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Tanis & Kilfoyle: Regent Tisch Must Be Accountable for Test Abuse of Children with Disabilities

By dianeravitch
July 23, 2015 //
7

Bianca Tanis and Marla Kilfoyle are parents and educators in Néw York. They have fought against inappropriate testing of children with special needs. They are leaders of the state’s large Opt Out movement.

They became outraged when they learned that the Chancellor of the State Board of Regents said that, if she had a child with certsin disabilities, she would “think twice” before letting the child take the state tests.

This is the message that parents of children with disabilities have repeated again and again, only to be rebuffed.

Tanis and Kilfoyle write:

“For some time now, the parents of New York have been in full revolt over the testing requirements set down by both federal and state leadership. Parents of children with special needs have been extremely vocal about the fact that Common Core state tests in grades 3-8 are abusive and inappropriate for their children. You can read examples of parents informing Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch that these tests have harmed their children with special needs here, here, here, and here. Despite anecdotal stories of children engaging in self-injury and soiling themselves during state testing, Merryl Tisch blatantly ignored parent concerns and allowed testing abuses to continue. As a result, New York is experiencing the largest parent test revolt in education history…

“In fact, just a few months ago, Chancellor Tisch penned an editorial in which she criticized parents who planned to opt out of state assessments by asserting that opt out hurts the neediest children, characterizing opt out as “putting blinders on….”

They then link to an opinion article by Tisch in which she disparaged parents who opt out and insisted that the tests provide valuable information. Tisch wrote: “It’s time to stop making noise to protect the adults and start speaking up for the students.”

They note:

“As Chancellor of the Board of Regents, Merryl Tisch is keenly aware of the fact that a current 5th grade student with a disability who receives a testing accommodation of extended time may sit for as long as 9 hours over the course of 3 days for a single exam. Despite being aware of this and other egregious examples of abuse, the Chancellor has done nothing to lessen the duration of testing or to mediate the harm to students. Rather, she has overseen changes to the New York State testing program that have doubled and in some instances, tripled the length of testing and allowed the inclusion of reading passages years above grade level.”

They conclude:

“The Chancellor’s actions are tantamount to sitting by and not only watching, but commissioning the abuse of the most vulnerable children. Her failure to inform special needs parents of the potential for harm while simultaneously encouraging them to subject their children to inappropriate tests is inexcusable.

“Merryl Tisch should immediately relinquish her Chancellorship and step down from the Board of Regents. Failing her resignation, parents and educators must urge their legislators NOT to reappoint to Merryl Tisch to the Board of Regents when her term expires next year. New York needs education leadership that will protect our children, not lead them to harm.”

Categories Common Core, New York, Special Education

Not Everyone in Rhode Island is Thrilled with New State Superintendent

By dianeravitch
July 22, 2015 //
12

Rhode Island Governor Gina Raimondo is a former venture capital entrepreneur. As state treasurer, she redirected the state’s pension funds. Her husband Andy Moffitt is a co-founder of the Global Education Practice at McKinsey. He is active with the anti-union, anti-teacher Stand for Children. He was a member of Teach for America. Moffitt co-wrote (with Paul Kihn and Michael Barber) “Deliverology 101: A Field Guide for Educational Leaders.”

The blog site “RIFuture” wrote of McKinsey:

“In terms of corporate education reform, one prominent McKinsey-watcher and follow-the-money researcher puts the firm in a class by itself:

“They have been the leaders in crafting the dominant narrative of an education crisis for decades, and now deeply entrenched in education reform policies, they are reaping the financial and political benefits of marketing solutions to the problems they manufactured in the first place.”

Governor Raimondo recently selected Deputy Commissioner of Education Ken Wagner as the new State Superintendent in Rhode Island. In Néw York, he was known as a strong supporter of high-stakes testing, VAM, and corporate reforms.

