Reader Jennifer Horowitz writes about Governor Andrew Cuomo’s plan to base 50% of teachers’ evaluation on state test scores (as opposed to the current 20%):
Here’s what’s INEFFECTIVE about the plan to me:
It doesn’t matter if you have 15 kids or 35.
It doesn’t matter if your students had any books read to them before Kindergarten.
It doesn’t matter if their parents have them do homework or ensure a good night’s sleep.
It doesn’t matter if assessment cut scores are so high that no nation has ever achieved excellent results with expectations that high.
It doesn’t matter if the district provides high quality professional development for the faculty.
It doesn’t matter if the classroom has enough books, not to mention desks, for all the students.
It doesn’t matter how many students learn to be kind, helpful, attentive, resilient or respectful.
It doesn’t matter how many phenomenal pieces of literature or symphonies or theories the teacher has shared with the class.
It doesn’t matter how many children learned the values of voting and debate.
It doesn’t matter if the child or parents value education and care about classroom success.
It doesn’t matter if the state cuts school district budgets so much that dozens or hundreds of faculty members have been let go and programs have been cut to the bare bones.
Teachers should be rated based on how students perform on a test for a few days each year.
What intelligent person would start a career in a profession like that?
Who will be the teachers of tomorrow?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Soft values always become the collateral damage of testing data…sad isn’t it since that is where the individual learns to become responsible citizen and friend.
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If teachers don’t WAKE UP! then the new ESEA Bill sponsored by Lamar Alexander will make this worse and the state and Federal laws will make teacher’s lives and professions unbearable.
But don’t worry! Pearson will teach them online and Electronic Arts (EA) has been working on producing video games to teach all subjects.
So there is no need for teachers at all!
http://abcsofdumbdown.blogspot.com/2015/01/lamar-alexanders-re-authorization-of.html
Page 48 makes FERPA, Family Education Rights in Privacy Act, federal law, which would put Obama’s EO into law, that allows third party contractors to access personally identifiable information on student records and substantiates a longitudinal state data collection system.
Page 153 the Secretary can grant waivers
Page 157 teacher pay will be based on measurable increase in student achievement
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It doesn’t seem to matter if the teacher actually teaches the subject the evaluation is based on! Nailing teachers to the wall is the goal, not any type of meaningful evaluation with feedback to help the teacher do better in the future.
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As both a former teacher and a business person/HRM – CLO I have always had mixed feelings on this. You raise some valid points. Most of which would also apply to College Professors, Business managers and supervisors. The time that could be saved if we just stop evaluating people. Hell, you could apply the same logic to the student. Why hold them responsible for how good or poorly the teacher taught. The teacher might not like red heads, got a poor night sleep or was hungry. Why should the student be responsible for having a teacher who doesn’t teach to their intelligence or learning mode or one who thinks that VAK are learning styles? It is not the students fault they got the teacher at the bottom of their class instead of at the top or one from the top who doesn’t want to be were they are…. We can always find some excuse why we should not be held accountable for doing our job when responsible for the work/learning of others.
Maybe the solution is to stop calling ourselves professionals. After Parents are a child’s first and most influential teachers. Some of the most Affluent highly educated parents who send they children off to the best private schools still turn out students that fail to meet the grade. On the flip side you have parents armed with nothing more than a GED homeschooling their children who go on to honor students in college. In the end, teaching is not about teaching but sparking a love for learning. If they got into teaching to preach then they are going to fail and should. Just because someone wants to be a teacher with all their heart does not mean they will be a good one. We need facilitators of learning in our schools. Our nations best teachers overcome everyone of those listed obstacles. They teaching is not driven by the degree which they earned but rather by passion and everything they have learned about teaching after leaving college.
While pondering our own self worth check out what these impoverished, undernourished child accomplished with a teacher: http://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_the_child_driven_education
I look forward to seeing your productive solution to evaluating both student and teacher so we can put the focus back on the student.
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“The time that could be saved if we just stop evaluating people.”
Strawman alert. No need to read further.
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What is HRM-CLO?
My excuse for not knowing is being diagnosed as AI. Do you have an excuse for not explaining the acronyms you use-ha ha?!?!
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Gotta love that “CLO-Chief Learning officer” moniker…Bizspeak in the edworld…
A chief learning officer (CLO) is a senior-level executive who ensures that a company’s corporate learning program and strategy supports its overall business goals.
