The editorial board of the “Journal-News” in the Lower Hudson Valley calls out the absurdity of Goveror Cuomo’s teacher evaluation plan. The deadline for a new plan is June 30, which is impossible.
They understand why parents are angry at the testing system and the governor:
“Declining morale in neighborhood schools is one big reason that many parents boycotted the state tests. How can Cuomo not see the connection?
“Now our leaders are racing to fix the system, but are likely to make it worse. Cuomo and legislative leaders, as part of their budget agreement, gave the state Board of Regents until June 30 to re-create the evaluation system, setting strict rules that tie the Regents’ hands.
Stop it. It’s time for the Board of Regents to take a stand – and stand up to Cuomo. The board should declare that it can’t slap together a viable evaluation system. New York should keep its current system in place and use at least the rest of 2015 to design a system that would promote classroom instruction and hold teachers accoutable.
“Judith Johnson, the Lower Hudson Valley’s new representative on the Board of Regents, has the right idea. “What the governor has put in place makes no sense,” she said. “If you want a scholarly system, you can’t throw it together in 30 to 60 days. If we ignore the science behind teacher evaluations, it’s just a political decision.”
Does the Board of Regents have the backbone to tell the governor and the legislature that they are wrong? Will they stick to science and turn their backs on Cuomo’s vindictive agenda?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Where is the science behind teacher evaluations? Is there a research base backing up these rubrics?
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Science??? Research???
Don’t need no stinkin science nor research!!!
Not when we have Noel Wilson’s logico-rational thinking that has proven the COMPLETE INVALIDITY of educational standards and the accompanying standardized tests in any usage (teacher evaluation) of the results to be “VAIN AND ILLUSORY”.
To understand that COMPLETE INVALIDITY read and understand Wilson’s never refuted nor rebutted 1997 treatise “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” found at: http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/577/700
Brief outline of Wilson’s “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” and some comments of mine.
1. A description of a quality can only be partially quantified. Quantity is almost always a very small aspect of quality. It is illogical to judge/assess a whole category only by a part of the whole. The assessment is, by definition, lacking in the sense that “assessments are always of multidimensional qualities. To quantify them as unidimensional quantities (numbers or grades) is to perpetuate a fundamental logical error” (per Wilson). The teaching and learning process falls in the logical realm of aesthetics/qualities of human interactions. In attempting to quantify educational standards and standardized testing the descriptive information about said interactions is inadequate, insufficient and inferior to the point of invalidity and unacceptability.
2. A major epistemological mistake is that we attach, with great importance, the “score” of the student, not only onto the student but also, by extension, the teacher, school and district. Any description of a testing event is only a description of an interaction, that of the student and the testing device at a given time and place. The only correct logical thing that we can attempt to do is to describe that interaction (how accurately or not is a whole other story). That description cannot, by logical thought, be “assigned/attached” to the student as it cannot be a description of the student but the interaction. And this error is probably one of the most egregious “errors” that occur with standardized testing (and even the “grading” of students by a teacher).
3. Wilson identifies four “frames of reference” each with distinct assumptions (epistemological basis) about the assessment process from which the “assessor” views the interactions of the teaching and learning process: the Judge (think college professor who “knows” the students capabilities and grades them accordingly), the General Frame-think standardized testing that claims to have a “scientific” basis, the Specific Frame-think of learning by objective like computer based learning, getting a correct answer before moving on to the next screen, and the Responsive Frame-think of an apprenticeship in a trade or a medical residency program where the learner interacts with the “teacher” with constant feedback. Each category has its own sources of error and more error in the process is caused when the assessor confuses and conflates the categories.
4. Wilson elucidates the notion of “error”: “Error is predicated on a notion of perfection; to allocate error is to imply what is without error; to know error it is necessary to determine what is true. And what is true is determined by what we define as true, theoretically by the assumptions of our epistemology, practically by the events and non-events, the discourses and silences, the world of surfaces and their interactions and interpretations; in short, the practices that permeate the field. . . Error is the uncertainty dimension of the statement; error is the band within which chaos reigns, in which anything can happen. Error comprises all of those eventful circumstances which make the assessment statement less than perfectly precise, the measure less than perfectly accurate, the rank order less than perfectly stable, the standard and its measurement less than absolute, and the communication of its truth less than impeccable.”