Sheila Resseger, a teacher in Rhode Island for many years, was unhappy with Raimondo’s choice. She wrote, in response to a post about Néw York’s Common Core curriculum called EngageNY:

“Here was my comment to the post that Diane referenced. I am going to make it my mission to inform Rhode Islanders about the total disdain that Ken Wagner has for authentic teaching and learning. According to the RI Dept of Ed and Gov. Raimondo, he “developed” EngageNY. By his own admission he is opposed to Opt Out and for data collection. These are the trifecta of evil in my book: Common Core/Pear$on testing/data mining.

“I find this so profoundly disturbing that I can hardly see straight to type this comment. I live in RI. As you may know, our Governor, Gina Raimondo, recently nominated NY State Deputy Commissioner of Ed Dr. Ken Wagner to be our new Commissioner of Education (replacing Broad-trained Deborah Gist). This past Monday night the RI Board of Education and Council on Elementary and Secondary Education met to decide whether or not to confirm Dr. Wagner. I was the only one to speak against his confirmation. Dr. Wagner was credited with developing EngageNY, and seemed to be delighted that it has been downloaded for free 20 million times. He also declared that the Common Core does not script lessons, but actually frees up teachers to teach creatively. Another egregious comment of his was that we don’t have to be concerned with Piaget’s developmental stages–that theory is passé. Now we know that children can do so much more than we had expected of them before. Yes, every first grader is delighted to learn about the Code of Hammurabi.

“Here is my post in RIFuture.org, published before the meeting. http://www.rifuture.org/will-ken-wagners-past-in-new-york-shape-his-future-in-rhode-island.html”

Categories Data and Data Mining, New York, Rhode Island, Standardized Testing, Teacher Evaluations, VAM (value-added modeling)

Teacher: Beware EngageNY Curriculum: It’s No Good!

By dianeravitch
July 22, 2015 //
60

A reader reports on first-hand experience with Néw York’s EngageNY curriculum for Common Core:

“As a 2nd grade teacher with nearly 20 years teaching experience, I cannot express how disturbing it is to be forced to use the EngageNY materials every day. It goes against everything we know works effectively to engage and educate our students. As professionals originally hired for our creativity, enthusiasm, and dedication – these materials do everything possible to kill those qualities in each of us.

“We were told from day one that we were to use the program “with fidelity.” It was obvious that no one had actually reviewed the materials (probably due to the fact that many of the modules hadn’t even been completed yet when districts adopted them) or had asked teachers to take a look at what we were being given ahead of time. We also were not given any training – the boxes were just delivered just a few days before the school year began. As the year progressed and it became increasingly evident that there were multiple errors and/or no way to implement all of the many components scheduled in a day with the time allotted, we were then told to “use common sense.” We were not exactly sure what that meant as we were still expected to follow the program and would be evaluated on our use of it as well.

“Last year we entered our second year with EngageNY. Having been through it once, we are still identifying more and more errors and, most importantly, developmentally inappropriate material that we are expected to present to our students. Mid-year we were told that we would finally have a day to meet with a representative to do some training. All we had ever requested was that someone come in to our school and demonstrate exactly HOW all of the materials were to be used in a given lesson. Please just SHOW US! – we asked over and over. That would never happen. However, during our “training” (which was essentially just a sales presentation showing us each component), again we asked how it would be possible to fit all of these things that were dictated in a lesson into our limited time each day. The representative did finally admit that there really couldn’t be any at to fit 2 1/2 hours worth of lessons in an hour or 1 1/2 hour period.

“We, teachers and students, are being set up to fail. It is so sad to think that I hear teachers talk about “the good old days” when we used to be able to create fun and engaging activities that students enjoyed and we loved teaching! I am sorry that this has been a bit long-winded (and I could go on and on with more about this), but I haven’t had an opportunity to share this with any teachers outside of my own district. It is both comforting (and discouraging) to know that there are others experiencing the same things around the country. I hope that we can come together and fight for what we know is right for our students!”

Categories Common Core, Curriculum, New York

New York’s Last District Takeover

By dianeravitch
July 21, 2015 //
15

New York state’s new Conmissioner of Education warned Buffalo to “fix” their schools or she would place the district in receivership.

