Archives for category: Teacher Evaluations
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Colorado: Democratic Candidates for Governor Fight Over Corporate Education Reforms

By dianeravitch
June 10, 2018 //
28

Colorado is heating up as a battleground over education issues. The gubernatorial race could be a watershed moment in the fight to reverse failed and punitive reforms.

There are three candidates for Governor. Two are corporate reformers: Jared Polis and Michael Johnston. The third, Cary Kennedy, has taken them both on for betraying public schools and teachers. I am not aware of any political race where the issues are drawn as sharply as they are in this race.

Polis and Johnston are angry at Kennedy because a teacher-funded group bought ads criticizing their education views. She can’t control the outside group. Polis and Johnston say she is engaged in negative campaigning and call the ad an attack ad. It seems to me that voters need to know where candidates differ. If they can’t criticize one another for their records, how will voters learn about the candidates?

Cary Kennedy was Colorado State Treasurer, Chief Financial Officer and Deputy Mayor of Denver. She has been endorsed by the Colorado Education Association. She also won a surprise victory at the state Democratic assembly. The Democrats of Colorado had previously denounced the hedgefunder group DFER (Democrats for Education Reform) for claiming to be Democrats while pushing conservative anti-public school, anti-teacher Policies.

Jared Polis is a multimillionaire member of Congress who is zealous about charter schools. He started two of them, and as a member of Congress he has pushed for generous charter funding. When I met with Congressional Democrats on the House Education and Labor Committee in 2010, after the publication of my best-selling book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education, Polis literally threw my book across the table at me and said it was “the worst book he had ever read.” He asked me to give him his money back. Another Congressman peeled off a $20 bill and bought Polis’ copy. I became the target of his wrath because I criticized charter schools.

Michael Johnston is a TFA alum who was briefly principal of a school, then won a seat in the State Senate. He authored a bill called SB 191, which assigns 50% of every teacher and principal’s evaluation to test scores. The Colorado Education Association fought it but lost. Johnston promised that his bill would guarantee that every school, every principal, and every teacher in the state would be “great.” Eight years later, even reformers acknowledge that the bill failed. But Johnston has opposed its repeal. I happened to be in Denver to meet with about 60 civic leaders on the day the bill passed in April 2010 and to debate Johnston. He didn’t appear until I finished my presentation—literally, as I finished, he walked in— so he never heard what I thought of his evaluation bill. I predicted it would fail. He was jubilant because he had just re-engineered Colorado education to march to the beat of standardized tests.

I have never met Cary Kennedy, but I am impressed by her education views and her deep experience. She is a graduate of Manual High School in Denver, one of the schools that reformers have toyed with for years.

If I were lucky enough to live in Colorado, I would vote for Cary Kennedy in the Democratic primary on June 26.

Categories Charter Schools, Colorado, Corporate Reform, Teacher Evaluations

Bob Shepherd: Evaluation Session Stream of Consciousness Rant

By dianeravitch
June 5, 2018 //
25

Bob Shepherd is an amazingly accomplished writer, assessment developer, wordsmith, textbook author, and many more things. But after climbing many professional mountains, he decided to become a classroom teacher. He has a low tolerance for nonsense. He teaches in Florida.

Evaluation Session Stream of Consciousness Rant

OK, you are sitting in your year-end evaluation session, the freaking EIGHTH such session you’ve had this year, as though you had nothing better to do, and you’ve heard from every other teacher in your school that his or her scores were a full level lower this year than last, and so you know that the district office has leaned on the principal to give fewer exemplary ratings even though your school actually doesn’t have a problem with its test scores and people are doing what they did last year but a bit better, of course, because one grows each year as a teacher–one refines what one did before, and one never stops learning.

But you know that this ritual doesn’t have anything, really, to do with improvement. It has to do with everyone, all along the line, covering his or her tushy and playing the game and doing exactly what he or she is told, going all the way back to Bill Gates, who, being a God, evaluates but is not evaluated, who did stack ranking at Microsoft because, admit it, he was probably on the spectrum and didn’t know better and, since behaving in this appalling way made him incredibly wealthy, it must be right, huh? And, at any rate, everyone except the politicians and those paid to think otherwise knows that the tests in ELA are not actually valid or reliable and that’s not really the issue at your school because, the scores are pretty good because this is a suburban school with affluent parents, and the kids always, year after year, do quite well.

