Arthur Goldstein has been teaching for more than 30 years in the New York City public schools.
He has a terrific blog about teaching in New York City.
Here, he describes how he will be rated as a teacher by an insane system.
He begins here:
NY City’s brilliant and infallible Engage system has mandated that I be rated on a test the overwhelming majority of my students will not be taking. As far as I can determine, this is a side effect of the rather awful regulation called CR Part 154. You see, I’m an ESL teacher, but teaching ESL isn’t real teaching. That’s because under Part 154 anything not regarded as “core content” is utterly without value. After all, if it can’t be measured with a standardized test, what proof is there that it even exists?
And yet, in fact, there is a standardized test to measure ESL progress. Sure it’s a stinking piece of garbage, but it exists. This test is called the NYSESLAT. It used to test language acquisition, albeit poorly, but it’s been redesigned to measure just how Common Corey our students are. For the last few years I’ve lost weeks of instruction so I could sit in the auditorium and ask newcomers endless questions about Hammurabi’s Code. I’m not sure what effect this had on non-English speaking students, but I know more about Hammurabi’s code than I ever have.
You may have read me lamenting the fact that I’d be measured on such a poor test once or twice. Last year, in fact, I must have done OK with it since I got an effective rating. I have no idea how exactly I did this. I don’t teach to that test nor do I go out of my way to learn what’s on it. With the oral part is so outlandish and invalid it doesn’t seem worth my while to study the written part. So why the hell aren’t I rated on this test?
It’s complicated, and I can only guess. But Part 154 largely couples ESL with another subject area. In my school, that area is English. It’s kind of a natural pairing, until you realize the high likelihood of ELL newcomers sitting around trying to read To Kill a Mockingbird when they can’t yet tell you what their names are. After all, when English teachers take the magical 12 credits that render them dual-licensed, how can we be sure part of that training entails instruction to NOT give ELLs materials they CANNOT READ? Maybe the focus is on making stuff more Common Corey. Who knows?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I so sympathize. As a special education teacher, I was called upon to administer the math portion of the ACT to a student who needed a reader. It was obvious to me that most of the time he had no idea what I was talking about, but we settled into a face saving routine in which he would pretend to understand what was required, and I would indicate my confidence in him through encouraging body language since we weren’t supposed to say anything beyond our prescribed script. It was before the brilliant idea of tying teacher evaluations to student performance. I hate to think how they would have attempted to tie my performance to that of my special education students although they did get me because I didn’t teach a reading program with rigid fidelity against all requirements of special ed best practice. Never mind that the district didn’t provide/follow most of the program’s protocols. I have noticed over the years that that seems to be a favorite strategy of the powers that be. So many demands/mandates without the resources to meet them even when they do make some sense.
The last three lines of your comment caught my eye:
Do as I say, not as I do. They demand you follow their protocols but don’t walk their own talk.
Hard to say whether one should put hypocrisy, laziness or incompetence first in the descriptors of the rheephorm-minded folks running your district.
Thank you for keeping it real. Not rheeal.
😎
Just last week, CT’s State Board of Education de-coupled teacher evaluation rating from student test scores on statewide summative assessments (SBAC and SAT) as recommended after lengthy consideration by its Performance Evaluation Advisory Council. It was a divided board vote, but one that saw reason triumph over misguided policymaking as even the pro-reform appointed board members could not ignore evidence that using student test results constituted an invalid use of testing as stated in the test company’s own press materials. The recently-released (January 2017) Minority Report presented by the teachers and those representing teachers after their year-and-a-half long participation on a CT Legislature-driven Mastery Examination Task Force speaks truth to power, even though they were sadly overruled by a committee loaded with predisposed stakeholders.
Click to access Minority-Report-SBAC%20v3.pdf
In CT they dropped it! No using stupid SBAC scores. For good. Now in my district the Super has to drop it from every single teacher’s SMART goals in EdReflect, too. I’m sorry but yes, I am laughing about it hahaha. So tired of the bs that I enjoyed this victory.
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The test-based “Value-Added Method” (VAM) of evaluating teachers has been “slammed” — quoting The Washington Post — by the very people who know the most about data measurement: The American Statistical Association (ASA). The findings of the ASA provide a firm basis by which every teacher who is unfavorably evaluated on students’ standardized test scores to vigorously oppose the evaluation, citing the ASA’s authoritative, detailed, seven-page VAM-slam “Statement on Using Value-Added Models for Educational Assessment”.