It’s worth recalling the state’s previous attempt to “fix” a failing district. In 2002, the legislature passed a law permitting a state takeover of the segregated Roosevelt school district on Long Island.

John Hildebrand of Newsday summed up the gains and losses in 2013, when the state relinquished control.

“New York State’s historic takeover of Roosevelt schools has fallen short of its purpose in boosting student academic performance, raising questions over how Albany might better deal with struggling districts in the future, policymakers say. The state is highly unlikely ever to attempt another direct takeover of a local district, those officials add. Albany’s intervention ends Monday, after 11 years and more than $300 million in extra state spending.

The period — marked by limited scholastic progress and memorable mistakes by state officials and their appointees — was the first and only time the state ever managed a local school system. “I can tell you right off the bat that the state Education Department has no capabilities to run a school district,” said Roger Tilles of Great Neck, who is Long Island’s representative to the state Board of Regents. “We need other alternatives, if we’re ever going to turn around other districts that are really not succeeding.” Regents set policy for the Education Department, which has run Roosevelt since state lawmakers approved the takeover in 2002. Tilles joined the board three years later.

By some measures, academic achievement has risen. In the 2011-12 school year, for example, 87 percent of Roosevelt High School’s graduates — 159 students in all — earned Regents diplomas. Only 12 percent, or 10 students, obtained such credentials in 2001-02. Regents diplomas signify completion of at least some college-prep coursework. The end of state control was hailed as “Roosevelt Independence Day” and “a historic moment” by school board leaders speaking Saturday before a high school graduation crowd of more than 1,000. Parents and other residents, both there and at Friday’s eighth-grade moving-up ceremony, voiced cautious optimism over the district’s prospects under local management. “This gives Roosevelt a chance to show its self-worth,” said the Rev. Al Henry, pastor of the local End Time Ministries church, whose daughter, Alyshia, 14, will enter ninth grade in September. “I think we have a 75 percent chance to overcome our past failures.”

How Roosevelt stacks up

In relative terms, Roosevelt remains far behind most other districts in student performance. Only 3.8 percent of 2011-12 graduates earned a Regents diploma with Advanced Designation, showing they were well-prepared for college. Nassau County’s average was 52.4 percent. The district’s high school has languished on Albany’s list of lowest-achieving schools throughout the takeover. The middle school and Centennial Avenue Elementary School also are listed as low performers. “I don’t think the state’s intervention was a plus,” said Dorothy Boxley, a 50-year Roosevelt resident and former education chairwoman for the local branch of the NAACP.

Roosevelt is a relatively small district, with about 2,800 students in a community of less than two square miles in the heart of Hempstead Town. The district’s enrollment is 53 percent black and 39 percent Hispanic, and 56 percent of all students received subsidized lunches in the 2011-12 school year.

The district is essentially tied with the Hempstead system as Nassau County’s poorest in terms of personal income, and historically has struggled to keep pace with wealthier systems nearby. The state’s deep involvement in Roosevelt dates to 1976, when it approved the first in a series of financial bailouts.

Some analysts say that comparing Roosevelt against wealthier districts overlooks the intertwined effects of poverty and housing discrimination on student performance. More than half of its students live below or near the poverty line; 21 percent speak limited English. “Nobody at the national, state or local levels wants to address the fact that there’s no magic bullet for improving the school performance of children who live in poverty,” said Alan Singer, a professor of secondary education at Hofstra University in Hempstead. “You cannot improve fundamentally their school performance without addressing the condition of their lives,” Singer said.

The 2002 takeover law gave state education commissioners unprecedented powers over Roosevelt and authorized state control for a minimum of nine years, with an optional two-year extension. Over time, commissioners ousted elected school board members, named replacements, exercised vetoes over local spending and appointed three separate superintendents. One provision of the law allowed for gradual resumption of local school board elections, which resulted in frequent clashes between the state’s appointees and elected trustees.

Albany pumped in extra money over the 11 years of intervention. Roosevelt received more than $210 million in state commitments for school reconstruction, and a total of $90 million in operating aid on top of what districts normally receive.

