Archives for category: Teacher Evaluations
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A Brief Conversation with John Thompson

By dianeravitch
December 17, 2012 //
20

John Thompson wonders if I overstate my concern about the current direction of the education reform movement.

He is not convinced that the end game is privatization.

Perhaps I sat through too many closed-door meetings of conservative think tanks to think otherwise.

As I read and listen to the leading lights of the movement (Jeb Bush; Tony Bennett; ALEC; DFER; Stand for Children; Michelle Rhee), I hear no liking for the public schools. I hear promises of the golden age to come when public schools have been replaced by charters and vouchers and virtual schools, when teachers have no unions or tenure or job protections whatever, when teachers need no more than a few weeks of training to be considered “highly qualified,” when schools are regularly closed if their test scores don’t improve, and teachers fired if their students’ scores don’t improve.

I see the P-word at work (privatization); I see the education profession turned into jobs for temps and short-timers.

I think it is time to stop practices that we know are harmful to children and to their education, like high-stakes testing.

Maybe I am wrong. It wouldn’t be the first time.

I try to follow the evidence.

John, where do you think this is heading?

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Reform, For-Profit, Privatization, Teacher Evaluations, Testing

A Bizarre Article Planted by StudentsFirst

By dianeravitch
December 13, 2012 //
10

I usually ignore editorials and opinion articles about education in the tabloids of New York City because 99% say the same things: public schools are bad, public school teachers are awful or criminal or should be fired, and charter schools are all great. (By contrast, both the New York Post and the New York Daily News have excellent reporters, and the Daily News have the amazing Juan Gonzalez, who has done great investigative journalism.)

Today, however, someone on Twitter asked me about an opinion piece in the Daily News. I read it and discovered it was written by someone who said he was the father of twin daughters in kindergarten in Brooklyn. The girls were in different classes. The father is upset because he can tell that one teacher is great and the other is not. He insists that the city and the union quickly agree to the state evaluation system so one teacher can be paid more than the other.

How does he know which one is better? She assigned homework every day after Hurricane Sandy and the other one didn’t.

At the end of the article, I noted that the father belongs to a group that is part of StudentsFirst. Why was I not surprised?

A New York City blogger dissected the article, noting that the writer is a NYC Department of Health employee. The South Bronx blogger wondered what evaluation system ranks employees in that city department.

Question: why does he think the proposed evaluation system will agree with what he thinks?

Categories New York City, StudentsFirst, Teacher Evaluations

Teacher Ratings: Charters say “No, Thanks!”

By dianeravitch
December 12, 2012 //
6

Students for Education Reform and StudentsFirst have brought pressure on the New York City teachers’ union to agree to a deal with the state to rate teachers by their students’ test scores.

But what these groups have overlooked is that the overwhelming majority of charter schools have said no. Few have turned in their teacher ratings, and most don’t intend to comply.

They say no deal. Forget about it.

The public schools should learn from the best practices of the charters and do the same.

Categories Charter Schools, New York, New York City, Race to the Top, Teacher Evaluations

A Scholar Joins the Honor Roll

By dianeravitch
December 12, 2012 //
1

Bruce Baker of Rutgers joins the honor roll, not as a champion of public education, but as a champion of honesty, accuracy and integrity.

Scholars must go where the evidence takes them, not where it is popular or politically expedient,

Today, Baker is outraged that the Néw York state education department continues to press for adoption of its flawed evaluation system.

He is outraged that the creators of the system–AIR–recognized its flaws, yet blessed it anyway.

He is outraged that the state and city of Néw York will force these flawed metrics on educators.

For his devotion to the best ideals of scholarship and his fearless championing of them, Bruce Baker joins the honor roll.

Categories Honor Roll, New York, NYC, Teacher Evaluations

Karen Lewis: Where Corporate Reform Is Going

By dianeravitch
December 11, 2012 //
11

A Comment from Karen Lewis about the simultaneous deluge of “reforms,” none of which is grounded in research or experience:

“Any decent researcher knows that when you change more than one variable in an experiment, you have to do some pretty heavy lifting in order to determine which one had more effect than another. So in Chicago we have a new evaluation, Common Core, a longer day and year, a new contract, school closings and the usual suspects of attacks on an urban system. The key is to be clear about what and whose purposes all of this serves.

“We now know with the Wall Street Journal “exposing” how America tests in relation to other countries, that the scope of the hand-ringing is to make sure parents of children in good schools will begin to question their efficacy in order to move to a purely private system. Public schools, with the promise of democracy, citizen-building and the common good are in danger of disappearing. If the billionaire dilettantes have their way, public schools will be for the “throwaway” kids and their teachers will be temps.”

Categories Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Education Reform, Emanuel, Rahm, Privatization, Teacher Evaluations, Unions

Teacher: Please Hear Me, Mayor Bloomberg

By dianeravitch
December 11, 2012 //
23

In his weekly radio interview, Mayor Bloomberg said that wants to hold teachers’ feet to the fire. He wants them evaluated by the scores of their students and he wants their ratings published. He is furious that the union has been unwilling to agree to a pact. He says he will cut the budget if they don’t comply.