In other word all the logical errors involved in the process render any conclusions invalid.
5. The test makers/psychometricians, through all sorts of mathematical machinations attempt to “prove” that these tests (based on standards) are valid-errorless or supposedly at least with minimal error [they aren’t]. Wilson turns the concept of validity on its head and focuses on just how invalid the machinations and the test and results are. He is an advocate for the test taker not the test maker. In doing so he identifies thirteen sources of “error”, any one of which renders the test making/giving/disseminating of results invalid. And a basic logical premise is that once something is shown to be invalid it is just that, invalid, and no amount of “fudging” by the psychometricians/test makers can alleviate that invalidity.
6. Having shown the invalidity, and therefore the unreliability, of the whole process Wilson concludes, rightly so, that any result/information gleaned from the process is “vain and illusory”. In other words start with an invalidity, end with an invalidity (except by sheer chance every once in a while, like a blind and anosmic squirrel who finds the occasional acorn, a result may be “true”) or to put in more mundane terms crap in-crap out.
7. And so what does this all mean? I’ll let Wilson have the second to last word: “So what does a test measure in our world? It measures what the person with the power to pay for the test says it measures. And the person who sets the test will name the test what the person who pays for the test wants the test to be named.”
In other words it attempts to measure “’something’ and we can specify some of the ‘errors’ in that ‘something’ but still don’t know [precisely] what the ‘something’ is.”
The whole process harms many students as the social rewards for some are not available to others who “don’t make the grade (sic)” Should American public education have the function of sorting and separating students so that some may receive greater benefits than others, especially considering that the sorting and separating devices, educational standards and standardized testing, are so flawed not only in concept but in execution?
My answer is NO!!!!!
One final note with Wilson channeling Foucault and his concept of subjectivization:
“So the mark [grade/test score] becomes part of the story about yourself and with sufficient repetitions becomes true: true because those who know, those in authority, say it is true; true because the society in which you live legitimates this authority; true because your cultural habitus makes it difficult for you to perceive, conceive and integrate those aspects of your experience that contradict the story; true because in acting out your story, which now includes the mark and its meaning, the social truth that created it is confirmed; true because if your mark is high you are consistently rewarded, so that your voice becomes a voice of authority in the power-knowledge discourses that reproduce the structure that helped to produce you; true because if your mark is low your voice becomes muted and confirms your lower position in the social hierarchy; true finally because that success or failure confirms that mark that implicitly predicted the now self evident consequences. And so the circle is complete.”In other words students “internalize” what those “marks” (grades/test scores) mean, and since the vast majority of the students have not developed the mental skills to counteract what the “authorities” say, they accept as “natural and normal” that “story/description” of them. Although paradoxical in a sense, the “I’m an “A” student” is almost as harmful as “I’m an ‘F’ student” in hindering students becoming independent, critical and free thinkers. And having independent, critical and free thinkers is a threat to the current socio-economic structure of society.
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None in Cuomo’s.
But that’s not what is being advocated by Judith Johnson in the final video. She points out that there are well-established protocols in the social sciences for inquiry based research and that those protocols are being violated in the quest to get rid of the “bad” teachers who infest public schools.
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“Holding teachers accountable” is another way of saying “holding teachers responsible for every problem in this country.”
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The fact that they felt compelled to add that line about “hold teachers accountable” shows how insidious and pernicious the reform lies are and that Jeb Bush’s poison has infiltrated the whole system.
Until that whole premise is abandoned the disease of reformist nonsense will keep spreading and we wil not save the schools or the teaching profession. The same mealy-mouthed semi-agreement stance poisons the NEA and AFT platforms.
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The unfortunate reality with Cuomo, Tisch, Sen. Flanagan and all the “heavy heart sell-out” democrats in the NYS Assembly is that there is WAY TOO much money that has been taken/spent behind the scenes for any one of these individuals to do an about face on seeing this whole initiative collapse. When politicians and persons in positions of power SELL THEIR SOULS to hedge fund investors, corporations and billionaires who are bored and keep looking for ways to spend their money; our “leaders” will be there with their pockets open, more than willing to grab whatever they can. Power corrupts … MONEY = arrogance and abject failure to do what is right for the majority of the constituent base. This is sickening and a trend all over our country. We are on a collision course in NYS of epic proportions. Our ONLY hope is for parents to rise up and VOTE OUT all of those who have harmed children and public school education. Make no mistake, there WILL be a day of reckoning for all those who have sought to demonize educators and public school education!