Any state takeover failure in Roosevelt has not been for lack of trying. In recent years, for instance, high school teachers such as Teri McGrath, Yolette Wright and Christina Squillante have taught a growing number of Advanced Placement courses set at a college level. Many enrolled teens are the sons and daughters of immigrants from Honduras, El Salvador, the Dominican Republic and Haiti — in some cases, the first in their families to speak fluent English….

Albany’s intervention had two broad goals from the outset. One objective — the easier to accomplish, as it turned out — revolved around Roosevelt’s management and infrastructure. The idea was to curb local political infighting, erase budget deficits and rebuild aging schools — two of which were deemed safety hazards. Those efforts have been largely successful, though school construction projects have been marked by delays and cost overruns, and some residents worry about the cost of upkeep on newly expanded schools. Exhibit A is Roosevelt’s once-shabby high school. The sprawling, two-story structure is due to reopen in September following a $66.9-million renovation and expansion that includes newly air-conditioned classrooms, 16 science and computer labs, a dance studio and job-training centers for prospective chefs and nurses. Completion of the high school project caps a districtwide, $245.5-million reconstruction effort launched in 2004 — the most ambitious face-lift of its sort ever undertaken on the Island. Since May, student groups have toured the rebuilt high school, admiring its features. Brianna Doe, 16, a sophomore, said she was especially impressed by new fume-suppressant safety equipment in laboratories that will allow her and classmates to do science experiments they’ve never tried before. “I was wowed, the building was so beautiful,” said Doe, who served as a volunteer tour guide. The other objective was to boost students’ academic achievement to levels acceptable under state and federal standards….

Roosevelt High School remains on the state’s list of so-called Schools Under Registration Review, or SURR. The list includes schools in the state’s bottom 5 percent, academically speaking. Roosevelt High has been stuck there more than 20 years running — a state record. Technically, SURR schools failing to improve can be stripped of state registrations — shut down, in other words. The state, however, has never spelled out exactly how that might work in a district, such as Roosevelt, with only one high school…

Mismanagement by some state-appointed school administrators left a bad taste. In September 2006, the Education Department discovered that the superintendent at the time, Ronald O. Ross, had run up a budget deficit eventually pegged at $8 million. Ross insisted the extra spending was essential to expand student services, but expenses included $6,000 for his own planned educational travel to Argentina and Antarctica. After public outcry, the trip was canceled. State administrators encountered embarrassments of their own. In January 2007, Education Department officials revealed that construction of a new Roosevelt Middle School was costing significantly more than originally estimated. Overruns ultimately totaled $16 million; $5 million was reimbursed by insurance. The extra costs were for cleanup of higher-than-expected levels of DDT on the 11-acre school site. The land previously was occupied by a county mosquito-control unit, and excavated dirt was so polluted that it had to be hauled to a Canadian landfill. Roosevelt residents voiced outrage over ballooning costs. In April 2007, the state education commissioner at the time, Richard Mills, appeared at a public meeting in the district and admitted he had been too slow in stemming the flow of red ink. Ross stepped down two months later and Mills resigned the following year, both under fire. Disillusionment over Roosevelt’s experience has raised questions over how the state might better deal with other districts facing similar problems, such as Hempstead and Wyandanch. “In the bigger picture, there continue to be districts around the state that are struggling,” said Assemb. Robert Sweeney (D-Lindenhurst), a longtime state legislator whose constituent area includes Wyandanch. “But I don’t think we’ll ever see the state Education Department proposing taking over a district like Roosevelt again, simply because it wasn’t a very good experience for them.”

States such as Ohio and Michigan are re-examining their takeover policies. One national education leader, Daniel Domenech, executive director of the American Association of School Administrators, said that takeovers generally have not made much academic headway. Domenech knows the issue from the inside. In 1995, as a regional BOCES superintendent on Long Island, he headed a state-appointed panel that monitored Roosevelt’s day-to-day operations — a preliminary step toward direct takeover. “Certainly, from my perspective, at the

Domenech knows the issue from the inside. In 1995, as a regional BOCES superintendent on Long Island, he headed a state-appointed panel that monitored Roosevelt’s day-to-day operations — a preliminary step toward direct takeover. “Certainly, from my perspective at the national level, state takeovers are hardly the model to follow,” said Domenech, whose association, based in a Washington, D.C., suburb, represents more than 13,000 educators in the United States.

