 3c.
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So Cuomo feels it is fine to judge teacher performance (and make critical decisions on a teacher’s career) based upon how students do on an exam that does not impact the students future? Anyone see any problems here? Also, Cuomo is concerned about disproportional looking results between student proficiency and teacher effectiveness without acknowledging that John King set the cut scores on the exam at a point where he knew 70% (or more) of NY students would not achieve the proficiency standard? The cut scores were set knowing they would foment a “crisis situation” that would allow Cuomo, King and Tisch to make a push for Cheater Schools. This thing was well thought out–and diabolical.
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Although a truly well-thought-out and diabolical plan would have resulted in more than 5 or 6 percent of teachers getting “ineffective” ratings on the VAM portion, no?
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One of the reasons they failed to get the teacher “failure” rates they were hoping for was due to the smart deal making of NYSUT president, Richard Iannuzzi. Cuomo was so anxious to win a RTTT prize that, with the deadline looming, he was forced to sign an APPR agreement that allowed each individual, local union to negotiate their own evaluation plan. Iannuzzi received little credit for pulling off this coup for his members.
New York teacher unions have negotiated 700 different APPR agreements, many of them advantageous to teachers.
The other reason that Cuomo and Tisch didn’t get their expected failure rate was because their combined arrogance and ignorance lead them to truly believe that teacher incompetence is rampant across the state, which of course it is not. In fact the percent of truly harmful, incompetent teachers is no different than the level of incompetence found in most work places.
Another reason for the disconnect between the 70% failure rate in math and ELA and the 90+% teacher effectiveness ratings lies in the simple fact that the majority of teachers do not teach subjects tested by the Pearson, 3 to 8, state assessments.
Most teachers must show student growth using SLOs that involve pre and post tests written by the teachers. A system easily gamed.
However the major reason for the resounding success of NY teachers on their evaluations is a result of a 60% value that is placed on principal or supervisor observations – both formal and informal. Principals are not the boss of teachers; they are colleagues who must work together in a symbiotic relationship. Principals cannot do their jobs effectively without the cooperation of teachers and support staff. Most principals are not self destructive. Most school staffs are like a family, imperfect relationships but bound together at a fundamental level. To unfairly target a large percentage of their teaching staff as ineffective (or developing) would be professional suicide for most principals.
So Andy can make all the changes he wants and it will barely budge the teacher evaluation numbers. He’s like Ahab chasing the white whale.
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Wow! Nice post! You said it all so perfectly!
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Wow, NY Teacher.
You almost sound like an administrator or someone REALLY high up in the union. . . . or formerly high up.
Still you nailed this almost perfectly! Clicking on the “like” button.
One tiny piece of feedback:
“New York teacher unions have negotiated 700 different APPR agreements, many of them advantageous to teachers.”
I would tend to disagree by saying that these agreements were crafted to be fair, given the ridiculousness of VAM methods and other Byzantine algorithms that no one, including the math staff at Harvard, can understand (that’s code up at NYSED for “Let’s be esoteric, cryptic, and really deep sounding without having to account to the public why we think our formulas are so wonderful. After all this is about power and politics, not math!”
Therefore, the agreements are pushback against all the unfair reforms made against teachers, children, parents, taxpayers, local control, and administrators.
There was nothing advantageous about the agreements . . . .
You seem very cynical and almost imply that there is no such thing as a really effective evaluation system, but I defer to other countries, where there is trust between educator, parent, taxpayer and government in all directions, and where there is far more fiscal equality that prevents children from entering the school system far less impoverished than they do here in the United Corporations of America.
Finland is a prime example.
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I am a 35 year veteran, junior high school science teacher and have never held a union position and never wanted to leave the trenches. I am mostly disappointed with NYSUTs reaction to the Regents Reform Agenda and am anxious to see how Magee and Mulgrew take on Cuomo’s very direct challenge. Nothing they have done to date gives me much confidence that they will be the second coming of Al Shanker. If push comes to shove, I would welcome a statewide walkout but know it will never happen. Much like you I despise Lord Cuomo with every molecule in my body. He is a disgrace to the office and a despicable human being.
