The New York State Education Department released educator evaluation results on February 26, and once again, the overwhelming majority of teachers received effective or highly effective ratings. State officials were deeply disappointed by the overwhelmingly positive results. They seem to operate under the assumption that poor test results must be caused by “bad” teachers, and that their evaluation program should identify them so they may be fired.
The SED found that:
The final evaluation results show more than 95 percent of teachers statewide are rated effective (54 percent) or highly effective (42 percent); 4 percent are rated as developing; 1 percent are rated ineffective. Ninety-four percent of principals are rated effective (66 percent) or highly effective (28 percent).
The results were somewhat different in New York City, which used a plan imposed by then-State Commissioner John King:
New York City, whose evaluation plan was imposed by former Commissioner King when the New York City Department of Education could not reach agreement on the terms of the evaluation plan with the teachers union, showed greater differentiation than most districts in the State. Although New York City teachers and principals were evaluated on the same overall subcomponents as the rest of the State, the three subcomponents used different scoring ranges to determine the subcomponent rating categories (i.e., Highly Effective, Effective, Developing, Ineffective). Less than 10 percent of teachers in the city are rated Highly Effective, while 83 percent are rated Effective, 7 percent are Developing and 1 percent are Ineffective.
The leader of the state Board of Regents expressed disappointment at the high proportion of teachers found to be effective or highly effective:
“The ratings show there’s much more work to do to strengthen the evaluation system,” Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl H. Tisch said. “There’s a real contrast between how our students are performing and how their teachers and principals are evaluated. The goal of the APPR process is to identify exceptional teachers who can serve as mentors and role models, and identify struggling teachers to make sure they get the help they need to improve. The evaluation system we have now doesn’t do that. The ratings from districts don’t reflect the struggles our students face to achieve college and career readiness. State law must be changed to build an evaluation system that supports teaching and learning in classrooms across the State. Our students deserve no less.”
Chancellor Tisch, like Governor Cuomo, assumes that the proportion of students getting low scores should somehow be matched by a similar proportion of low-rated teachers. It would be useful if Chancellor Tisch and Governor Cuomo reviewed two basic documents: the American Statistical Association statement on the uses and misuses of value-added measurement (VAM) and the joint statement of the National Academy of Education and the American Educational Research Association. It is unfortunate that the Board of Regents and the Governor proceed without regard to research on the effects of out-of-school and in-school factors that affect test scores. Were they to familiarize themselves with the two documents cited, they might develop a very different action plan, one that helps both students and teachers.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I’m surprised NYSED and Cuomo haven’t hired Pearson to come up with an evaluation.
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But they did! Back in the dark ages of APPR, when Prince Andrew was right about “the strictest evaluation system in the country,” before he was wrong– too many highly effective and effective teachers- Pearson WAS on the approved list of teacher evaluation tools right next to Danielson and Marzano. Some schools thought, hey, we’re using Pearson tests, so why not use their teacher evaluation tool? But Pearson couldn’t answer questions, or the comptroller found a conflict of interest, and suddenly, just like that, Pearson was removed from the approved list, and schools had to scramble for a new teacher evaluation tool a month before Angry Andy’s deadline. That was before Albany Law students read the APPR plans and approved them for State Ed., before the Chancellor’s clone army of NYSED fellows promoted modules (that don’t really align to the tests), before John King compared teachers to Tuskeegee Airmen, and before a bogus charter school was approved by the board of regents. But it was way after teachers were required to have a master’s degree in order to teach in NY, back in the dark ages of the 20th century, yet that didn’t count. Only tests calibrated to the SAT or NAEP-yes, for third graders- deemed teachers effective or ineffective based on questions that used product placement and convoluted language. The Pearson tool existed before New York was terrible, when New York’s education system and teachers were highly regarded, before Angry Andy and Queen Meryl and Jester John. Pearson was on the list way before Angry Andy called out Long Island teachers because if he just fired all those dang teachers and replaced them with test administrators, or TFA, or part-time temps, New York would be great. And profitable for all those hedge funders, because real-estate on Long Island is pretty valuable to billionaires.
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It seems to me that a teacher who cannot meet the criteria in other measures is the one who needs the assistance, mentoring, etc…Looking at the atatistics, the percentage of teachers who did not do well in the other measures matches the percentage of overall effectiveness. That would seem to be appropriate. Test scores are way too much of a crap shoot to evaluate.
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Regardless of the obvious absurdity both technical, statistical and in terms of its conceptual construct of the teacher evaluation scheme used in NYC, the results suggest several things:
1) Not enough variance is generated for the categories to have the ability to distinguish between teachers of varying quality. Like the old system where everybody who had a pulse and showed up to the classroom got tenure, the newer system does little to address the issue of teacher quality. Anybody who has worked or had their children go to a NYC public school knows that teacher vary enormously in quality. I’ve had a teachers who fabricated grades. I kid you not. These teachers are just as “effective” under the new evaluation system, as some of my many star teachers who everyday transformed the lives of the children under their stead, who built amazing living curricula where students explored life’s big questions and the great works of art with depth and passion, who made kids think and ponder and get excited about learning. Something is very wrong when the measuring stick we use everybody comes out the same height, when we all know this simply is not true.
