This is a letter from a reader who learned that Sheri Lederman’s case against the New York State teacher evaluation system is going forward in court, despite the New York State Education Department’s effort to quash her lawsuit.
He writes:
My situation is very similar to Sheri’s. I am a reading teacher in a small rural district in upstate New York along the Pennsylvania border. Every year I receive an Effective rating on my APPR [the “annual professional performance review” for teachers and principals], though my Growth score is a perfect 20 and my Teacher Evaluation score is a perfect 60. However my Achievement score is a zero every year. I work with struggling readers. They generally receive scores in the teens on the pre-tests, and generally score in the 50’s on the post tests (thus the excellent Growth score). However scores in the 50’s are still failing, so my Achievement score is always a zero. I tried to get my union and administrators to help, but no one has come up with a solution.
My administrators, coworkers, students, and I all know I am a more than effective teacher, but in the state of New York, I am just a few points away from being ineffective. I hope this court case goes quickly and helps end this inaccurate and unfair system.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I trust that this guy is writing to all the senators and representatives for his state, and anybody else as well.
This type of teacher evaluation is certain to drive off anyone who teaches children with disabilities. We’ve become like ancient Sparta.
Diane this is a historical fight which will take more than a few good souls such as yourself and Carol Burris at the helm. I suggest you employ the help of some other social mover shakers who attract media publicity regularly and who recognize the unconstitutional nature of its origins.
Cornell West is one who gets it, deeply understands the links among poverty, racism and inequities in education and health care. You’re right Roxanne, progressive leaders from various fields should unite — this is one struggle, to finally create a racially and economically United States!
Unconstitutional nature of the Common Core origins that is.
The nightmare will probably NOT end anytime soon because the people behind the push to privatization will continue to press on until they get what they want. These folks are used to getting their way in their worlds, and will keep coming at us until they do. And they’ve created enough negative narratives about teachers, unions and public education that they often have the public on their side, even if it means the public is actually voting against it’s own best interests. And that has helped proponents of privatization get their “people” in all the right places. And the public sees no real reason to get them out of there. It always reminds me of a Seinfeld episode where Newman says in a sinister voice, “When you control the mail, you control INFORMATION”. The proponents of privatization are many of the same people who control media outlets in this country, and the INFORMATION the public gets, and uses to choose how to vote.
So true! But we have to continue fighting ka-ching … GREED and elitism taking over our precious public schools!
We already know that the evaluation system is invalid and unjust.Who on this blog is going to provide some practical, step by step advice to this teacher? He needs help!
We, those that are concerned about public school education are loosing! The reformsters, backed by big huge money, are winning the political and propaganda battle. If a progressive state like Wisconsin can be transformed into its current condition, in such a short period of time, I fear that the likes of a Scott Walker can transfer his agenda from Wisconsin to the entire US. I do not know what to suggest, but a new strategy is needed to stop and kill the current reform movement. One thing that we must do is find out whether Hillary Clinton believes in the value of a high quality public school system or if she will side with Wall Street and the privatization of our schools.
Has anyone received a reply from Hilary Clinton to find out what she thinks and what she will do to support our public schools?
She won’t. She supports charter schools.
Let us hope that Ms. Lederman’s case will shed some light on the difficulty of trying to distill the efforts of a teacher into a formula. Her situation is not unique as, I am sure, that many more teachers that work with students in the bottom quartile will find themselves similarly rated. Teachers of classified students, ELLs and students of poverty all have virtual targets on their backs. This is the result of using false metrics based on false assumptions to define the “value” of a teacher. Someone in New York should collect data on these groups of teachers to determine if these teachers’ ratings are consistently lower due to the population they serve. I can see this case resulting in a class action suit as well it should. States should not be allowed to fire or harm teachers’ careers based on a feeble attempt to define the complexities of teaching into a formula.
I can relate. I’m a literacy teacher tasked to teach a very specific literacy program mostly to struggling 1st graders. I get a small group of 1st graders for a fast paced 30 minute group of intensive literacy skills. But because of the new evaluation tool not letting us score NA – I’m now rated partially proficient in math – a subject I’m not even supposed to be addressing in my time with students. Indeed, I wouldn’t be teaching the literacy program with fidelity if I altered it to achieve math proficiency too.