Categories Cuomo, Andrew, New York, Turnaround Schools

Buffalo’s Struggling Music Program

By dianeravitch
July 21, 2015 //
32

The state is getting ready to turn Buffalo’s lowest performing schools over to a receiver. It sounds like Michigan’s emergency manager plan, created by Republican Governor Rivk Snyder. The emergency managers handed the schools over to for-profit charter chains. It hasn’t helped or even turned a profit.

On the ground in Buffalo, there are realities, like this story about a homeless boy who loved music. The music program in Buffalo public schools saved him.

But Buffalo can’t afford to have a music teacher in every school.

“Of all the elective programs in the city’s schools, instrumental music has been hit the hardest. During the 2012 school year, the program had 20 full-time teachers spread among the district’s 56 schools. According to the district’s budget posted on its website (page 41 of 70), this year the number is at 13.74 full-time positions and slated drop to 9.86 next year, when the supplemental and temporary funding the program has received from Mayor Byron Brown for the past two years expires. A Contract for Excellence grant boosts that number to 24.16 for the current year.

“Of those 24.16 positions, 14.1 of them are in high schools, leaving ten teachers scattered throughout the district floating between buildings, in some cases to teach one class per six-day cycle.

“Amy Steiner works in three different buildings to provide instrumental music instruction for 40 minutes once a cycle. “I can’t get anything going, and I’m a good teacher,” says Steiner, who was honored by Business First in 2010. “They are literally wasting money.”

“It’s not just teacher positions that have been defunded. The instruments have been neglected, too. The total budget for the program’s supplies is just over $4,000. The current budget for instrument repairs is zero. By way of comparison, the budget for extracurricular athletic programming is just over $3 million—six times greater than the total budget for the academic instrumental music program.”

Categories Arts Education, New York

Researcher: Buffalo News is Biased Towards Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
July 21, 2015 //
12

A study by professor Andrea B. Nikischer of Buffalo State concluded that the education coverage of the city’s only daily newspaper is biased in favor of charter schools and against public schools.

“The study demonstrates that two distinct stories are being told: The first gives readers an uncritical look at charter schools, promoting them as the answer to the perceived failure of the city’s so-called failing public schools, while the second gives an overwhelmingly negative portrayal of Buffalo Public Schools, along with their teachers and union.

“As Buffalo has only one traditional newspaper, and virtually no other mainstream media sources in the county provide detailed coverage of the Buffalo Public Schools or school reform, the power of articles published on these issues is immense,” notes Dr. Nikischer, an assistant professor at Buff State’s Adult Education Department.

“Public school supporters have been critical of the News’s coverage, which has, they believe, unfairly and loudly echoed the agenda of Governor Andrew Cuomo, the Buffalo Board of Education majority, and the nationwide school privatization and high-stake testing movements. Now, for the first time, they can point to a qualitative study to back these claims.”

Categories Charter Schools, Cuomo, Andrew, Media, New York

New York Top Official Says She Would Think Twice About Letting Child with Special Needs Take the State Tests

By dianeravitch
July 20, 2015 //
17

Geoff Decker in Chalkbeat New York reports that the Chancellor of the New York Board of Regents said that if she had a child with special needs, she would think twice about letting the child take the state tests.

“New York’s top education official, who sharply criticized parents who might keep their children from taking state tests a few months ago, offered a different message for parents of some students with special needs on Monday.
“Personally, I would say that if I was the mother of a student with a certain type of disability, I would think twice before I allowed my child to sit through an exam that was incomprehensible to them,” Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch said in Albany.