So whether the kids are learning isn’t really the issue. The issue is that by means of the latest magic formula pushed by the district and some InstaEduPundit, each cohort of kids is supposed to perform better than the last–significantly better–on the tests, though they come into your classes in exactly the same shape they’ve always come into them in because, you know, they are kids and they are just learning and teaching ISN’T magic. It’s a lot of hard work. It’s magical, sometimes, but its’ not magic.

So, the stuff you’ve been told to do in your “trainings” (“Bark. Roll over. Sit. Good Boy”) is pretty transparently teaching-to-the-test because some people, astonishingly, continue to believe, after years of evidence to the contrary, that that’s a way that one might actually meet the insane demand that each cohort will be magically superior to the last, but you feel in your heart of hearts that caving to this idiocy, this crowd madness, would be JUST WRONG, that it would short-change your students to start teaching InstaWriting-for-the Test, Grade 5, instead of, say, teaching writing. And despite all the demeaning crap you are subjected to, you still give a damn.

And you sit there and you actually feel sorry for this principal because she, too, is squirming like a fly in treacle in the muck that is Education Deform, and she knows she has fantastic teachers who knock it out of the park year after year, but her life has become a living hell of accountability reports and data chats to the point that she doesn’t have time for anything else anymore (she has said this many times), and now she has to sit there and tell her amazing veteran teachers who have worked so hard all these years and who care so much and give so much and know so freaking much that they are just satisfactory, and she feels like hell doing this and is wondering when she can retire.
And the fact that you BOTH know this hangs there in the room–the big, ugly, unspoken thing. And the politicians and the plutocrats and the mendacious twits at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute and that smarmy know-nothing David Coleman and the Secretary of the Department for the Privatization of Education, formerly the USDE, and the Vichy education guru collaborators with these people barrel ahead, like so many drunks in a car plowing through a crowd of pedestrians.

Categories Education Reform, Teacher Evaluations, Teachers and Teaching

Business Elite in Richmond, Virginia, Hires Michelle Rhee Team to Run Its Schools

By dianeravitch
May 31, 2018 //
16

Parents and teachers in Richmond, Virginia, are very concerned about their new superintendent, Jason Kamras, who was a key leader of Michelle Rhee’s team in D.C.

Kamras was the architect of Rhee’s controversial IMPACT program, which evaluated teachers in large part by student test scores. Kamras told Richmond educators that he won’t bring IMPACT with him, but he continues to believe that it was “equitable” and effective. Half of his cabinet in Richmond worked with him in D.C. He is still looking for a “chief talent officer.” (Corporate reformers do not employ assistant superintendents, they use corporate titles.)

The Richmond Times reported:

“Since the 44-year-old was named Richmond’s new schools chief in late November, Richmond School Board members, teachers and education advocates have raised concerns about the system, IMPACT, and its relationship to the “worst series of scandals in at least a decade” to rock Washington’s school system.

“It created a culture of fear,” David Tansey, a high school mathematics teacher in Washington, said of Kamras’ program. “Because it was paired with a top-down culture of getting results quickly, it became abused.”

“How Kamras, the highest-paid superintendent in Richmond’s history, plans to assess Richmond Public Schools teachers remains unclear.

“Eight days after the Richmond School Board announced Kamras’ selection in a celebratory news conference, an investigation revealed that fewer than half of students should have graduated from Washington’s Ballou High, previously touted as a bright spot in an ailing system for moving every senior on to college.

“Six days before he was sworn in at the beginning of February, an independent review found that those issues, which stemmed in part from Kamras’ evaluation system, were endemic to D.C. Public Schools as a whole.

“Kamras was noncommittal on teacher accountability when he discussed his plans for moving Richmond Public Schools forward at a community meeting the next month.”

The article quoted admirers and critics of IMPACT.

The recent graduation rate scandal began in Ballou High School, which falsely claimed a graduation rate of 100%. That revelation led to a systemwide investigation, and the discovery that the D.C. schools’ graduation rate was inflated, stemming from the fear induced by Kamras’ IMPACT system.

Richmond journalist Kristen Reed says that the power elite selected Kamras to impose Rhee-style corporate reform on the Richmond public schools. She portrays Tom Farrell, CEO of Dominion Energy, as the leader of the “Gang of 26,” business leaders who tried to eliminate the elected board and have been eager to disrupt democratic governance of the schools.

