David Greene taught for many years and most recently has been mentoring new teachers. He read Pasi Sahlberg’s post this morning which said that Finnish teachers are not “the best and the brightest,” but those who are both capable and are committed to becoming career educators. Reflecting on Pasi’s article, he wrote this one of his own.
David is upset by the suggestion of the Chancellor of the New York Board of Regents that “high-performing districts,” with high test scores and high graduation rates might be exempted from the teacher-principal test-score based evaluations. Her purpose, one suspects, is to tamp down the opt out movement, which is especially strong in suburban districts.
He asks:
So, according to [Chancellor Merryl] Tisch, those who teach our “best and brightest” (i.e. mostly wealthier and whiter) would be exempt as a result of New York’s two-tier education system that also is the most highly segregated in the nation.
Tisch makes me wonder. Was I a highly effective teacher in wealthy and white Scarsdale High School when I taught her nephew? Was I a developing or effective teacher in mostly middle class and integrated Woodlands High School? And did that make me an ineffective teacher at Adlai Stevenson High School in the Bronx, the nation’s poorest urban county, regardless of the huge number of success stories that emanated from there?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Hello Diane Opt out in WI happening as well. Dan http://discoverhometown.com/59-of-germantown-students-opt-out-of-badger-exams
The link you posted doesn’t seem to be working. Try this link: http://discoverhometown.com/59-of-germantown-students-opt-out-of-badger-exams
59% of the Germantown elementary school district students opted out of the Badger test.
There was an interesting article in the February 8, 2015 Kenosha News (page A6) about the standardized tests that students in the Wisconsin public schools will take this spring. According to the article, “the online test is expected to be more rigorous than the traditional pencil-and-paper exam it’s replacing.” Unfortunately, “a technical glitch means that school districts will get a less advanced version instead of a more complex system that isn’t working properly.” I guess that $12 million dollars doesn’t buy much these days.
Reblogged this on DCGEducator: Doing The Right Thing and commented:
Thank you Diane Ravitch.
And once again, the poor and their poor teachers will get punished for being poor…
Absolutely! I would love to see these legislators work in one of our classrooms ( for one day) in the South Bronx, just to get a feel for what is happening in the public schools.
Personally, I don’t think any one of them would even last for five minutes…..
A friend of mine called her tour of foot in the mouth comments, valedictory. I call them contradictory… to reason and sanity.
Come on David, don’t you know that once you’re deemed ineffective you are always considered ineffective. The VAM model proves it.
“Defective Teachers”
Once you’re deemed “defective”
That is what you’ll stay
Cuz firing’s the objective
And VAM is just the way
I’m labeled just “proficient”
No matter what I do.
“Accomplished” isn’t on the table
Though data shows its true.
Sigh.
This statement appears in the article below:
” Because the tests are not designed to determine teacher effectiveness, no accurate conclusions can be drawn about an individual teacher from her students’ test scores.” Until the TESTING companies are willing to say that the test measure Teacher Effectiveness–we SHOULD not be using these tests to evaluate teachers. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/02/22/massachusetts-professors-protest-high-stakes-standardized-tests/
The research shows that standardized test scores correlate to the socioeconomic levels of the students. Greene was probably effective in all three of his assignments, but the scores don’t necessarily reflect it.
I have students on probation, on multiple children, poor, addicted, etc – teaching high risk. My test scores, when they participate, are below ineffective. They are very low. I am, to Reformers, scum of the earth, a failure, a dismal excuse for a teacher. So be it. To many of my students, I am their last chance before dropping out. I’ve given up on metrics as I have about as much chance being rated effective as winning a Nobel prize. Likely a career shortened by clueless Reformers. Onward….
I am right behind you MathVale.
Yes, this is a ridiculous, politically-driven proposal, but she got a lot of immediate, negative feedback. Doubt it has any chance.
David, you have been holding back…
“Tisch makes me wonder.
Was I a highly effective teacher in wealthy
And white Scarsdale High School
When I taught her nephew?”
Is it true?
According to Tisch
were you?
‘A highly effective teacher’
We all will be ineffective or developing teachers until one day the whole system becomes privatized, low cost, and dumbed down to the point where no one will realize it is dumbed down.
At that point, we, with no collective bargaining, no living wage, no pensions, and no due process will be seen as highly effective and priceless.
One cannot put a price upon fascism and classism . . . . .