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This is a good conversation on Democracy Now with Ralph Nader talking about the corporate take over, TPP, Bernie Sanders presidential bid. There is a part 2 as well.
http://www.democracynow.org/2015/5/1/ralph_nader_on_bernie_sanders_the
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The opt-out movement proves the deformers have not only lost the hearts and minds, the hearts and minds actually hold them in seething contempt. This is accountability, without all of the fake machinery and horse manure.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2015/05/03/why-the-movement-to-opt-out-of-common-core-tests-is-a-big-deal/
But where are the updates on the NY math opt-outs???
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This is from today’s Albany TImes Union:
http://www.timesunion.com/tuplus-opinion/article/Casey-Seiler-A-low-bar-for-gossip-on-exam-6238373.php
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Our children across the state and nation deserve an equitable, rigorous, equal, and a FUNdamental innovative education that goes beyond high stakes testing that doesn’t prove a thing to student individual successes in their life long journey!
We need to hit the reset button on ensuring that are students have an equal opportunity to
earn while they learn skills that promote building positive social/emotional connections with peers, teachers, administrators, and community members as a first step to finding their own spaces and places that collectively foster each other to attain their full selves being present in their classrooms to learn, engage and apply their knowledge base to life success beyond the classroom (i.e., social, emotional, physical and educational growth) that is co-created with people that value our human assets as we enter our educational journey.
Students should be evaluated on their content knowledge by the application of their higher order thinking skills that go beyond a scripted test. We know as parents, we are our child’s first and most influential teachers before they enter our schools and if we equip our children with language, learning, love, support, guidance and trust we can get each to reach their optimal level of realizing their dreams at early ages and stages that will organically be fruitful by the actions we model, not just say, to ensure that no child, youth or student is ever left behind.
Let’s get back to the basics in cultivating our strong relationships with no high stakes testing, but by individualized portfolios that touch upon the special gifts each of us comes with in this world and are only realized when differential instruction takes place in the classroom and the teacher really knows her audience of students that deserve individualized attention to build themselves to become educated, confident, empathetic, respectful and productive citizens in their communities….
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As I have said many times, Gary Stern of Lo-Hud, now the education editor has learned a great deal about the ins and outs of these issues and has not been swayed by the deformers. It is wonderful to see that this local newspaper in the Lower Hudson Valley has been supportive of parents, teachers, and school administrators who know what is best for children.
Whether looking at testing, the common core, and now the Wizard of Albany’s (http://www.edcircuit.com/the-wizard-of-albany/) incessant attack on teachers, this newspaper has done its due diligence, unlike the NYT, TIME, NBC, et al.
The goal of getting rid of bad teachers has morphed into the reality of losing good and great teachers, because it is they who will not put up with this false god of education. The best leave because it destroys their profession. By far more good and great teachers have left the profession early that bad ones.
Perhaps that was the goal all along? But why?
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Go and read this article about Milton Friedman in the Washington Monthly and you will begin to see the “why”.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2008/0804.anrig.html
This is a long game plan to privatize education, end the profession of teaching by making it just a job, destroy teacher unions, and monetize education for profits. All in the name of Friedman’s Free Market god, a god proven, over and over, to have clay feet.
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To Chris in Florida who gave me this wonderful link in response to David Green’s piece: I cross posted it… but my comment at the end is filled with LINKS that show the greed and corruption that pushed and attended this idea of ‘choice, which underlies this ‘reform’ movement, and is pure Orwellian, as it providesNO CHOICE.
Read what I wrote there.
http://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/An-Idea-Whose-Time-Has-Gon-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Children_Choice_Economic_Education-150503-8.html#comment543653
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“If we ignore the science behind teacher evaluations, it’s just a political decision.”
What it really is is fraud — certainly from the scientific standpoint and probably from a legal standpoint as well.