She writes:

“Farrell, who has led Dominion Energy for 10 years, has a vested interest in promoting the narrative that Kamras is a community hire. Farrell’s broader work in the power industry draws its profit model from seizing unilateral control of democratic institutions under the auspices of “public process” and “public good.” Dominion power has been widely criticized as exercising disproportionate control over the Virginia General Assembly.

“Despite extraordinary public opposition, Dominion has proven itself uniquely empowered to take Virginian land, to custom-draft its own legislation, and to do so at tremendous cost to members of the public, who have no choice but to remain a captive and disempowered consumer base. The broader public in Virginia has thoroughly articulated their reluctance to trust our energy monopoly to govern in lieu of democratic process. Our last election season communicated this message clearly when 13 candidates who ran on platforms that specifically refused Dominion funding won seats in our General Assembly. As the public pushes back, however, Farrell and his corporate colleagues continue to demand disproportionate power over public institutions.

“Farrell is right to be concerned. He not only chaired the committee that brought Kamras to Richmond, he also plays a leadership role in a particular strain of Virginia’s business elite that holds growing investment in bringing corporate education reform to our city. At stake is his long-standing interest in the Richmond public education system, which he has struggled to fully realize. In 2007, Farrell joined a movement of corporate leaders in the city of Richmond who advocated against an elected school board and in favor of a corporate monopoly on school governance.

“The Gang of 26, as they have become known, issued a now-infamous letter that demanded our democratically elected school board be “abolished.” Widespread public outcry, led by African-American education activists and the Richmond Crusade for Voters, pushed back at the prospect of a plutocratic school governance structure. Defeated, members of the Gang of 26 have continued to look for other avenues to disrupt democratic governance of public schools.”

Stay tuned.

Richmond may be the next battle between the community and corporate elites over the future of public schools.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, District of Columbia, Education Industry, Privatization, Rhee, Michelle, Teacher Evaluations, Virginia

New York: Parents Demand Complete Repeal of State Teacher Evaluation Law

By dianeravitch
May 30, 2018 //
35

Just posted:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: May 30, 2018
More information contact:
Lisa Rudley (917) 414-9190; nys.allies@gmail.com
Jeanette Deutermann (516) 902-9228; nys.allies@gmail.com
NY State Allies for Public Education – NYSAPE

Link to Press Release

Parents Demand the NY Legislature Repeal the Education Transformation Act & APPR; Stop Playing Political Games with Our Children’s Education

NY State Allies for Public Education, a coalition of over 50 parent and educator groups active across the state, vehemently opposes the new teacher evaluation bill, passed by the NYS Assembly and now being considered by the NY Senate as S08301. This bill would change the teacher evaluation system in the state for the fourth time since 2010. This bill, like the current evaluation system, fails the most important measure, it does absolutely nothing to alleviate the impact a test-and-punish system has had on our children.

Contrary to the claims of some of its supporters, a careful reading of the bill indicates that it continues to link teacher evaluations to growth scores, using either state standardized exams or alternative assessments approved by the State Education Commissioner. The bill also leaves the controversial HEDI rubric and corresponding weights in place.

NYSAPE recognizes that the American Statistical Association and the National Science Foundation have concluded that rating teachers based on student growth scores yields statistically invalid and flawed results.

Jeanette Deutermann, a co-founder of NYSAPE and leader of Long Island Opt Out, said “Backroom deals and political leveraging have resulted in an Assembly and Senate bill that purposely fails to decouple test scores from the teacher evaluation system, fails to reverse the destructive receivership law, fails to remove the arbitrary and capricious growth model, and leaves room for grade 3-8 state assessments to once again be used in our evaluation system. Teachers and students deserve a bill that reverses the destruction caused by the Education Transformation Act.”

NYSAPE shares the concerns of the New York State School Boards Association and the New York Council of School Superintendents that this bill, if passed, could mean even more testing. If districts decide to tie teacher ratings to student scores on alternative assessments, those assessments would come in addition to the annual state tests that are required by federal law.

Education historian Diane Ravitch points out, “The current teacher evaluation law (APPR) was passed to make New York eligible for federal funding from the Race to the Top program in 2010. Under this law, 97% of teachers in the state were rated either effective or highly effective. The law is ineffective. It should be wholly repealed, rather than amended as proposed. Let the state continue setting high standards for teachers and let local districts design their own evaluation plans, without requiring that they be tied to any sort of student test scores.”