2) If tenure is to be an earned professional right and responsibility, its got to be more than pro-forma. The challenge itself will generate positive results for the profession. The current evaluation system challenges no one. Its bogus, and a joke – not good for the professions tarnished image. (I’ll set aside whether its good for the students, since seemingly we do not know how to measure this).
3) The enormous energies and cost of the systems of evaluation, in the light of underfunding of schools generally, makes it critically important that a careful cost/benefit analysis be done. With these results its clear where that balance is: any rational leader would dump the assessment system and focus those resources elsewhere. We are pouring money down the drain here. Worse: we are wasting money AND pissing off teachers and draining energies of the principals who barely have the time to manage the schools day to day functions.
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Public school teachers don’t have tenure but the identical protections other public employees receive. Since you obviously conflate it with college tenure, your suggestion has no validity at all.
If a principal wants to get rid of a teacher, he or.she can do.it easily. School districts are infamous for gaming the legal system for their benefit. Administrative law is seen as a joke to school districts.
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What’s fascinating is that those percentage seem quite realistic. Not that I love this evaluation approach. But somehow it seems to have reached truth. And that should make reformers angry who just want to blame everyone and accept no blame themselves.
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It might be easier to point out that teacher evaluations and test scores do not correlate because the test is not an accurate measure of teacher effectiveness. It is not the teachers. It is the test!
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The test scores of students should never be used to judge teachers unless you believe in the blank slate theory of mind, with NOTHING influencing what students learn year-to-year except what the teacher of record for a given year and course presents, with no links to prior learning and no openings to ancillary information that may advantage one student more than another.
That sounds crazy but teachers and administrators are faced with a long list of policies and requirements intended to ensure that every measure of student learning is linked to a single teacher of record or if not “proportioned” for credit among two or more teachers of record for a given course, class, year, student.
The test scores of students are not instructionally sensitive…that is one reason why so little of the variance in student test scores can be attributed to the teacher of record for that test That is also why year-to-year variations for a single teacher are so unstable–especially when scores are reduced to a four point rating system–HEDI (highly effective,effective, developing, ineffective).
The architects of federal policies for testing students and using those scores to evaluate teachers are perpetuating a major fraud. They are aided and abetted by an unregulated testing industry.
There is no known way to make a student test instructionally sensitive unless you make instruction and learning a matter of reciprocal parroting, with the teacher the head parrot, in a cage (or on a stage) with students and the head parrot fully programmed to stick to the script.
Toy parrots that perform in just this way are available for purchase on the internet for less that $30. I once owned three that could talk to each other until the batteries went dead.
if you want a reference that speaks to the fraud of treating tests as if they are instructionally sensitive, here it one especially interesting from a Pearson expert speaking about PARCC
http://www.parcconline.org/sites/parcc/files/Instructional_sensitivity_memo_final(08 15 14).pdf
This PARCC pdf includes a mystifying diagram illustrative of the convoluted and circular reasoning, “difficult” inferential leaps and so on. It ends with one conclusion: Research is needed.
Heard that one before?
.
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Shouldn’t we be celebrating that so many teachers in New York are Effective and Highly Effective? If the test scores are so bad, perhaps the tests should be revised instead of the teacher evaluation system?
Just a thought…..
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Here’s the scary and sad line:
“Unfortunately, in far too many districts across the State, we see evaluation results that do not reveal the true performance of educators”
They’ve decided that we’re all bad and won’t stop until they come up with a model that agrees with them.
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I think that is Cuomo’s intent. He wants to tweak and manipulate the scores so he can justify turning over many poor districts and schools to Wall St. That way they can make profit from our needy students, and Cuomo will have earned all those campaign donations
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Does anybody know the answer to this: do all of the “not proficient” students come from the same teachers ? In other words, does Teacher X have all “not proficient” students ? While Teacher Y has only “proficient” students ?
Or do all or most of the teachers have a blend ? If so, does this mean ALL the teachers are ineffective ? Or are ALL of them effective ?
Or — in this actual universe — is it possible that one teacher doing the same things could be effective for some kids, and not effective for others ? So, do we need teachers to be TWO DIFFERENT THINGS simultaneously ? What wondrous physics!
To the contrary, this is simple math — guess your poor commissioner Tisch is just no good at it — just no good at all. Probably your state board commissioner’s should have to pass a middle school math test before they become Commish ?
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Tisch is not the Commissioner of Education; she is chair of the Board of Regents which over sees the NYS Education Department.
Still, I hope never to find myself alone in a room with her. I might be tempted to slap her up side the head.
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>State officials were deeply disappointed by the overwhelmingly positive results.
Love this line.
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What kind of DoE is DISAPPOINTED that so many of its teachers are rated effective?Wouldn’t the Chamber of Commerce want to brag on that and see lots of people move to NYS for its great teachers?
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The problem lies with the state test. The teacher evaluation doesn’t “reflect the struggles our students face”: well that’s for sure. So look elsewhere. Like at Ed reform issues. NOT the teachers.
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When test cut-off scores are intentionally set where 70% of students will “fail” (even higher for ELL and special education students), this mismatch will always occur. As other people have said, New York should be proud that it’s teachers are so effective.
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