Even the anti-public school, anti-union Washington Post newspaper said this about the ASA Statement: “You can be certain that members of the American Statistical Association, the largest organization in the United States representing statisticians and related professionals, know a thing or two about data and measurement. The ASA just slammed the high-stakes ‘value-added method’ (VAM) of evaluating teachers that has been increasingly embraced in states as part of school-reform efforts. VAM purports to be able to take student standardized test scores and measure the ‘value’ a teacher adds to student learning through complicated formulas that can supposedly factor out all of the other influences and emerge with a valid assessment of how effective a particular teacher has been. THESE FORMULAS CAN’T ACTUALLY DO THIS (emphasis added) with sufficient reliability and validity, but school reformers have pushed this approach and now most states use VAM as part of teacher evaluations.”
The ASA Statement points out the following and many other failings of testing-based VAM:
“System-level conditions” include everything from overcrowded and underfunded classrooms to district-and site-level management of the schools and to student poverty.
A copy of the VAM-slamming ASA Statement should be posted on the union bulletin board at every school site throughout our nation and should be explained to every teacher by their union at individual site faculty meetings so that teachers are aware of what it says about how invalid it is to use standardized test results to evaluate teachers — and teachers’ unions should fight all evaluations based on student test scores.
Fight back! Never, never, never give up!
I don’t understand the rationale for coupling ESL with content unless they are expecting ESL or ENL or, whatever they call it these days, to be taught through sheltered English. I am a retired NYS ESL teacher with a master’s in TESOL. I am so happy to be free of ridiculous state rules, although I had to deal with lots of state tests too. At least nobody rated my performance based on student performance on absurd tests. I cannot believe that English teachers can teach ESL or ENL with only twelve credits. What an insult! What do they do? Introduce them to Krashen’s theory of second language acquisition and sing “Kumbaya?” My old degree was like a degree in applied linguistics. This is the dumbing down of teaching.
Like Arthur, I am an ESL teacher in NYC. However, I don’t hold the “Magical” Dual-License that is bestowed on those who take 12 extra credits in ESL just to get a job in their content area. Since my 36 graduate credits in teaching English to speakers of languages other than English don’t count for anything “real” in NYC, I am relegated to the farce that is “co-teaching” (glorified para). But even though I’m now a glorified para, I’m still being evaluated on a test of English language skills – a test that I can’t prepare my students to take because they are busy in their more important classes. But that’s ok because as soon as there are enough teachers with the magical 12, I won’t be need anymore. Those ;magical 12 credits will make all the difference when a class of 34 11th graders, 6 of whom don’t know how to count up to 10, are reading Hamlet.
Very sorry to hear you’re going through that. I will say that NYSUT today passed a resolution very similar to the one I helped with at UFT. It criticizes Part 154 and the nonsense that came along with it. I’m hoping to be part of something that corrects this.
Thanks. I read your blog and know that you are fighting the good fight.
Also remember that an estimated 69 percent of teachers have job assignments for which there are no state-wide tests. The powers that be are faced with a “What do we do now?” They stick to their guns and invent absurd ways of generating a score for subjects and for students NOT taught by the teacher or they require the totally invalid, unreliable writing assignment called a Student Learning Objective–SLO–with around 26 criteria and scores on some other district approved test. SLOs have been marketed since 1999 by William Slotnick who can produce no evidence that these suckers are reliable, valid, or improve learning in any of the grades and subjects where they are used. VAM as a SCAM is well documented. The ridiculousness of SLOs is hidden from view and serious review.
Thanks for touching on a crucial subject seldom discussed: For all these long years bent to NCLB/R2T/ESSA funding in our reform-money-greedy district, teachers have NOT experienced testing similarly. When two or three subjects become the overwhelmed focus of testing and test score blame, the fact that teachers instructing these subjects have been endlessly invaded while other teachers in the building not teaching these subjects may not have experienced the same — and may even remain confused about why there is such a fuss about testing — has served to tear whole teaching communities apart.
The Acronym SMART, like all acronyms, is a metaphor based introduction to the language that is an attempt to dress a bad idea. VAM is likewise. Both of these words seek to give legitimacy to silly propositions by giving them names that reek of authority. Phrases are similar. Teacher evaluation must be noted as a phrase that makes it seem legitimate, yet another Orwellian phrase that makes oligarchy seem acceptable. We can reduce learning and wonder to student outcomes.