Frank Zappa said the six most dangerous letters in the English language are MBA and LSD… 😉
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Duane, continuing ed is big in the business world—they are very in touch with how to keep up with the latest best practices in real time. So the CLO manages that.
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Did your teacher fail? You seem intelligent, yet you have not mastered the English concept of subject verb agreement. This would reduce your English teacher’s evaluation scores. I would submit the errors are not his or her fault, I am sure these things were taught, just not mastered.
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Not to mention capitalization. (Or should I say Capitalization?)
Thank you for making this point. I’d like to know if Q believes her/his failure to master some of the basics of the English language – which I guarantee were taught by more than one teacher in her/his life – is a failure of the teachers. (I have a hunch what the answer would be.)
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We are truly in the depths of a new dark age. From Wikipedia: Early Middle Ages: The period has been labelled the “Dark Ages”, a characterization highlighting the relative scarcity of literary and cultural output.
Sound familiar? Add diminishing educational opportunities for all and you’ve got today!
Welcome to the NDA…
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New Dopes Alliance???
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In answer to that final question…not my 3 kids! I am a veteran teacher and sternly warned them not to get involved in drugs, gangs or teacher training programs. It worked. One has a Phd., one has a masters and one has a B.A. and two wonderful boys.
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As an undergraduate who is considering pursuing a career in teaching (the goal is to eventually work on social justice and equality within the education system), the thought of having to work under conditions like this is terrifying. I understand that the thought is to keep teachers accountable, but when did we start trying to blame teachers for the faults of our nation? How is it a teachers fault if there are 30 kids in a classroom that only seats 24 and more than half of them are at least one grade level below state standards? That could destroy the work ethic of the teachers and in turn destroy education for the newer generations… but it certainly wouldn’t affect all kids, just the ones who go to low-income schools where they don’t get half the funding as schools in wealthier districts.
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“but when did we start trying to blame teachers for the faults of our nation?”
2002, NCLB
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I’d suggest it goes back a lot further. See Ray Callahan’s “Education and the Cult of Efficiency”
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I have been able to convince the young members of my family not to go into teaching. I love teaching, but in the current climate, there are less painful ways for talented, passionate, dedicated people to work themselves to death. And, not to burst your bubble, but you can’t work from inside. You’ll be too busy teaching to do anything else. (one grade level below standard? lol… get ready for four grades below)
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It’s not a question of teachers ”waking up” – the people making the policies and decisions do NOT care what teachers think or say. We can protest and complain – and we should – but I’m not holding my breath on it making a difference. The goal is to get rid of the teaching profession as it is today. Sorry …feeling pessimistic.
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I know just what you mean. Are we feeling pessimistic, or just getting real?
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I’m absolutely with you. It seems it would take a revolution, at this point, to stop the insanity.
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justateacher: it would help if people opposed to this punitive agenda responded with sit=ins, demonstrations, and other actions. Actions speak louder than words.
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When the 50% goes through and teachers see their jobs truly and not just rhetorically on the line, the demonstrations will start up. Then when good people start losing their jobs, they will be unemployed and have plenty of time to demonstrate, sit-in, sue districts, sue the government, etc. In the meantime, teach to that test and hope not to be among the fallen.
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I think you misspelled “Evacuate” …
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Much easier (and less electron consumptive) to answer the inverse: “What Is Right with Cuomo’s Plan to Evaluate Teachers?”:
Answer: { }
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kind of like the list on how to win an argument with a woman. hee hee
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Don’t listen to her????
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Cuomo’s plan is about as valid as a plan for measuring the beauty of a spring day using a broken thermometer. If the NCLB provision that requires all education policies to be based on reliable, professional research remains in the re-write, his plan (using VAM and SLOs) will be illegal.
“The [NCLB] act requires schools to rely on scientifically based research for programs and teaching methods. The act defines this as “research that involves the application of rigorous, systematic, and objective procedures to obtain reliable and valid knowledge relevant to education activities and programs.” Scientifically based research results in “replicable and applicable findings” from research that used appropriate methods to generate persuasive, empirical conclusions.
Non-scientific methods include following tradition, personal preferences, and non-scientific research, such as research based on case studies, ethnographies, personal interviews, discourse analysis, grounded theory, action research, and other forms of qualitative research. These are generally not an acceptable basis for making decisions about teaching children under the act.”