Though many people may not appreciate it, this is not science or anything remotely resembling it
And it is is far more serious than the changing of test scores which the Atlanta educators were jailed for because this junk “evaluation” scheme will be used to take away teachers’ livelihoods.
Whether the legal system will treat such fraud (on a massive scale) as it should be treated — as a crime — remains to be seen.
I won’t hold my breath.
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Cross-posted at: http://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Editorial-Time-to-Hit-Res-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Cuomo_Diane-Ravitch_Evaluation_Impossible-150503-88.html#comment543628
there are embedded links at the article to this site, and the mentioned articles.
Ravitch also gives us this: “This is one of the best articles you will read about Common Core and testing. It appears in the Long Island Business News. It shows the big business of testing, with a focus on Pearson.
“Race to the Top, it turns out, unleashed a dash to the cash. And Pearson was the biggest winner. Since 1996, it has been buying up other companies in the testing industry. It is now the biggest provider of testing in the U. S.
“You will learn about the big money behing the political decisions that affect children and why their parents want them to opt out.”
And this one : “The New York Times has written another article about the historic Opt Out movement in New York. Thus far, we know that 150,000-200,000 students opted out of the ELA, and we don’t know yet how many opted out of the math tests. The subject of the article is whether opt out students are treated unfairly when forced to “sit and stare,” rather than going to the library and reading while their classmates take the test. The article raises another point: Are the opt out students “bullying” their classmates who are taking the tests? While these are interesting points, they seem to be trivial as compared to the reasons why parents opt out. It is not simply to protect their children. Is it not simply to thwart public officials who want data. It is because parents know that the tests provide no information of any value to their child.”
Submitted on Sunday, May 3, 2015 at 7:50:33 AM
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Pushing for an extension of the deadline to rollout the new evals is THE WRONG POSITION NY TEACHERS SHOULD TAKE!!!!!
We must HOLD the Regents to Cuomo’s June deadline and fight against an extension. Why? Because its obviously going to be a disaster….an enormous one….and Cuomo has to own it. It will also be a much easier defense in court for any teacher facing a 3020A hearing.
Wanting the Regents to have more time is something Tisch was pushing for quite strongly. Pushing back the deadline will mean very bad things for NY teachers. It will allow for the evals to be more thoroughly thought out and implemented…..why would we want that when the entire VAM idea is ridiculous??
We must stop hoping that cooler heads will prevail in time and that our voices may be heard at “the table.” Will never happen. Hold them to the deadline and let them own the wreckage. Lets now give them time to craft something.
Kind of crazy that this needs to be said. It’s the obvious position we need to take.
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I understand the thinking behind the strategy you suggest, but I disagree. Allowing the wreckage to take place will not necessarily facilitate a change of course.
Postponement is a more viable strategy if organizing is expanded and the resistance to corporate education reform continues to spread.
It is not OK to ask teachers and students to suffer through another school year of escalating stress and abuse in order to pin the impending disaster on an idiot, or three, in Albany.
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How does that follow? Your assumption is that if they have more time, there will be less suffering on the part of teachers. It’s completely the opposite: teachers will be in a much larger world of hurt with a much more thought-thru eval. There would be way more successful 3020a’s. Is that what we want?? Really? Somehow there are people on our side that want to help our opposition do what they do better….help them solve their problems. Give then elbow room to craft a much-more-likely-to-stick teacher evaluation. Then Tisch wins. Cuomo wins. And teachers are 3020a’d out.
Pushing the deadline will not give us room to rally and get a seat at the table….the is no historical precedent for that. We need to allow them to make their mistakes. Period. It’s the only path for us to win. We will not win because we are right. Thats mythological. We will have to enable their loss. Period.
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“Pushing the deadline will not give us room to rally and get a seat at the table….the is no historical precedent for that. We need to allow them to make their mistakes.”
They have already made their mistakes!
Who said anything about getting a seat at the table and eventual appeasement. There is already a failed APPR plan in effect. There is no reason for teachers to be evaluated by a second, outside evaluator next year, and increasing the weight of the test scores on APPR merely doubles down on the very teachers now under fire.