Tisch’s remarks came after federal education officials rejected New York’s request to loosen testing requirements for some high-needs students in June. The waiver would have exempted English language learners who have attended U.S. schools for less than two years from taking the tests, and assessed students with severe disabilities based on their instructional level, rather than their age-based grade…

Never before has Tisch supported opting out as a reasonable response to unreasonable demands.

The state’s “request to exempt certain high-need students from some testing requirements was denied. Assistant Secretary of Education Deborah Delisle wrote that the current testing requirements were necessary to ensure that academic progress of all students is properly tracked.”

This is the height of absurdity. If a child has cognitive impairments so severe that he or she cannot understand the test, what exactly is the point of forcing the child to take the test. If the teacher knows that the child is certain to fail because of his or her disabilities, requiring the test is akin to child abuse.

Last year in Florida, the state compelled a dying child to take the state tests. At what point does a society come to realize that policymakers who impose such draconian mandates don’t care about children? When common sense and common decency are gone, what is left but an empty bureaucratic shell?

Where are the lawyers?

Categories New York, Special Education, Standardized Testing, U.S. Department of Education

EngageNY=Lock-Step Teaching=Dumbing Down Our Kids

By dianeravitch
July 19, 2015 //
38

This post is a description of EngageNY, the scripted curriculum written for use in New York state and now migrating to other states. Ken Wagner, former deputy commissioner of the New York State Education Department, now Rhode Island state superintendent, promises to import them to Rhode Island. New York’s new state commissioner says she used the New York curriculum with great success in Florida. Read this post and decide for yourself. Be sure to read the comments.

Here is a sample:

The same people who gave us standardized testing have now given us standardized teaching, which goes directly to the information a student can get, how the student gets it, and what the student is supposed to get out of each and every class minute. It is 19th-century educational lockstep, pushed by the White House and institutionalized by the New York governor’s office.

If standardized testing dumbed down school and teacher evaluation, standardized teaching takes it a step further: It dumbs down the kids.

The project is called “Engage New York.” It does anything but.

If, say, you are a teacher of 11th-grade English in Buffalo, you get, every 10 weeks, a thick three-ring binder with instructions on what you are to do in every class. The copy I have of one of these runs 587 pages. The volume is excruciatingly boring to read. (I cheated: I skimmed most of the pages.) I cannot imagine what it is like to be a creative and imaginative teacher hamstrung by it. Worse: I cannot imagine what it must be like to be a student in classes that now have to be taught by teachers forced to deliver this drivel or be fired.

The book is divided into teaching “modules,” which list what questions the teachers should ask, what answers they should get, and how they should respond to them. They list what words students should learn each day.

There are regular pages headed “Unit-at-a-Glance Calendar,” telling the teacher the specific lines and paragraphs to be covered in each class. There are pages listing “Activity” items for each class; each named activity includes the percentage of class time to be devoted to it. One, for example has “Activity 1: Introduction of Lesson Agenda. 5%”; Activity 2: Homework Accountability. 10%”; “Activity 3: Masterful Reading. 5%”; “Activity 4: Hamlet Act 1.2, Lines 900-110 Reading and Discussion, 60%.”

Day after day of this, class after class, minute by minute.

The questions the teachers are ordered to ask are often so banal they read like a Monty Python parody. Here is an example. The teacher is told to ask the question, “What information do you gather from the full title of the play: The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark?” (All teacher questions are in bold type.)

Permissible student answers are:

—The play is about a person named Hamlet.

—This is a tragic or sad play.

—Hamlet is a prince.

—This play likely takes place in Denmark.

This is drivel. The book is full of things like that. It is also full of misinformation.

Categories Common Core, Curriculum, New York

New York Set to Administer Harsh Punishments to 144 Struggling Schools

By dianeravitch
July 18, 2015 //
57

Typically, schools with low test scores enrolled large numbers of students who are impoverished, are English language learners, and have significant handicaps. Such schools need extra staff and resources. But the vogue today is to threaten them with punishments, to fire the staff, and to hand them over to charter operators.