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Cuomo’s plan is about as valid as a plan for measuring the beauty of a spring day using any thermometer. Who in their right mind thinks the temperature is the defining characteristic of a spring day? I can smell the change in the air, feel the warmth of the sun on my skin, see the cloud of chartreuse on the tips of tree branches, admire the crocus and early daffodils,… Yeah, the warmer temperatures are a welcome change from winter, but we have yet to equate the January thaw with spring here in Chicago or, I suspect, in New York! Just as we wouldn’t define spring with a thermometer, we shouldn’t define learning by a test score.
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Here is really what is wrong with any plan that uses test scores to evaluate teachers:
“What was educationally significant and hard to measure has been replaced by what is educationally insignificant and easy to measure. So now we measure how well we taught what isn’t worth learning.”
– Arthur Costa, Emeritus Professor at California State University
http://reclaimreform.com/2015/01/28/arthur-costa-the-value-of-high-stakes-testing/
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How does this sound for a plan to advance NY State education: (1) firing teachers is the best way to improve student outcomes, (2) talk endlessly about NY having “too much government” then open up unlimited charters (each one governed by a new, unelected Board), (3) systematically underfund the school districts that deal with the most challenging student population, (4) have an outsider evaluate teachers based upon one visit–disregarding what an on site administrator sees every day, (5) utilize new Common core assessments before any staff members become familiar with the curriculum assuring results are an embarrassment, (6) force every district in the state to engage in costly negotiations to arrive at an APPR plan under a threat that they will not get an increase in state aid then call the outcome you forced upon school districts “Baloney” while pretending your costly mandate is somebody else’s evaluation system. Our megalomaniac governor is “The Man With The Plan.” Scott Walker masquerading as a Democrat! Just as goofy!
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You forgot to include, (7) bribe state legislators with a billion+ dollars of taxpayer money in an effort to coerce adoption.
This plan, if implemented, will destroy what not too long ago was considered one of the premiere public education systems in the US. The megalomaniac from Albany must be stopped.
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Who will be the teachers of tomorrow?
Robots pre programmed with microsoft “teacher” software with Coleman info and a slew of programmers to implement. These robots will even be programmed to give hugs when knees are skinned! Suddenly it will be determined that one teacher robot is needed for every 10 students (no longer 1 teacher per 45 students as Gate’s once mentioned). Why? Well surely the owner of the teacher-robot making company stands to profit! Surely there will be pre-programmed conversation to instill citizenship too. The conversation will have been tested with rigorous data of course.
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What’s wrong with Cuomo’s plan?
Everything!
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So Diane-
When will you blog about Randi and Mulgrew’s role in the NY APPR misery and it’s effect on students ????
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I understand why people would like to remove ineffective teachers from their job. I wouldn’t want a teacher that is ineffective teaching my children. However, this is not the way to go about doing that. I would like to see the students be measured on their own personal growth. I come from a teaching/coaching background, so I am more concerned about mastering skills. There are too many variables in our students’ personal lives to make test scores a factor in teacher effectiveness. I would like to see more options for teacher evaluations, especially the ones that have a pre and post-test element. The school where I am currently teaching is using Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) three times this year. This is a personalized assessment tool that adapts to their learning level. This assessment is especially appropriate for the teacher/school to monitor individual growth and be able to make academic adjustment. It seems to me, this would be a better tool to help determine teacher effectiveness, and of course I don’t believe there should only be one set of criteria to assess teacher effectiveness.
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Welcome to Ohio’s current reality! 50% is too high and so wrong!
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Finally located the resources on Cuomo’s “32% of teaching graduates are failing”. NYS just instituted harder teacher certification tests and didn’t give the colleges any preparation materials. Harder test, new raised bar, no resources? Sounds familiar somehow??….. #CCSS Oddly the article says Cuomo asked Tisch to make the tests harder. Sounds like he is creating data again. Before the new test that students were not prepared for, the SUNY pass rate was 90%.
http://www.lohud.com/story/news/education/2015/01/16/teacher-candidates-new-tests-financially-crippling/21876835/
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I wonder how many lawyers take the bar exams without the law review course? Cuomo and Tisch owe these potential teachers a huge apology. I would never vote for that man for president and would make sure that as many people as possible were aware of the slime he deals in.
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