The whole system will never be privatized. Never. They will get away with it in areas with little parental resistance. But large scale privatization is a pipe dream of the reformers. Schools will never be money makers and when they realize just how hard it is to turn a profit on the backs of children, they will run to the next shiny thing.
Really?
Please tell your theory to all the landlords who own the buildings charter schools rent space in down in Miami and other towns throughout Florida. . . . Many of these people are on the boards or are relatives and friends of the board, and the rent they charge is above market rates.
Cha-Ching . . . . Bling, Bling.
Robert Rendo, in Florida and elsewhere, charters own the building, then lease it to themselves at exorbitant rents. That’s the game.
And besides, whoa are the parents with little resistance?
Sometimes not white, usually working class, usually poor, and sometimes immigrant.
NY Teacher, their goal is to replace teachers with online instruction, cut costs, and make a profit on the hardware, software, testing, and consulting. They won’t get far in the affluent suburbs. They like the urban districts because the parents lack the political power to repulse them.
I realize that privatization is their goal. But can you really envision the day that private corporations are in charge of 50 million children? Their eyes are way to big for their means. They will make some continued inroads in the struggling inner cities, but as far as suburbia – no way. And rural schools have no ROI appeal. Worst case scenarios rarely play out, and this one won’t even come close. The idea that they can replace teachers with computer screens exemplifies their arrogance and ignorance about all things human.
You both may be right (NY Teacher and Diane), but it still makes a comment about class polarization and segregation.
And what about districts like mine that are truly an equal mixture of middle and upper middle class children and another 40% who are immigrant and Title 1 and 3? We are vulnerable to the fangs and claws of the government’s encroachment with privatized means of delivering education.
It will work in the short term, at least, as did the housing mess that many can never recover from – unless they were a part of creating it. It WILL turn a profit for enough of them, for long enough.
But I agree with you; I think that higher-income, English-speaking parents in school zones that already have the higher scores will resist, and they will not privatize those. But they will be a minority.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-faux/education-wall-street_b_1919727.html?
http://theassailedteacher.com/2012/01/14/chris-hedges-is-right-about-pretty-much-everything/ (see the education video)
http://www.talk2action.org/story/2011/5/3/12515/58655/Front_Page/Strategy_for_Privatizing_Public_Schools_Spelled_out_by_Dick_DeVos_in_2002_Heritage_Foundation_Speech
The student “growth” criteria being developed by NYSED will be THE game changer.
It probably won’t matter which district you teach in. The VAM formula will compare your student scores with a subset with very similar demographics. So your high (or low)achieving student’s growth will be compared to the average growth of other high (or low) achieving students. Pay very close attention NY teachers to what NYSED hands us, and remember it must be negotiated into all our contracts. What happens if your local refuses to agree? Time will tell.
SGP and VAM are statistical efforts being made to lend validity to evaluations of educators instead of lending validity to instructional decisions made by professional educators. Statistics do little to meet the emotional, social and economic needs (as well as educational program opportunities) of students in difficult situations in underfunded schools and in classrooms with many other students in similar situations. Teachers have always instinctively used SGP and VAM to do their jobs-but it’s less about accumulation of cross-referenced investment style data and more about the accumulation of years of experience and an understanding of children.
NY,
If they don’t agree, the district will be denied funding.
With all due respect, I do not agree with NY Teacher – this is a huge problem for all teachers, parents & unfortunately the kids. Your comment: “Schools will never be money makers and when they realize just how hard it is to turn a profit on the backs of children, they will run to the next shiny thing.”………………….Bill Gates, Duncan, etc. beg to differ (as do I – respectfully).
The profiteers are making plenty of money in Newark. NY Teacher, they have big appetites and are just rolling out their plans. Nonurban districts are not immune. Watch Cuomo. He will demonstrate how it is done. He is going after the entire state.
Divide and conquer is a very effective strategy.
My suspicion is that the “opting out” (or refusal) movement in NY is just the skin, not the meat, in the eyes of Tisch and those behind the testing offensive. If something can be done to keep the paint on their pig, by that I mean push in some way for testing that is legislatively mandated with consequences for citizens and children who try to refuse. Then they can continue to claim some (artificial) validity/practicality of tests as the way to improve outcomes for the most needy. Not only are these tests an awesome way to identify bad teachers…but refusals help us find bad parents and force them to be more “effective”!