New York’s new state Commissioner MaryEllen Elia announced that, pursuant to the legislation that Governor Andrew Cuomo tucked into the state’s budget, she will take action against 144 struggling schools.

Cuomo’s “program creates carrots and sticks and sets out the possibility that the poorest performers could in a year’s time end up under outside receivership, that is, they could be taken over by an independent entity, such as a college or even a charter school operator.

There are 144 struggline schools statewide including 20 that are ”persistently struggling.”

For the persistently struggling schools, which includes Albany’s Hackett middle school, Burgard High in Buffalo and a slew in New York City as well as Rochester, an inside receiver, which is mostly likely the superintendent, will take charge this year. That person then has a year to show improvement or accept the outside receiver. The struggling schools have a year to improve or else they then go under the superintendent’s control, with outside takeover the year after that if there is no improvement.

The stick includes some potentially harsh measures, although it’s unclear how they will play out. In persistently struggling schools, for example, a superintendent acting as the local or in district receiver could conceivably fire teachers and administrators regardless of tenure. The superintendent also can change curriculum and institute a longer school day and school year.”

Blogger Perdidostreetschool notes that one of the struggling school was already being closed. He predicts that there will be many more sticks than carrots.

Perdido writes:

The goal of education reform is to slowly but surely privatize the school system, fire the unionized teachers, and replace schools with non-union charters.

That’s what Cuomo devised here with the budget legislation that allows for state receivership of so-called “failing” schools, but as is usual with the incompetents at NYSED, they screw stuff up and threaten to close a school that’s already closing.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Closing schools, New York

Jennifer Higgins: I Am Not a “Developing” Teacher

By dianeravitch
July 18, 2015 //
96

 

I have gotten to a point where I hate posting statements by teachers who are giving up because of stupid mandates and idiotic “reforms.” I don’t want anyone to quit. I want teachers to stay and fight for themselves, their students, their profession. At the same time, I understand that sometimes people reach a breaking point, and they can’t take it anymore.

 

The only good thing about these statements is that they tell the world about the damage done by ill-informed, misguided, punitive “reforms.” We can’t afford to drive good teachers away, yet that’s what current metrics are doing.

 

Here is a statement by Jennifer Higgins. She knows she’s a terrific teacher, but the data say she’s not. I hope she fights back. Don’t let the reformers win. If you quit, they win.

 

 

Today, for the first and only time in as long as I can remember, I wasn’t sure I wanted to be a teacher.

 

Today, for the first and only time in as long as I can remember, I wasn’t sure I wanted to be a teacher. The reason? One that I am embarrassed to admit.

 

As an elementary educator, there are any number of challenges I face on a daily basis. We’ve ALL been there.

 

Schedules that seem impossible, students who struggle, curriculum demands, parental communication, interruptions for students leaving early or coming late, social drama “spillover”, not enough time in the day, the list goes on and on…and on. We teachers wear many hats – at times, we are parents, coaches, friends, mentors, social workers, psychologists, and cheerleaders, just to name a few. Yes, our job is to teach our students reading comprehension, problem solving strategies, and research skills, but our job is also to remind them of their manners, to encourage them to talk and to listen to each other, to practice kindness so they may model it, to comfort them when they come into school upset because a parent or grandparent is in the hospital, to reassure them when they are nervous about taking a test, to give them a hug and a Band-Aid when they give themselves a paper cut…because if we don’t do it, who will? So, we do. And most of us – myself included – love every minute of it. And because we love it, we don’t just do it – we do it with enthusiasm, with compassion, and with pride.

 

I don’t know how you would measure the value of a teacher in a student’s life, but if you could, I would rest assured knowing that anyone whose job it was to evaluate me would notice how I greet each child with a smile every day, how I incorporate Community Building activities into my classroom, and how I work for hours at night and on the weekends planning, giving feedback on assignments, and coming up with creative ways to teach 21 st Century skills to my eager learners. In addition to teaching 4 th grade in a collaborative, special education integrated classroom, I also actively participate in my school and district community as a Student Council co-advisor, volunteer on our Teacher Center policy board, summer school remediation teacher, and member of various committees including curriculum writing and the OLWEUS Bullying Prevention Coordinating Committee. I would be comfortable with having someone observe my classroom management, read through my plan book, take notes on my rapport with children, view my parent communication log, or otherwise evaluate any number of measures, which contribute to being a dedicated and effective professional.