In my earlier roles as a classroom teacher and a math interventionist, I prided myself on being pretty effective at teaching math, yet now my record states otherwise. I’m wondering what will happen if I ever want to leave literacy intervention and move back to general ed, or to math intervention, with this false score on my record. And I understand our music teacher is in the same situation. So many of us ‘specialist’ teachers are in the ‘damned if we do, damned if we don’t’ category. How is this helpful for anyone?
yea she is suing
A REPLY TO ALL WHO ARE ENCOURING TEACHERS TO SUE.
Teachers who are willing to spend energy and years, and loads of money do sue. You just are hearing about it for the first time , because the media ignores it; so across almost SIXTEEN THOUSAND districts in FIFTY STATES, it appears as something new to teachers.
I remember in 2005 when Dania Hall, In Belmore LI, NY, went searching for lawyers because of this:
http://endteacherabuse.org/Hall.html
In 2008 there was this at Betsy Combier’s blog ont he war on teachers:
http://nycrubberroomreporter.blogspot.com/2008/12/north-bellmore-ny-teacher-dania-hall.html
I know for a fact that Dania is finally in court, and has agreed not to talk about it. Exactly.
That is how they do it. I will post her letter to teacher’s below this comment, becasue it is a lesson from someone who has tried to get justice for a decade.
But here is the reality.
David Pakter’s story is typical. You can google his elegant essays as he gave up the his sixties to fighting, but here is what happened.
http://ednotesonline.blogspot.com/search?q=david+pakter
http://protectportelos.org/the-david-pakter-saga-an-all-too-familiar-of-a-story/
Francesco Portellos is fighting RIGHT NOW, after they did this.
to him. Oh, you have not heard about him? Discover, him— He is never going back to his classroom, but he is hanging on to his pension as a sub, and writes about the lawlessness.
http://protectportelos.org/does-workplace-bullying-continues-my-33-hrs-behind-bars/
http://protectportelos.org/allegations-against-me/
As I have said here and everywhere, FOR almost 2 decades, this lawsuit is just the most recent.
Lorna Stremcha whom I met when I hired my own lawyer to do the union’s job, once showed me the room of documents she gathered as she spent he life’s savings and her daughter’s college fund to sue the principal who set her up to be assaulted… and never was held accountable, even as she was harassed out of her career. Her book tells the tale
http://www.amazon.com/Bravery-Bullies-Blowhards-Lessons-Classroom/dp/0991309936/ref=cm_sw_em_r_dptop_dn1Avb040EW4Q_tt
In the nineties TENS OF THOUSANDS of teachers were sent packing when the powers in charge discovered the union would let the principals have a free hand in ridding the school budget of the highest earners… and thus, the only way to do that, was to let these top-dogs harass the tenured teacher out the door…civil rights not withstanding.
http://citywatchla.com/8box-left/6666-lausd-and-utla-complicity-kills-collective-bargaining-and-civil-rights-for-la-s-teachers
I wrote this in 2004, and it was cross posted at Perdaily in 2011, spitting in the wind, as I am prone to do,
http://www.perdaily.com/2011/01/lausd-et-al-a-national-scandal-of-enormous-proportions-by-susan-lee-schwartz-part-1.html
You all are in the dark about what has happened despite the many links I provide toNAPTA’s collection of true stories,
ttp://endteacherabuse.org/ or
Betsy Combier’s chronicle of abuse in NYC. She is NOT a teacher, but was a journalist who became interested in this incredible hidden story of abuse, which all these years later, is still in full swing, so that the poor teacher has to fight for constitutional rights in court????
For heaven’s sake, if YOU have never gone there… do it now… and look at what she explains, and at the sidebar with all the info you need as to how THEY DID IT IN NYC.
http://nycrubberroomreporter.blogspot.com/2009/03/gotcha-squad-and-new-york-city-rubber.html
There is Perdaily which nails the war on teachers in LAUSD, and has been there for years.
http://www.perdaily.com/2014/07/former-ctc-attorney-kathleen-carroll-lays-out-unholy-alliance-between-union-and-public-education-pri.html
Lennny Isenberg, who created Perdaily, is suing!
Oh. You have not heard this:
http://www.perdaily.com/2014/03/has-utla-rank-and-file-been-told-that-im-suing-utla-why-not.html
Maybe, it is because he is suing the UNION!
How do you think that the largest school district in the nation, the one that worked and only needed some funding, ended up like this, if teachers were able to access the justice system?