The ‘ed-reformer’ agenda has already fueled the resistance. What you are suggesting is stoking the fire with the casualties of those who would be most impacted. Perhaps it would be no skin of your nose.
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I agree that holding them to their timeline is the best way to go.
Every time there is pushback against their policies, the first thing they do is call for more time. Delaying is nothing more than a tactic to confuse, diffuse and disable the opposition.
Bill Gates did this with VAM. Rather than admit that VAM is junk, he called for a two year moratorium on use of Common Core tests for high stakes (VAM for firing), allegedly in order to do more research.
But there is no need for further research. The stuff is junk and no amount of change to the models is going to make it anything different.
Gates* and the people developing these “evaluation’ systems (eg, in the NY State ed office) almost certainly already know that use of VAM to evaluate individual teachers is junk, having been warned by the American Statistical Association that the use of VAM for evaluation of individual teachers was an ill-advised idea for many reasons — very unstable and hence unreliable (changes randomly from year to year and from one model to another), only correlates with student test scores and even then very poorly, produces negative consequences, etc)
*Gates actually implemented a similar “stacked ranking” system at his own company with disastrous results so he certainly knows it is junk.
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The difference now is teachers and parents are actually paying attention.
“Every time there is pushback against their policies, the first thing they do is call for more time. Delaying is nothing more than a tactic to confuse, diffuse and disable the opposition.”
I agree that ‘Delaying is nothing more than a tactic to confuse, diffuse and disable the opposition’, but the dynamics are not the same as they were a few years ago. Perhaps it is too easy for you and NYSTEACHER to call for an escalation of stress and abuse to be heaped on students and teachers. What is your skin in the game?
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My hope is that Judy Johnson will bring reason to the discussion in the political snake pit of Albany. She has the understanding and experience to offer guidance and wisdom to help shape sound policy. She also has skills to build consensus among disparate groups. Let’s hope she can find allies among other Regents and is not marginalized for speaking her mind.
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I’ve got your Rest Button right here …
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfsHkF9UN24
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To Chris in Florida who gave me this wonderful link in response to David Green’s piece: I cross posted it… but my comment at the end is filled with LINKS that show the greed and corruption that pushed and attended this idea of ‘choice, which underlies this ‘reform’ movement, and is pure Orwellian, as it providesNO CHOICE.
Read what I wrote there.
http://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/An-Idea-Whose-Time-Has-Gon-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Children_Choice_Economic_Education-150503-8.html#comment543653
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Better to postpone it now. Next year it can be voted down. Meanwhile, better now to lose your job over this bs–nobody would want to be that person(s)!!!
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I, too, am sick to death of being told that “teachers must be held accountable.” Accountable for what? If you are going to work every day, preparing lessons, executing them, grading classwork, homework, tests and quizzes, helping individual students and contacting their parents, we are fulfilling our responsibilities, and our students, their parents and our supervisors will know this! We are NOT responsible for the social ills that create income inequality and resultant poor outcomes on standardized tests (even non-ridiculous ones!) and “failing schools and failing students”–terms which should be expunged from the English language. I say, hold our politicians accountable for not creating programs which are known to reduce poverty and inequity–it is THEY who should be rated, graded, rehired or fired!
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I received an email saying my state rankings are available. I am refusing to read them. I could care less. They are not helping me become a better teacher, are released too late to impact my current classrooms, and will most certainly be terrible given n the population I teach. Is that a smidgen of civil disobedience?
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This is what the pushback looks like when the schools under attack belong to middle class, educated folks. In poor communities, few community members have been able or willing to defend their schools. Another tactical mistake Cuomo has made in his attack on teachers.
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NYSTEACHER is correct. The faster the Regents ram this evaluation through the better. Ignore Tisch’s whining. Let Cuomo and the Heavy Hearts Club own what they have wrought. Allow them to pay for their malfeasance at the ballot box. Accountability is not only for teachers.
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Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Texas Education.
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I’m covering for an 8th grade earth science regents teacher. She received effective in observations and then was rated ineffective because they looked at the growth between her student’s 7th grade math and 8th grade regents test. Mind you this test is for juniors in high school. I thought she was kidding, but this obsurdity is true.
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She should take this to court. Fraudulent, fraudulent, fraudulent…
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