“The entire idea of basing teacher evaluations on student growth is a farce. Districts will create new metrics that are just as unreliable and invalid as the grade 3-8 test scores. It is time that politicians cease meddling in matters they do not understand and return teacher and principal evaluation back to professionals and elected school boards,” said Carol Burris, the Executive Director of the Network for Public Education and a former New York State High School Principal of the Year.

“The worst outcome would be if this faulty bill passed in exchange for more concessions to charter schools, either increasing their funding or raising the charter cap. Already charter schools in NYC are given preferable treatment in being able to claim free space at the city’s expense, when more than half a million of our public school students are crammed into overcrowded schools, with no hope of relief,” said Leonie Haimson, Executive Director of Class Size Matters.

Parents and educators have been demanding for a long-time that the APPR system be entirely repealed so districts can design their own evaluation plans untied to student test scores. It’s time Albany stands up for children and stops playing political games with their education.

NYSAPE is a grassroots coalition with over 50 parent and educator groups across the state.

###

Categories Education Reform, New York, Teacher Evaluations

When Bill Gates Fails, He Doesn’t Change Course, He Doubles Down

By dianeravitch
May 28, 2018 //
37

Marin Levine writes in NonProfit Quarterly about Bill Gates’ determination to reshape the nation’s schools. He has gone from failure to failure without changing course. The only time he admitted he was wrong was when he gave up his small schools initiative. Small schools are not a bad idea, but they can’t be stamped out in a cookie cutter fashion. Gates never understood that to succeed, they need to have a guiding spirit. Smallness all alone is not Reform.

On to charter schools, the Common Core and teacher evaluation. Failures. None delivered the Revolution he sought.

Now he is “helping” states with their ESSA plans, which means he is telling them what to do.

If only he could find a new idea, a new toy, a new hobby.

Give it up, Bill! You don’t know how to redesign American education. You never will, unless you made it your mission to give every child the same education you and your children had at Lakeside Academy.

Otherwise, he and Melinda are rich dilettantes playing with the lives of other people’s children.

Categories Charter Schools, Common Core, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Teacher Evaluations

It’s Time to Reinvent Teacher Evaluation

By dianeravitch
May 25, 2018 //
38

Rachel E. Gabriel and Sarah L. Woulfin of the University of Connecticut ask a simple but very important question: Isn’t it time to redesign teacher evaluation? Most states are stuck with laws they wrote to apply for Race to the Top funding. Nearly a decade has passed. We now know that test-based evaluation has failed. Why are so many states and districts holding on to a failed strategy for evaluating teachers? Is it inertia? Apathy?

The model in use is obsolete. It failed. It is time to move on.

“Under RTT, teacher-evaluation policies were designed using economic theories of motivation and compensation and statistical growth tools such as value-added measurement. Evaluation policies based on principles of economics and corporate management have failed to take into account the complex and personalized work of educating students.
While evaluation aims to address teacher performance and quality, what we don’t see is acknowledgement of teacher voice and choice in how policies affect their work. We need to create learning-focused evaluation policies for teachers that enable both students’ and teachers’ growth and align with the needs of schools, students, and communities.

“It’s clear to most educators that the current crop of teacher-evaluation systems is flawed, overwrought, and sometimes just plain broken. Detailed case studies demonstrate that some states now spend millions of dollars on contracts with data-management companies and statistical consulting firms. Many states and districts make similar investments despite the fact that researchers and policymakers question the wisdom of value-added measurement within high-stakes teacher evaluations.

“There is now an entire industry devoted to the evaluation of teaching and the management of student data. There are online professional-development video databases and classroom-walkthrough apps for school leaders—which have not demonstrated a positive effect on instruction. But all of them have inflated the edu-business marketplace…

“A learning-focused teacher-evaluation policy would create the organizational and social conditions teachers need to thrive. During goal-setting with administrators, teachers would work together to write challenging, yet attainable, goals for themselves and their students. They would also have professional-development opportunities to learn about different types of student-progress measurement tools to refine what works best. And in feedback meetings with school leaders, teachers would have space to reflect upon areas of their success and weakness. In turn, principals would devote time and energy to framing evaluation as an opportunity to learn about—rather than judge—teaching.

“To begin the transition toward this kind of evaluation, state and district administrators must shift the balance of resources away from measuring and sorting teachers into categories. School leaders must focus on subject-specific questions about teaching and learning, rather than applying a generic set of indicators. And instead of boiling teachers’ work down to a rating, leaders must share observations that help teachers extend what they do well and identify where they can grow.