Yeah, teachers need to have their legal rights enforced… that was in my contract, which sits on my desk. I was too poor and to old to go to court to ensure my rights as an American.
God bless Ms Lederman. Maybe her bravery and sacrifice will inspire teachers to band together and DEMAND justice for all, because these systems have tons of lawyers whose job i is to delay until a mere teacher is bankrupt. Even if they win, nothing changes, and worse… NO ONE KNOWS, OR CARES, beyond those who read this blog.
Read what the lady who still fighting in LI says in my second post.
Thank you Susan for your precious collection of these heartbreaking stories.
If all of these teachers and you can get together in order to write the greatest collections of many mini stories like fables, to publish on Face Book, to allow comedians use as material for their jokes, and finally to put on a small movie screen for Public to acknowledge the REAL puppet masters who control and intentionally manipulate American Public Education into privatized domain WITH their only intent to bring down democracy and civility in America.
I hope that everything should be done to educators’ favor in terms of justice from humane conscience according to the adage – “good deed return good deed, and evil follows evil”. Nobody can escape this universal law because sooner or later, cause and effect will eventually be shown under the sun and the moon.
In short, even if educators profoundly forgive evil deed from abusive authorities and their GAGAers, they and their loved ones will suffer many more folds than educators’ sufferance. Yet, all educators are suffering more than a decade. This unspeakable sufferance will yield on these abusers to their many reincarnated lives.
I feel and I am sad for all educators who are being abused. Also, I am terrified to acknowledge that all abusers will face to horrible consequences that they intentionally and ignorantly cause to all conscientious educators. May King
DON’T MISS THIS ONE!
Here is what Dania writes to me when I told HER LAST YEAR, of a teacher who is FIGHTING BACK:
SUSAN,
This woman, who is “fighting back” is submitting her complaint to the NYS Commissioner of Education. All I can tell her is, “good luck with that”.
That is the one of the very first thing I did, as far as my multi-teared lawsuit is concerned. First I went to the BOE, who never addressed my termination and my request for reasons for my firing during the board meeting at which it was to be addressed, in which I had submitted legal packets to all board members. Somebody just threw them out. The fact that they ignored the regulations of teacher’s contract meant that I did not receive adequate due process of law. Next I, too, went to the commissioner of education. First, two months before the ax fell in June of 2005, I wrote a non-legal letter to the commissioner, telling him what was going on. In response, there was no response. There was not even the courtesy of a comment from the Commissioner. It was his secretary who told me that an official lawsuit could be opened. And she told me that I didn’t need a lawyer to do that. So I took her advice and filed my case with the NYS Commissioner of Education.
So, for about 9 months I was clobbered by the giant law firm _________, drowning me in volumes of legaleze and sophisticated lengthy responses, affidavits, memorandums, etc.. I was working pro se, and those months were probably the most degrading and emotionally devastating time of my life, and I wonder now how I ever mustered the strength to deal with it without slitting my wrists! I was sure the all-powerful commissioner of education would see the obscene and blatant injustices that befell me in the three years that I had devoted to that corrupt school district!
Still, during the summer when I was writing, naive as I was, I was sure that I would be going back to work in September, and I thought that it was all just like a bad dream. Well the summer came and went, the the grand “Commissioner of Education” did not make any decision about me before September, so that daydream about going back to work in the fall was out. It wasn’t until more than a year afterwords, and, at that point, he “Dismissed” it, falsely accusing me of not meeting the required time statutes, and that the scope of my case was “too broad” for him to deal with. All that painful gut-wrenching pro se work and bearing my soul in months of pro se litigation were all for absolutely NOTHING!!! Be aware that part of the game is that they count on being able to outlast you, with their rope-a-dope tactics.
Writing my own litigation with the well-heeled law firm was the most emotionally exhausting experience of my life. It was like a total nightmare. Instead of retiring with a ceremony of accolades, congratulating me for my hard work of going to school and earning both a Bachelors and Masters in Education in my later life, and receiving acknowledgements for all the accomplishments of my 3 years at the district, all I had to deal with were flagrant lies, and accusations of being a bad teacher! There was no mention of all my excellent observations and reviews! I was totally invalidated as a teacher and my whole life flashed before me. The accolades that my teaching career ended with was NEGATIVE, NEGATIVE, NEGATIVE. This is the way our Education system works to defend good teachers!