This teacher read the post and replied:

“I can not believe his language. Evaluation is something every professional adult is subject to, provided that the evaluation is done in good faith, by a fair measure, by trustworthy evaluators. The minute you say you want to hold my feet to the fire, I know you don’t want to see whether or not I’m a good teacher, celebrate my skills and help me improve my weaknesses – you just want me out.

I can not stand another month of being beat up every time I open a newspaper, after spending hours (my own time) writing awesome and engaging lessons, and creating materials (since the DOE gives me nothing) that are specific and responsive to my specific and real population of students. Stay up til 1am planning lessons, read the newspaper, cry on my way to work, spend a day in my classroom trying to build confidence and faith that the world is open to them, that the system is not rigged, that if you work hard, go to college, grad school, pick a decent and socially responsible profession you will succeed, be fairly compensated, and respected. Go back, read the paper, cry again. It is really awful, Mr. Bloomberg. You have no idea.

“Hold my feet to the fire”. What are you threatening with budget cuts? I already pay for all my own school supplies. I buy class sets of text books. I haven’t had a nickel raise in three years, even as my rent goes up and the subway fare raises again. You’re going to make this worse for me somehow? You want me to quit?

After you’ve completely destroyed the professionalism of teaching, once you’ve rallied the press to declare that anyone who goes into teaching is corrupt and suspicious, lazy and stupid – what kind of amazing self-confident and self-respecting recruits are you hoping to replace me with?”

Categories Bloomberg, Michael, New York City, Teacher Evaluations

Randi Weingarten: VAM Is Junk Science

By dianeravitch
December 11, 2012 //
14

The United Teachers of Los Angeles reached an evaluation agreement that minimizes the use of test scores.

Perhaps they were burned by the inappropriate public release of teacher ratings devised by the Los Angeles Times.

I don’t understand how their evaluation system will work, but this is the key takeaway: AFT President Randi Weingarten called value-added modeling (VAM) by this term: “junk science.”

You read it here and here and here

This is the method whereby a teacher may be voted “teacher of the year” and rated “ineffective,” all at the same time.

You go, Randi!.

Categories Los Angeles, Teacher Evaluations

Outlook for Common Core: Turmoil Ahead

By dianeravitch
December 11, 2012 //
11

Researchers usually find that students flourish where there is stability in the school, with an experienced staff, clear expectations, small classes, and a rich curriculum.

In Kentucky, first state to implement and test the Common Core, student scores fell and achievement gaps widened.

This teacher in Connecticut foresees rough weather ahead as the state and federal government launch a massive experiment:

I wonder about the impact specifically in Connecticut where we are rolling out a new comprehensive teacher evaluation system at the same time [as Common Core]….so we have teachers learning new standards, possibly new curriculum, new evaluation processes, new observational rubrics for lessons, teaching and then setting learning goals based on results of one type of test in 2014, and then another online, common core test in 2015…how many schools will fail? How many teachers will not make gains with their students? How many will be fired? How many schools will be taken over? How will the students handle all the stress and change in the schools? It sounds to me like a lot of people will benefit – private companies waiting to take over schools, publishers, trainers, RESCS, but the hands-down, biggest loser will be the students. It is going to be a rough ride in Connecticut for a few years as this experiment unfolds.

Categories Charter Schools, Common Core, Connecticut, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Teacher Evaluations, Teachers and Teaching, Technology, Computers, Testing, US Education

How to Become a Teacher in Need of Improvement

By dianeravitch
December 11, 2012 //
32

A teacher explains how she went from effective to “in need of improvement”:

“I too have been highly effective for the 13 years I have been in the classroom, until last year, that is. I am now a teacher in need of improvement, not due to my teaching or my rapport with my students, but because I didn’t have my learning goal posted next to my rubric and I didn’t put descriptive feedback on 100% of the papers in portfolios )I missed 3 papers out of the 100+ that were in there). I didn’t refer to my rubric at the beginning, middle and end of my 15 minute small group lesson and when dealing with a child on the autism spectrum, I didn’t ask him to recall what the rule was for sitting on the carpet, I used the cue that I had discussed with him instead. This VAM is ruining the psyches of teachers and making us feel like we just fell off of the turnip truck. Way to make us want to stay in the career we love…tell us we suck every day!”

Categories Accountability, Teacher Evaluations, Teachers and Teaching

Joshua Starr: “Stop the Insanity”

By dianeravitch
December 11, 2012 //
8

Joshua Starr is the superintendent of Montgomery County’s public school system, the 17th largest district in the nation. He says that the “country needs a three-year moratorium on standardized testing and needs to ‘stop the insanity’ of evaluating teachers according to student test scores because it is based on ‘bad science.’He also said that the best education reform the country has had is actually health-care reform.”

He said that evaluating teachers by test scores is a very bad idea.

Starr said that “a good way to create assessments for Common Core-aligned curriculum would be to crowd-source the development and let teachers design them rather than have corporations do it. He criticized policies that help make public education ‘a private commodity.'”

Starr said that schools have been asked to make too many changes at the same time.

Joshua Starr was named as a member of the honor roll on September 1, 2012, for refusing to accept Race to the Top funding to judge his teachers by their test scores.

Superintendents across the nation have told me they share Starr’s views. If only they all said so in public, we could reclaim American education from the miasma of bad ideas.

Categories Education Reform, Teacher Evaluations, Testing
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