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Brave Principals

By dianeravitch
May 3, 2012 //
12

The principals of New York State are amazing. When the State Education Department began creating its “educator evaluation system,” it called together the principals and showed them what it was up to. It showed them a video of guys building a plane while it was flying. This was called, in self-congratulatory parlance, “building a plane in mid-air.” A few principals noticed that the guys building the exterior of the plane were wearing parachutes, but the passengers didn’t have parachutes. The principals realized that they, their staff, and their students were the passengers. The ones with the parachutes were the overseers at the New York State Education Department. For them, it was a lark, but the evaluation system they created was do-or-die for the hapless passengers.

The principals rose up in revolt, led by Carol Burris and Sean Feeney. They wrote a petition and circulated it to other principals. In a matter of weeks, they had the signatures of more than a third of the principals in the state. All objected to the test-score based evaluation, all objected to being the state’s guinea pigs, and all insisted that the state should do some pilots before imposing its best guess on the principals, teachers, and students of New York.

It took tremendous courage for principals to sign the petition. Sadly, they didn’t even get the support of the teachers’ unions of New York State. Indeed, NYSUT told its members not to sign. I can’t explain why. It made no sense to me. Why would teachers want to be judged by the arbitrary rise or fall of test scores.

The principals created a website, newyorkprincipals.org. Lots of people have signed their petition. I hope more do.

One of the brave principals wrote a letter to Commissioner John King yesterday. It was reported in the New York Times blog, Schoolbook. (http://www.nytimes.com/schoolbook/2012/05/02/long-island-principal-decries-quality-of-state-exams/)

The principal, Sharon Fougner, said the following:

The tests contained:

Unfamiliar, untaught material

Deliberately misleading questions and answer choices

Ambiguous, poorly worded questions and answer choices

Inconsistent directions

Misplaced answer lines

Omitted directional cues

Multiple answers that could be correct

Inappropriately sized work spaces

Extended multiple steps (as many as 5 or 6) in single problems

Incomplete/missing information

Reading levels that are above grade

These errors by Pearson and the State Education Department have caused “confusion, anxiety, miscalculations, distraction, misuse of time, and fatigue.” The “inordinate length” of these exams, wrote the principal, is “beyond the stamina and attention span of eight to ten year olds.”

All of this together adds up to one single conclusion: The New York State Education Department is guilty of child abuse. Let me say it again, this time slowly: The New York State Education Department is guilty of child abuse. And incompetence.

Will anyone be accountable? Don’t hold your breath.

Diane

Categories New York, Principals, Teacher Evaluations

Take the Next Step, Governor Cuomo

By dianeravitch
April 26, 2012 //
1

I read in the Daily News this morning that Governor Cuomo will oppose the public release of teacher ratings (http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/teachers/gov-andrew-cuomo-approve-making-teacher-evaluations-public-article-1.1067628#ixzz1t98iGb9q). I am glad he realizes that teachers’ evaluation should not be published for all to see, but I wish he had taken the next step, which is to shield such evaluations as part of every teacher’s personnel file. No member of the public has the right to see the job evaluations of police or firefighters or corrections officers, yet their jobs are no less important than those of teachers.

The Governor’s position is that parents have a “right to know” the job evaluations of their child’s teacher. I disagree, and I’ll explain why.

The first reason that I think this is wrong is that the ratings themselves, as we learned when they were released by New York City, are inaccurate. Why should parents have the right to know a rating that is wrong? We saw examples of teachers who were assigned students they never taught; teachers who got ratings for years when they were on maternity leave. Given the city’s insistence that teachers be compared to other teachers and graded on a curve, half of the teachers fell in the bottom half of the curve, despite their qualities as teachers.

In one case, a teacher of gifted children was rated a very poor teacher—one of the worst in the city—because the children who started in her classroom gained only .05 of a point when the computer said they should have gained .07 of a point. This is not judgment, this is a mechanical calculation that is meaningless. Her principals says she is an excellent teacher but the computer knows best.

Then there was the New York Post’s “expose” of the woman they called “the worst teacher in the city.” The rankings showed her at the bottom. But the rankings did not explain that she teaches new immigrant students who cycle in and out of her classroom as they learn English. In other words, the rankings are bunk.

Aside from the question of accuracy—a very large question given the crudeness of the measures—there is an issue of practicality. What happens when the parents in a school learn that Ms. Smith has a ranking in the 12 percentile? Will they all go to the principal and ask to have their children transferred to a teacher with a higher ranking? If they do, will Ms. Jones have 65 children in her class, while Ms. Smith sits in an empty classroom? What will be their rankings next year? What will parents do with the inaccurate information the Governor wants them to have?

I suppose this will sort itself out and in time will come to mean nothing at all. One thing seems certain. This is not a method that will improve the teaching profession or improve education or give teachers the respect they now feel is sorely lacking.

Categories Cuomo, Andrew, New York, Teacher Evaluations, Teachers and Teaching

Pay attention to Peer Assistance & Review to replace high-stakes testing for evaluation

By dianeravitch
April 24, 2012 //
6

Great common on my Edweek blog. Often I wish I had a way to call attention to smart comments like this one. My new blog gives me the chance to give additional attention to the ideas of thoughtful writers. This one comments as “laborlawyer.”

Objecting to high-stakes-testing cannot stop high-stakes-testing unless those objecting can offer a reasonable alternative to high-stakes-testing as a way to identify/remove ineffective teachers. The high-stakes-testing supporters argue that there are ineffective teachers in the schools, that current teacher evaluation systems are not identifying/removing those ineffective teachers, and that these ineffective teachers are a major cause of poorly-performing schools (that is, of low test scores in inner-city schools). These arguments are superficially compelling. It’s true that there are ineffective teachers in the schools (just as there are ineffective employees everywhere) and virtually all citizens have personal recollections of ineffective teachers from their own school days. It’s also true that current teacher evaluation systems are not identifying/removing ineffective teachers — in most school systems, the traditional principal-observes-and-evaluates evaluation system results in very few, if any, discharges. It’s probably not true that ineffective teachers are a major cause of poorly-performing schools (that is, the poorly performing schools are concentrated in low-income areas while the ineffective teachers, even if somewhat more common in the low-income areas, are certainly not concentrated in the low-income areas to the same extent as the low test scores are). But — it’s impossible to prove that ineffective teachers are not a major problem and, in any event, arguing in favor of ineffective teachers has zero appeal. High-stakes-testing is an inexpensive solution to the identify/remove-ineffective-teacher issue. So — to win the debate, opponents of high-stakes-testing must provide an alternative solution. An obvious possibility is a peer-review evaluation system similar to that used in Montgomery County, MD schools since 2001. This system — called “PAR” — has been amazingly successful at removing ineffective teachers with over 500 teachers discharged or resigned-in-lieu-of-PAR-evaluation. The teachers union supports PAR. There have been few litigation challenges to the discharges. The overwhelming majority of teachers think the system is fair. There is no high-stakes-testing, with all its adverse side effects. Briefly, principals identify teachers as possibly poor-performers; senior consulting teachers (who do not report to the principal) intensively monitor/evaluate the identified teachers; a consulting-teachers/principals committee makes the final discharge decision. It’s unclear why PAR has received so little public attention. The NY Times wrote a column praising PAR. But, the media and ed bloggers have otherwise largely ignored it. Opponents of high-stakes-testing should study and publicize PAR — or something like it — as an inexpensive, productive alternative to the destructive high-stakes-testing as a way to identify/remove ineffective teachers.

Categories Teacher Evaluations, Testing
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