If one takes a look at the Commissioner of Education’s website, you will notice that it clearly states that the Commissioner favors the districts in his decision process, if you take time to read it. It says it right there, in black and white. If you investigate further, you will note that there are hundreds of case decisions that are posted on his site. You will find “Dismissal” after “Dismissal”, when it comes to any teacher that brings forth a case. In short, teachers NEVER win! They always lose. And at this point, this is not even a matter of monetary winnings.
This was only the beginning of my battle, which has lasted almost 10 years now, and any successes that I have had, sure have nothing to do with the NYS Commissioner of Education! The most my experience with the NYS Education department has given me, I must say, is a REAL EDUCATION about our illustrious Education System, and it AIN’T PRETTY! It’s pretty ugly and pretty corrupt, as a matter of fact.
So my advice to this teacher is, if you intend to address anything with the NYS Commissioner of Education, think again – or prepare yourself for a painful, dysfunctional, empty abyss!
It’s interesting — but not surprising — that the above teacher’s “growth score” (associated with student growth on the standardized test) was a perfect 20 and he works with “struggling readers” (who can therefore have a lot of “room for improvement”).
This is actually just the opposite of Sheri Lederman, whose “growth score” was only 1 out of 20 and who worked with “higher achievers.”
But this actually makes sense — and illustrates a very serious (effectively fatal) bias with use of “student growth scores” to evaluate teachers: it is highly dependent on what type of students you teach, since those students at the “higher end” are likely to make smaller improvements in scores than those at the opposite end. It’s actually obvious at the extremes: students starting out at the very top have nowhere to go but down. And students starting out at the bottom, have nowhere to go but up.
On the other hand, for those students already at the higher end, it’s easier to consistently attain high “achievement” in absolute terms (indeed, Lederman’s students were well above the “standard” set by the state and well above the state average, as well ) than for those at the lower end.
These two things (growth and achievement) work in opposite directions with regard to impact on the overall teacher evaluation score, but as they say, two wrongs do not make a right and if neither is valid, neither should be used as even a part of the teacher evaluation*
This is actually common sense and certainly does not take much “analysis” to figure out.
Those who concocted and now support such a biased, invalid, illogical, irrational — absurd(!) — evaluation system were/are thinking well below (1st?) grade level and certainly do not belong in the NY State Department of Education — or in the NY State Regents or governor’s mansion, for that matter.
*Unfortunately, if Cuomo and the state legislature have their way, student test scores will become an even bigger factor (take on greater weight) in teacher ratings in the coming years.
I think it’s intentional – they got you coming and going. Advanced students doing fabulously on tests? Sorry, your growth scores are too low – you’re ineffective. Remedial students making great strides? Sorry, your absolute scores are too low – you’re ineffective. See? All public school teachers are ineffective.
BTW, exactly the opposite should be applied to charter teachers, especially the TfA ones, because, as we all know, every one of them is super duper, life-changing effective.
It’s possible that it is intentional, but from what I have seen of this stuff (eg, VAM), I don’t think the folks developing and pushing it are smart enough for such cleverness.
Also, the potentially wild swings in growth score from one year to the next (exemplified by Sheri Lederman’s case) make growth scores highly unreliable even for the reformers!
Read my comment here an ego to the links… then maybe you will understand why this whole issue of teacher evaluation has been foisted on the public… they she been BAMBOOZLED
http://www.opednews.com/articles/BAMBOOZLE-THEM-where-tea-by-Susan-Lee-Schwartz-110524-511.html
If you have decent foundation in statistics, go back and read the Pallas’ affidavit in the Lederman case. He refers to the flawed metrics at both ends of the bell shaped curve. I got lost when he started to compare different populations; I didn’t get his point.
SomeDAM Poet: I thank you, and the commenters that followed, for exposing the sham that is VAM.
Two points.
1), I urge all viewers of this blog to read the affidavits in the Sheri Lederman case. They can be dowloaded if you access links provided in a recent posting on this blog—
Link: https://dianeravitch.net/2015/06/04/the-lederman-case-experts-assess-new-york-states-phony-growth-measure-in-evaluating-teachers/
2), You wrote in a follow-up comment that “I don’t think the folks developing and pushing it are smart enough for such cleverness.”