As far as teacher evaluations, I am a strong proponent of independent peer review. The Marzano and Danielson rubrics are a joke, easily gamed with dog and pony shows. At the secondary level, few principals have the content knowledge to accurately evaluate most of the teachers they observe. I am also of the strong belief that truly incompetent teachers are the result of lazy and even more incompetent administrators. But truly harmful teachers are very few and far between. Clueless Cuomo seems to want a state where all teachers are above average.
A 40 minute observation is the equivalent of a reviewer watching a random 45 second clip of a movie. Most principals get their best feedback through informal sources. Most principals would be crazy to want to have to turn over a large percentage of their staff because unlike Clueless Cuomo, they know that there is not a large pool of unemployed superstar teachers just waiting for the mass firings to open the door for them.
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And yes, RR, your description of the locally negotiated APPRs as being crafted to be fair, to counter act the onerous use of VAM and SLOs is a better way to describe things. What do you think Cuomo will try? I liken him to Ahab in his obsession with hunting down the white whale. And how do you think NYSUT will counter?
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NY Teacher,
Thank you for this insightful analysis. It is possible that Cuomo is striving to do one of two things: he may be trying to impose a math or ELA score or both in the “local” 20 percent of the evaluation. “Local” to all non-New Yorkers, means “locally negotiated” from a state-approved list of testing vendors or a system whose “rigor” is approved by superintendents. Some schools use the PSAT (crazy-right?) as the local measure, others use district -created measures, and others use an “average” of student proficiency for all tests taken in a school. The list is quite varied. NYC Has a more stringent local 20. But imposing a test score on all teachers would be “equitable” but misguided. Ask Florida. The other thing he might try to do is impose one evaluation system statewide for the 60 percent. initially, schools got to choose among several rubrics, including Pearson, which part way through the first year was removed from the list. Schools that had selected it had to scramble to find another. So while we mostly hear about the horrors of Danielson and Marzano, there are pockets of high performing schools using other approved “tools.” Again, imposing one rubric would appear equitable. Watch the state testing itself as well. those vaunted modules are written to align with PARCC, so as much as the Board of Regents seems agnostic about PARCC at this time, that could change quickly and will certainly impact high school math and ELA teachers, at least those who teach at a tested grade level. “One ring to [crush] them all.”
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John King has already said this is a goal. Probably Cuomo, too. Eliminating local measures in the name of test reduction.
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NY Teacher and Others,
I think NYSUT takes far too many cues from the AFT and the UFT. . . . . Weingarten is the the Queen Bee with her satellite drone unions doing too much of what mommy tells them.
That said, I dont’ know how NYSUT will react, but given the history of unions not doing anything substantial to resist NCLB and RttT, and, even as Dick Ianuzzi stated to me at a rally in Washington (One Nation), the reformers are too powerful for anyone to resist, and it’s better to try and partner with them while educating them on the realities of teaching.
Whether people think that was a good move (and BTW, it was Weingarten’s move as well), it did not work. That’s pretty obvious.
Therefore, I conclude the unions – NYSUT too – will do as much as they can without putting themselves out of business. The current state of most education unions, especially at a state and national level, is to stay in business, up and running as long as they are collecting union dues. Staying in business, regardless of politics and all political and economic consequences, is the number one priority of unions. Unions are also scrambling to figure out how long they can look good for their constituents and still compromise with government and the very rich. They are on the lookout, in their PR cubicles, for how long they can get away with such and such and for what purpose and at what cost.
Unions in this context shoot their rifles WITH the Waltons and Gates, rifles all aimed at us educators, and then unions dress up as Clara Barton to come into the fields and sympathetically nurse our wounds.
There are dire exceptions to this union culture, but they are spaced far apart.
If this were a French union and the reform movement were to infect France, there would have been major strikes used as a START, and the strikes would have been considered to be an innocuous strategy.