“Only when we involve teachers in the process of evaluation policymaking will we come up with a system that supports and develops the teaching expertise students deserve.”

Categories Education Industry, Education Reform, Failure, Race to the Top, Teacher Evaluations, VAM

Jake Jacobs: Test-Based Teacher Evaluation is Absurd

By dianeravitch
May 25, 2018 //
12

Jake Jacobs, an art teacher in New York, commends Cynthia Nixon for calling for the repeal of New York State’s teacher evaluation law, which was imposed to comply with Race to the Top. After Nixon spoke out, the State Assembly cobbled together a pretend repeal of the law, which does not actually change anything since districts will still be required to use a test, but only a test approved by the state commissioner. Critics of the bill fear it will double the amount of testing by adding local tests to state tests.

At lest, Nixon had the courage to call for a flat out repeal of a useless and ineffective method of evaluating teachers.

Consider how Jake Jacobs is evaluated.

“Where I teach, we have two days of federally mandated math tests, two days of English Language Arts tests, and two days of Science tests for 8th graders. Then, because of the Annual Professional Performance Review policy, we have state requirements for two more math tests, two more English Language Arts tests, two more Science tests, two Social Studies tests, plus two language tests for English learners (even though they also take the English Language Arts tests). Some schools are required to do mandated “field testing” in June as well.

“From the start, Cuomo’s performance review policy was gamed from every direction.

“As an art teacher, I was stunned at the absurdity of the Annual Professional Performance Review “group measures,” which since 2013 made me choose math or English Language Arts scores for my evaluation. In 2015, I reported on the “ineffective” rating attributed to me because of low math scores, even though I don’t teach math, and I was teaching in an alternative school that only enrolled high need students, and I never even met some of the children whose test scores were used. Last year the city even debuted standardized Art tests for eighth grade—but hardly any schools participated.

“In 2015, Sheri Lederman, a fourth-grade teacher and accomplished professional at the top of her game, challenged her rating in a New York State Supreme Court, which later determined that the process for her evaluation was “arbitrary and capricious.”

“If the point of Annual Professional Performance Review was to create a horrible, wasteful evaluation policy and then make teachers bargain for relief, it worked well.

“Cuomo boasted in 2014 that his teacher evaluation system would be his single most enduring legacy.”

This is the height of absurdity!

Categories Cuomo, Andrew, New York, Race to the Top, Teacher Evaluations

AP Analysis: Bill Gates Can’t Stop Meddling in Education

By dianeravitch
May 19, 2018 //
41

The Associated Press reviewed the Gates Foundation’s education spending and found that Bill Gates is now engaged in “helping” shape the ESSA plans of the states. He just can’t stop telling everyone how to run their public schools even though everything he has tried until now has been a failure.

Does he care that teachers in several states have walked out due to underfunding? Is he trying to persuade governors and legislators to tax billionaires to raise school funding? Don’t hold your breath.

Presumably he wants to make sure they are sticking with high-stakes testing, Common Core, and charters, his three favorite reforms to which he never subjected his own children or their school. If it is not good enough for Lakeside Academy in Seattle, why must it be mandatory for the rest of the nation?

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Common Core, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Teacher Evaluations, Testing

Petition: Repeal New York State Teacher Evaluations Law!

By dianeravitch
May 18, 2018 //
9

James Eterno, a teacher in New York City, has started a petition calling on the New York State Legislature to repeal the failed and ineffective teacher evaluation law.

I agree! I signed! Let educators decide how to evaluate teachers, not politicians.

https://petitions.moveon.org/sign/repeal-nys-teacher-evaluatio?source=s.em.cp&r_hash=arkN4TBC

Categories New York, Teacher Evaluations

Leonie Haimson: The New York Teacher Evaluation Mess

By dianeravitch
May 18, 2018 //
19

Leonie Haimson weighs in on the mess created by Arne Duncan’s Race to the Top demand for a state teacher evaluation system based to a significant degree on test scores.

Leonie says that if the Legislature is unwilling to repeal the law (as I urge), it should hold public hearings.

No way to put lipstick on this pig.

Evaluating teachers by test scores is unsound. There is no evidence for it. It has failed and failed and failed.

It should be repealed. The legislature doesn’t know how to evaluate teachers. Let each district devise its own plans.

Categories New York, Race to the Top, Teacher Evaluations
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