 

Too bad that New York State has other plans in mind. Instead of fairly measuring the effectiveness of my planning and teaching by utilizing methods deemed appropriate by actual educators, my evaluation is based on a convoluted matrix, developed by some non-transparent “powers that be”. I have read about it, researched it, had many discussions centered around it, taken countless notes at meetings – and still, I can’t tell you how it is calculated. What I can tell you is this (and this is extremely difficult for me as someone who does not enjoy “tooting my own horn”):

 

I have been told by my colleagues that they love working with me. I have been told by my principal that I am an exemplary educator. I have been told by parents that I have made their children love school and that I was the best teacher they have ever had. I have been told by students that they wish I could follow them to the next grade. I have been thanked by administrators for my involvement and dedication. I have even recently been made aware that there is a Facebook group for moms in my school, in which I have repeatedly received accolades and compliments.

 

But… I have also now been told by New York State that I am 2 points short of being an “effective” teacher; that, in fact, after 12 years in the classroom, I am only “developing” at my profession.
So what now? Well, when I heard this news, I did what any person wanting to be rational but acting with their heart instead would do – I cried…and cried…and cried. I didn’t sleep. I had trouble focusing on anything else. And then, the more I thought about it, the more I got angry.

 

I am angry that I spent hours and hours of time last school year using test prep books that made students miserable. I am angry that some of the brightest students I know received grades on the state test that will no doubt make them question their own intelligence. I am angry that if someone doesn’t know me better, they could look at my score of 72/100 and think that I am not a very good educator. I am angry that there are other good teachers in the same position as me. I am angry because, if I am truly failing at what I am supposed to be accomplishing, there is absolutely no way to improve because I have no idea what I did “wrong”. And I am angry because I would never give a score lacking feedback to a student, and yet that is exactly what is being done to me.

 

Let me be clear: I believe in evaluating teachers, and I am the first one to admit that there is always room for improvement. I self-reflect, I study best practices, and I try – each day, each month, and each year – to be better at my job than I was before. What would a fair system for evaluating teachers look like? I’m not sure, but I know with absolute certainty that it would not look like this !

 

I received a BA from Dartmouth College in Psychology, and I received my MA in Elementary Education from Columbia Teachers College. Sadly, I have been asked MANY times why I went to “such good schools to become a teacher”. The answer that I want to share, but often don’t, is: Shouldn’t a world-class education, from institutions that encourage you to persevere, to challenge yourself, and to think critically, be exactly what we want teachers to have in order to ensure that the next generation will be prepared to inherit the world and hopefully do a better job with it than we have? The answer that I usually give is to laugh and shrug nervously, because NO answer I can give can overcome the fact that the question is reflective of a much bigger problem. The truth is that most of our society still thinks of teaching as a “fallback” job, one that is not to be respected, and one that is undertaken by people who can’t do anything else. Clearly, this is the way we are thought of by the leaders of our state; otherwise, we would not be subjected to such an antiquated and unjust manner of “evaluation.”

 

Something needs to change, because if it does not, people like me – who have wanted to be teachers since they were little kids and who pour their heart and soul into their profession – will continue to feel at best dejected and at worst outraged. And eventually, those people will leave the field – either of their own volition or because they have been asked to do so because of their low performances on these evaluations.

 

Today, the reason that for the first and only time in as long as I can remember I wasn’t sure I wanted to be a teacher, was that New York State told me that I am not good enough to be one.

 

The best – and the only – recourse I have is to take my frustration and sadness and turn it into a call to action. This cannot go on any longer. I can’t sit back and watch it happen. Change is necessary – and it’s necessary NOW.

 

Jennifer Higgins

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Categories New York, Teacher Evaluations
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