I agree completely. As I see it, one way to look at the public verbiage emanating from the mouths of the leaders and enforcers and enablers of self-styled “education reform” is as a simple and reflex (even if at times charming and polite) regurgitation of what can most accurately be described as—
What they remember of the sales pitches of CCSS and standardized testing and VAM and the like. They’re not really putting a spin or employing hype on the above because they don’t have clue what they really can or can’t do; they’re just imitating the same sort of language and tenor as what you’d find in a sales pitch for hamburgers or automobiles or deodorants or the latest techno-gimmick.
They’re salespeople, but only in a second- or third-hand sense—just like their education “solutions” are recycled variants of proven failures. It is hard not to describe the entire leadership of the corporate education reform movement as being tired clichés (and mediocrity) writ large.
IMHO, one of the greatest positives of the Sheri Lederman case is that not only are the rheephormsters are going to have to put their “experts” up against folks like Audrey Amrein-Beardsley and Aaron Pallas and Linda Darling-Hammond, for example, but they are going to have to do something that they instinctively recoil from and fear and loath—
They are going to have to engage in a public show-and-tell where their version of rheeality has to prove its propers against reality.
Hands down, they are going to lose anything even approaching a fair and balanced exchange of views and data. For the same reason that they refuse, over and over again, to engage (despite their protestations a la Peter Cunningham) in a direct and civil and honest dialogue with supporters of public schools and a “better education for all.” *Giant example: with Diane Ravitch, the owner of this blog.*
When it comes to that place known as Rheephorm Heaven, where all their plots and schemes and promises live, well, to aptly reuse something that Gertrude Stein said some time ago:
“There is no there there.”
And for the heavyweights of the “new civil rights movement of our time” there is a matter of supreme importance: their self-esteem can’t take the battering, nay the swarming, that comes with their efforts to practice a 21st century century cage busting version of a very old practice used by the privileged and advantaged for the “benefit” of the drawers of water and the hewers of wood—
Noblesse oblige. It’s all the rage with the BBBC [BoredBillionaireBoysClub] and its employees and hangers-on.
Unfortunately for the entitlement crowd, kings and queens and such are just so, well, passé for the vast majority of us. And we don’t want charity. We do all the drawing and hewing. About time for some equity and social justice and fairness.
Lakeside School for everyone. No excuses. Whatever it takes.
😎
Read my post here! What is happening to you is NOTHING NEW, and is a direct result of the process I described 16 years ago.
Like the hedge fund managers, bankers and the LIBOR ratings people, NO ONE WAS PROSECUTED FOR REAL CRIMINAL ABUSE… no one lost their job, all were rewarded!
No accountability allows Your administrators to do as they wish!
He could maybe write his SLO so that it would say that his students will show growth, not meet standards. For Example he could say that 95% of his students will show growth on the SLO and not have it be a passing grade.
The reformers say that there is no general consensus by teachers that the new standards are developmentally appropriate. They use this as ammunition. How can teachers speak out against the standards when their jobs are on the line? It is a catch 22 and the reformers know it. Teachers must urge parents to speak on their behalf or someone must be more public about the fact that teachers are restricted from offering their opinions.
So-called “growth” measures are a perverse way to judge teachers. I tried to make sense of this requirement as set forth by the Ohio Department of Education. Here is the example I constructed from information on the website.
Using scores on the American Government test as a baseline (near start of year), all students will meet the corresponding end-of year target (CUT) score. The end of year cut score is set at 70 for the students who had the lowest scores at the beginning of the year. In other words, all students are supposed to score 70 or higher on the final exam—end of course or posttest.
Students who score high on the pretest must be given an extra assignment or capstone project to make sure they are challenged. That extra assignment must be scored so there is “stretch”– a polite term way to say you can’t have too many students acing the end-of year assignment. If that happens, you and your students have not shown sufficient “growth.” So here is the example with five trajectories of “expected growth.”
Pretest score of 86-95 means the posttest CUT score is set at 95. The student/teacher GROWTH target is an increase of 1 to 9 points. (A score of 90 or higher is set for a capstone portfolio project for students who did well on the pretest).
Pretest score of 71-85 means the posttest CUT score is set at 90 or higher. The student/teacher GROWTH target is an increase of 5 to 19 points (A score of 85 or higher is set fort a on capstone portfolio project for students who did well on the pretest).
Pretest score of 51-70 means the posttest CUT score is set at 90. The student/teacher GROWTH target is an increase of 20 to 39 points.
Pretest score of 31-50 means the posttest CUT score is set at 80. The student/teacher GROWTH target is an increase of 30 to 49 points.