The meat, of course, is poverty. And how sad and sick that Tisch even tries to augment her “high achieving schools” free pass from Cuomo’s attack with her claim that it isn’t about the wealthy or the poor. Poverty, inequity, the impact on families and children and as a result classrooms…the more these supposed “leaders” dance around these issues and try to ramp up the attack on those serving-the less worthy of leaadersship they appear.
Apparently schools are money makers. Until the Board of Regents and the other powers that be live by the same standards that they want to set nothing will change. As a former principal of one of the worst Failing Middle Schools in the Bronx that I turned around with the help of my amazing staff the pressure to purchase products in software alone from our Network was mind boggling. Someone is getting a cut from all of this. I was told before taking the position in 2012 that my teachers were the worst teachers and I needed to U-rate them and the assistant principals. I defied these orders from my superiors and found out that my teachers were amazing but were teaching students who entered our school reading at a K-3rd grade level. 80% of the students were at a K-3rd grade level. I had to have every teacher become a reading teacher! Not only that we had a huge population of students with special needs and newcomer ELL’s, over 100 students as newcomers. Of course my school was Title 1, 99% minority with a large portion of students in shelters, SIFE and many entering 6th grade with no formal education at all! My teachers were wrongly branded as failing, because the superiors wanted to close the school. My parents could not advocate on behalf of our children and to be quite honest neither did any of my supervisors. I was told by my Cluster Leader that the children in this neighboorhood will never change, that there was little I could do for them and it has always been this way and will always be this way. Amazing! no one cared that, that is how they looked at my children, Farina just promoted him to one of her Directors. Nothing will change if the people in power do not want it to and apparently they do not want it to.
the propaganda of equity of outcomes, acheivement gap, is all lies to make you think that giving kids no content, and grouping to push down achievers, and using failed programs like whole language and every day math and mind emptying mental exercises, is somehow fairness and empathetic and 21st century HOTS…. whatever. its all trickery. social justice teachers and change agents bought it hook line and sinker. Not your fault thats what you were taught by your ed school change agents. your usefulness is over, theirs eventually will be too.
educreeps do not care about the poor and intend to keep them. they are useful. To keep the workforce trained kiddies in line and the pretenses of society intact. but teachers are not valuable in the digital age. Gates et al do not profit from teachers. they profit from techno ed screens and individual learning devices and fickle software, and new age programs of neuro plasticity. cram 75 kids in a room with a facilitator.
You just hit the nail on the head. That’s been my experience, too- no one in the NYCDOE seems to have any faith in the students that attend our schools in the South Bronx, for all of the reasons you enumerated above.
You appear to be one of the rare administrators that actually has a backbone, and stood up to the powers that be. Bravo to you, we need more administrators like you in the NYCDOE.
Yep. The poorer the school you work in, the less effective you are. Teachers need to RUN from teaching in poor schools. Your students won’t score well or do well in observations. Find a suburban school. I taught at a 90% poverty level school. I taught a 6th grade advanced class and 8th grade standard classes- English/Language Arts. In the same year, I was a 4 (woo hoo!) for the 6th graders who cared about their grades. I was a 1 for the 8th graders. I worked my butt off for the 8th graders. I just let the 6th graders do a lot of independent, self-selected reading.
Love the questions. I am a big fan performance assessment, but I qualify the nouns with the adjectives : authentic, and genuine, WHICH WERE ATTACHED TO THEM LIKE GLUE, when the Harvard’s Lauren Renick” Principles OF Learning, became the Pew’s research for the NATIONAL (LEARNING) STANDARDS.
OH…YOU NEVER HEARD OF THIS?
Well, Pew spent zillions on the 12 districts and 20,000 teachers who would be observed.
Had I not been the NYC cohort, and attended the seminars and workshops for 2 years, while th elRDC observed my practice, I would think I am delusional to believe that they exist.
The fourth principle for TEACHERS (the other four principles were for the administrative SUPPORT FOR LEARNING) was Genuine Assessments and Authentic Evaluation.
Even this was for THE CLASSROOM PRACTITIONER, so that plans could be made to reach all learners.
* Note the absence of the word teaching!!!!!!
No standards for testing schools or teachers existed, because this was GENUINE, AUTHENTIC third level research… meaning it had to work all the time everywhere….as opposed to the hogwash and bullpen that is the NCLB which has left all children and this nation behind the rest of the world.
Sigh!