I am not tolerant at all of any radical measures, but I also recognize he fact that education unions are corrupt mostly, and refuse to take risks and show civilized militancy in their actions.
There is almost no democratic structure to NYSUT, the UFT, and the AFT.
Yet, the biggest gain we have to make – and it will be a worthy struggle – is to reinvent our unions, as did MORE of the UFT and the CTU with Karen Lewis. Barbara Madeloni and the MTA is another shining example.
No pain, no gain.
It’s fascinating to see Andrew Cuomo stand up for women’s choice for giving birth, rights to marijuana, and gay marriage. But when it comes to the people who nurture, care for, and educate our children across NY state – and that includes teachers AND administrators on ALL levels, he becomes this hideous monstrous lap dog of Wall Street who HATES teachers and public entities.
Andrew Cuomo, up yours.
But that’s the state of the union in many ways. . . . . .
You know how that lovely song from Crosby, Stills, and Nash goes: “Teach your children well . . . . . . “
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Peter Greene,
Cuomo does understand accountability. He just does not want to have to give it from himself . . . . . . He wants it given to him by others.
He is a lascivious, wretched, decrepit, moral cripple of a human being. No wonder his father’s heart is failing.
If Andrew were a dog, the owner would have long euthanized him. . . . .
Andrew Cuomo, however, is like that un-neutered German Shepherd who eats anything, humps anything, and only thinks of himself, his immediate survival, and his opportunism for more intake . . . . . . Constantly begging at the Wall Street table, drooling with tongue out and dog saliva, and even jumping up on the table to snatch the end piece of the roast.
Someone needs to send the governor (here, boy!) to obedience school. If not, rolling up a newspaper and a good swat on the muzzle should give him a message he badly needs to get . . . .
(Down, boy, down! Sit, Andy. Sit down!) . . . . . .
Something tells me that Andy will continue to prowl around without a leash, and will think so closely about his own conquests that he will forget to look where he is going and end up somewhere on the Long Island Expressway, where drivers don’t always, at 60 MPH, see stray dogs. . . . . .
Someone call the dog pound . . . . . .
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German Shepherds are loyal dogs. A Jackal is a more accurate comparison.
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All of the invalid, unreliable, unfair measures that USDE has inflicted on K-12 teachers are now being proposed as measures of teacher education programs, with a few more bureaucratic additions. Nothing has changed.
Why? Arne and his staff are still committed to securing compliance with flawed policies and extending these to teacher education. The Gates and USDE funded “teacher student data-link system” is in place and eleven states already have these links from each teacher-of-record backmapped to their teacher education programs. The proposed regulation grandfathers the data in these reports to evaluate teacher education programs. New teachers will become part of the system.
The proposed regulation says: “We would permit the State to build its indicators of academic content knowledge and teaching skills linked to …existing teacher evaluation systems” provided that these “(1) differentiate teachers on a regular basis using at least three performance levels, (2) use multiple valid measures in determining each teacher’s performance level, and (3) include, as a significant factor, data on student growth for all students and other measures of professional practice.” “States may prefer to use a stand-alone measure of student growth.”
Teacher education programs will also be rated by “employment outcomes.” This reasoning is already embedded in the Higher Education Act reauthorized in 2014. This Act requires institutions of higher education to train prospective teachers in a manner that “responds to the identified needs of the local educational agencies or States where the institution’s graduates are likely to teach based on past hiring and recruitment trends” (sections 205(a)(1)(A)(ii) and 206 of the Higher Education Act).
USDE amplifies on this position with its usual convoluted reasoning: ”We believe…the goal of teacher preparation programs is to provide prospective teachers with the skills and knowledge needed to pursue a teaching career and remain successfully employed as a teacher, and to produce graduates who meet the needs of local educational agencies.” Moreover, ”we believe that programs that persistently produce teachers who fail to find jobs or, once teaching, fail to remain in teaching, may not be providing the level of content knowledge and teaching skills that new teachers need to succeed in the classroom. Correspondingly, we believe that high placement and retention rates suggest that a teacher preparation program’s graduates do have the requisite content knowledge and teaching skills that enable them to demonstrate sufficient competency to find a job, earn positive reviews, and stay in the profession.”