Pretest score of 20-30 means the posttest CUT score is set at 70. The student/teacher GROWTH target is an increase of 40 to 50 points.
The ODE Guide says that students who score below 50 need to gain more than 10 points to reach an “acceptable” score for “growth.” No reasoning is given. Then it also says a score of 70 is the “acceptable minimum” for all. The Capstone Project (portfolio) will add the “stretch” for students who scored high on the pre-test. “Acceptable growth” is not defined except by example and by criteria that seem to me contradictory.
In any case, I constructed a line graph to illustrate the five slopes and “trajectories” toward the mandated growth targets. I color coded the lines on my graph to imagine five cohorts of students who had to move along the path from point A (pretest) to point B (posttest) with different starting scores and expected posttest scores. I used a ruler to draw the lines and thus constructed a nice and misleading graph with upward sloping lines suggesting “continuous improvement” by all five of my groups. The overall graph fits the federal “Race to the Top” metaphor and fantasy. Point 1 (pretest) and point 2 (posttest) represent the distance to be traveled; that is, the content to be covered and “mastered” between the start of a year (or course) and the posttest.
For students who score low on pretests, the learning path is much, much steeper than for students who score higher on the pretest. In addition, those students must also learn at “more rapid pace” than other students, otherwise they cannot meet or exceed the “acceptable minimum” cut score of 70 on the posttest.
In effect, the evaluation process, like the Race to the Top slogan, reduces education to a “time, distance, and speed” problem. The expected gains in test scores, euphemistically called “growth measures,” are not different from targets for productivity in a factory organized for just-in-time production of a minimum number of products starting on a date certain and completed before a date certain.
This is the travesty of “data-driven” decision-making foisted on teachers and students as if the almighty test score is objective and trustworthy and education is no different from fast-track manufacturing. This is the system policy makers in the United States have foisted on states and districts. This is not about education. The system must be dismantled, folded, shredded, and shown to be idiotic in court cases, preferably class action cases.
There are many problems with this factory model. Students are not widgets. There are many reasons why students perform at lower levels such as learning disabilities, English language learners, lack of innate ability or motivation, emotional issues etc. It is absurd to assume that the bottom students should just “quicken the pace.” In fact, the term “slow learner” applies to students that learn more slowly. They require many more repetitions to learn material. This model assumes that students will learn more efficiently if we turn up the motor on the conveyor belt. It is pure nonsense!
Don’t let anyone tell you you or your kids are a failure when they made gains better than they have ever done in the past. http://savingstudents-caplee.blogspot.com/2013/12/accountability-with-honor-and-yes-we.html
This will end when we stand for individualizing assessment. when we take the facts you presented and prove success. How many students made gains? Individualize and humanize students.
Until we all take a stand for a viable alternative to the current testing fiasco, our schools will perish. When we show we have a better idea, then and only then will our schools and our kids succeed
Original writer: Do you get input on your evaluations? You can say that your students showed a 240% growth in reading (or whatever the growth was).
I hear you. When I first began doing special ed. elementary, I refused to grade the kids with letter grades on a grade level report card. I still do it this way. They show progress and satisfactory, but not percentages. I mean, seriously, since they are not independent, am I to make sure they do assignments wrong or am I to make sure they understand it and have the right answers. If I were to go by their answers they would all make straight A’s. But do people realize what me and my assistant go through just to get them to work? I have bruises all over. My ears have become sensitive. And sometimes, disaster happens in the form of temper fits.
Give the a letter grade? To hell I will. I am just trying to figure out the best strategies to teach them. My portfolio is not updated yet. It will be Monday. But I don’t care whether anybody likes it……we get so little support, I am there to teach, that’s all.
I hope this lawsuit gets nationwide publicity. The public really needs to know what is going on with this.
I’m amazed this teacher has the restraint to call this system merely “inaccurate and unfair!” The ignorance and malfeasance behind it is criminal.
At least she can understand her calculations. We are assigned a quadrant based on student growth-but no one can explain to me how they come up with that rating. Because I teach Kinder and we have to test BOY and EOY (by the way this year they changed our test to a different EOY so we are comparing apples to oranges). I entered their scores and had one student who didn’t show growth-I ask what does that mean my rating will be, how much growth do they have to show to be rated as “effective”-literally no one knows-not even our person in charge of the evaluation process from our district. This is the 3rd year we’ve used this process-30% of my evaluation.