The Higher Education act and USDE reflect the new vocationalism and parochialism in defining what higher education is for. Either is for job prep in your state, or it is useless.
While posturing about the importance of “evidence-based practice” for teachers, USDE systematically ignores evidence that VAM and SLOs are invalid and unreliable measures for teachers. The research citations in this proposal are mainly from economists and statisticians who have pushed these measures. USDE is engaging in a studied campaign of ignorance of all of the expert criticisms of these measures and much else in the so-called reforms of the last several decades.
Education is being corrupted by USDE and Congressional policies that must be exposed as pathologically focused on seeking compliance in the absence of credible evidence. The hypocrisy is made worse by insisting that the practice of teachers and teacher-educators be evidence-based.
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My kid is a teacher who graduated in Dec. 2010 from MSU in NJ. She has 2 certifications. It took her 3 months short of 3 years to secure a teaching job, tho she worked in “education” until then. It is very hard to get a job, especially when veteran teachers are being tossed to the wolves or thrown into rubber rooms, and cities have partnered with TFA for “x” amount of scabs. Tying ed colleges to the jobs their students EVENTUALLY secure is another stab at teachers through this measure because Duncan, et al. know that the jobs for traditional teachers have lessened due to TFA and charters that staff the classrooms with TFA and other uncertifieds. The end game, as usual, is to turn the teaching profession into a low-paid high turnover “clerk” situation. DOE wants technology to benefit the tech sector and to further turn teaching into clerking.
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Donna, I could not have said it better. You are right on the mark. The evil ones are trying very hard to eliminate teaching as a career profession. I was highly respected in the fall of 1985, which was my very first year of teaching. As I finish my final years, I feel my profession is in deep trouble. The state of Ohio has made teachers feel as though we are bugs which need stepped on and destroyed. The evil ones wish to pocket all money, replacing highly qualified teachers with low pay clerks who will oversee online learning. I honestly never thought it would ever get this bad. Again, it will be our children who suffer. Young people will avoid this profession like the plague. It is already happening.
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I’ve been attempting to read the whole proposed regs (alternately nonplussed, outaged, somnolent). This of what you cite above is downright nutty:
”we believe that programs that persistently produce teachers who fail to find jobs or, once teaching, fail to remain in teaching, may not be providing the level of content knowledge and teaching skills that new teachers need to succeed in the classroom. Correspondingly, we believe that high placement and retention rates suggest that a teacher preparation program’s graduates do have the requisite content knowledge and teaching skills that enable them to demonstrate sufficient competency to find a job, earn positive reviews, and stay in the profession.”
Can you direct me to the cite? I’d like to copy it to friends so they’ll comment on regs.
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This gets you to the proposed teacher education regulations
https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2014/12/03/2014-28218/teacher-preparation-issues#h-54
This sectioni have quoted from (and lightly edited) is Rationale for Employment Outcomes
I have found it useful to put federal legislation into Word format and do searches so I can bold face terms/phrases like “must,” “are required to” and always the “definitions” and “final definitions.
This proposed federal regulation really is tedidious. All of the rationales and the supporting research is cherry picked and thin.
There are frequent references to “non-governmental negotiators.” These particiants were enlisted from a process first announced in the Federal Registerand started in May 2011.
Transcripts of all regional meetings and a summary of all comments received orally and in writing are posted as background material in the Regulations.gov docket and may also be accessed at http://www2.ed.gov/policy/highered/reg/hearulemaking/2011/hearings.html.
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Here we are once again….the tragedy of not learning from history.
I think back to the late 1990s. And, what was a significant percentage of our country obsessed with….Bill Clinton’s penis. Yes, the president of the United States had a weird, embarrassing sort of affair with an intern. I don’t know why this guy couldn’t just hold it together for a few years and keep his zipper zipped -at least until he got clear of the Oval Office. And, then there were all those alleged “family values” obsessed Republicans who just couldn’t stop talking about Bill Clinton’s penis, entrapping him in their bizarre, alternate reality world.(The same world where the Clinton’s had supposedly murdered Vince Foster.)
Meanwhile, a guy named Osama bin Laden was working very diligently to change our channel, so to speak. If only we’d been paying more attention to him…..
And, then we got George W. Bush….. feckless, shallow, entitled…. For a few months American rallied around this president…..he could have inspired us to do anything…to all sacrifice for our country….to tackle the BIG issues we face as a nation. And, what does he ask us to do? Keep shopping. Yup, that and send thousands of loyal soldiers to invade a country that had nothing to do with 9-11. One of my former students died in that war….a wonderful, young man who deserved much better in life. He sacrificed for his country. What did we do?
So, here are, in 2014, left with Cuomo and Duncan and Christie and, wow, Clinton and Bush, again. We’ve got HUGE problems we need to be working on, and this is the best leadership our nation has to offer?
The problem isn’t that we have stupid kids. No, it’s not our schools. The problem is we’ve got too many stupid adults. Stupid and/or selfish. I don’t think Andrew Cuomo and his ilk care let alone really understand VAM and APPR and SLOs and all the other educational mumbo jumbo that they’ve spawned. It’s all some sort of sick game to them. Either that or they are just plain idiots.
Look, I’ve been teaching 27 years. And, each day I learn something and become a better teacher. But is this country going to wait around 27 years or 17 years or even 7 years for someone to be a good teacher? Hell, we don’t even have the patience to wait 7 seconds for something to load on our computers. Wait, make that .7 seconds.
The conversation, the debate we should be having is about how we need to do right by our kids now in the 21st century. How are we all going to adapt to this new, high tech world we’re living in?
But instead, too many of our leaders are using this unique moment in history as just another opportunity to amass power and money, attack perceived enemies and further divide us all. They distract and confuse…they obfuscate constantly. Really, they’re making a mockery of what education is meant to be.
Boy, are we blowing it……again.
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John,
You speak my sentiments exactly… almost…
However, I do differ with you on stupid adults. Yes, there are tons of stupid adults, but the Cuomos, Duncan, Christie, the Bush tribe, the Clintons, add to that the Koch Bros., Walker, Daniels, Kasich, Gates, Cruz and whole slew of others are not stupid. They are ruthless, intelligent, dangerous and greedy people.
They count on the stupid, gullible, sleeping masses to drink the reform kool-aid whilst they do the sleight of hand and create an even-less informed, somnambulistic electorate that will surely keep them in office. Who doesn’t have a smart phone, a big screen TV and a tablet these days?
As sad it is, it seems to me that the reformer 1% clique truly wants a less educated class of drones and welfare scapegoats living outside of the gated communities. The drones and scapegoats will do their shift as part of the 37 hour work week at Wal-Mart, go home, drink a couple of Busch Lights, throw an On-Cor frozen meal in the oven and watch Hannity of the big screen…
Ahhhh…all is right with the world.
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DEzerov.
Maybe wisdom is more of what I’m thinking about? Christie and Duncan and Cuomo might be intelligent but they lack wisdom. I don’t think wise people would pillage their own society. I don’t think what they’re doing to our nation is sustainable.
Let me add…..I just got home from a small Christmas party held after school at a nice little bar in Jeffersonville. I refrained from drinking any beer while there since I had a half hour ride home ahead of me and I’m really tired. But your mention of Busch Light, DEzerov, just put me over the edge. And, I’m sitting here now, Rolling Rock in hand. LOL. That internet is a powerful thing.
Take care
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Please add in – a family member arrested or shot.
There are also students in the Erie County Holding Center who are registered students in the Buffalo Public Schools. (My husband has two in his role book). If they fail the final, it goes on his record for not being an effective teacher.
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How awful…Nothing surprises me anymore. I think we all will understand when there are not enough licensed teachers to staff our schools in 10 years. What a toxic environment the evil ones have created for us…..How awful….
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