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     Jerry Moore (Admin) Board Administrator Username: Admin Post Number: 30201 Registered: 01-2000  Rating: N/A |
Change of plans. Meetings creating teacher evaluations will be public. By Jacqueline Rabe Thomas / Hartford (CT) CT Mirror with around 20 comments May 23, 2012 After holding numerous meetings behind closed doors to finalize details on how teachers and principals will be graded, the State Department of Education has said the public and the media can attend the sessions from now on. "Something is different at this meeting. At this meeting -- in the interest of transparency -- the state department has invited the press to join us," is how Elizabeth Shaw, the state's consultant with Education First, started Wednesday's "working group" meeting. This decision to conduct open meetings comes one day after the Connecticut Mirror reported that several private meetings have taken place without public notice and that 10 more closed sessions had been scheduled. * * * * 
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| Jerry Moore (Admin) Board Administrator Username: Admin Post Number: 30099 Registered: 01-2000 Rating: N/A |
Boston Students Push to Include Their Opinions in Teachers’ Evaluations Posted by Michael Keany / School Leadership 2.0 May 8, 2012 “As people across the country discuss supporting and evaluating teachers, why are they not involving those with the most intimate knowledge of the classroom?” ask members of the Boston Student Advisory Council (BSAC) in this Harvard Educational Review article. “As students, we are the ones in the classroom, and our futures are affected by what happens there every day.” BSAC leaders describe how they approached Boston central office and teachers’ union officials in 2006 with the idea of including student opinions in teachers’ evaluations, and piloted their Friendly Feedback Form in one Boston high school during the 2007-08 school year. Teachers suggested some edits to the questionnaire, 400 students filled it out anonymously, the results were tabulated, teachers received a summary of the feedback in sealed envelopes, and student leaders presented the overall results in a schoolwide professional development meeting, highlighting best practices being used in classrooms and areas for improvement. “In addition to learning valuable facts and figures from this session,” they write, “this discussion allowed students and teachers to improve their relationships and promote a more positive school culture.” In another Boston high school, teachers balked at being evaluated by students, but the administrators volunteered. BSAC members created an Administrator Constructive Feedback Form and went through a similar process with the administrative team with positive results. Based on the success of these pilots, BSAC leaders proposed that all Boston high-school students should evaluate their teachers. They worked with district and union officials to create a two-page questionnaire on student learning and classroom management and instruction that could be filled out in less than 15 minutes, with open-response questions voluntary in case students were worried that their handwriting could be recognized. BSAC members were careful to include a section for students to reflect on their own learning practices in each classroom. “This self-reflection would help students take more ownership of their education and also reduce the potential for ‘teacher bashing’,” they write. “Favoring easy teachers and penalizing demanding teachers was a huge concern from many of the people with whom we met. In order to alleviate this concern, we decided it was important to evaluate ourselves too. If we could not honestly and openly respond to questions about our own learning, then perhaps we could not honestly provide feedback to our instructors.” Boston’s school board unanimously approved the questionnaire and implementation plan in May 2010, and it was implemented in 29 Boston high schools during the 2010-11 school year. The response was “overwhelmingly positive,” according to the authors, with teachers saying it gave them a better understanding of how students were learning and specific ideas for improving instruction. The next step was pushing to have student feedback included as an official part of Boston teachers’ evaluations. In a survey, 86 percent of the city’s high-school headmasters supported this move. BSAC didn’t stop there; its leaders began actively campaigning to have student voice included in the new Massachusetts teacher evaluation system. In June 2011, the Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education voted on an evaluation framework that includes student feedback in teacher evaluations beginning in 2013-14, with details to be worked out after further study. The BSAC authors end by noting the support among students around the nation for a voice in teacher evaluation. Some school districts are moving in this direction – for example, the Brookline (MA) schools strongly encourage teachers to solicit student feedback as part of their evaluations. Getting teachers on board with the idea is a prime BSAC goal: “After all, the messaging of the importance of student voice in teacher evaluations will be much more powerful coming from teachers and students together. We need to continue improving the teacher evaluation system as a cohesive unit. Teachers and students are both heavily invested in the education system,” they say. “We have to work together.” “‘We Are the Ones in the Classrooms – Ask Us!’ Student Voice in Teacher Evaluations” by the Boston Student Advisory Council: Abibatu Bayoh, Dan Chu, Adam Fischer, Cheria Funches, Ayan Hassan, Teena-Marie Johnson, Damien Leach, Xin Jian (Peter)Li, Eseniolla Maitre, Steve Marcelin, Will Poff-Webster, Carlos Rojas, Christina Moriah Smith, Colin Smith, Dennis Tan, Rosanna Velasquez, Mengning (Melinda) Wang, Rachel Wingert, and adult staff: Rachel Gunther, Caroline Lau, Maria Ortiz, and Jenny Sazama in Harvard Educational Review, Spring 2012 (Vol. 82, # 1, p. 153-162), http://her.hepg.org/content/t3lu73624p0p31w2/ * * * *
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| Jerry Moore (Admin) Board Administrator Username: Admin Post Number: 30086 Registered: 01-2000 Rating: N/A |
Voter support is shown for BTF on evaluations Poll also reflects worries about loss of aid By Mary B. Pasciak / Buffalo News Staff Reporter May 8, 2012 A majority of Buffalo voters support the Buffalo Teachers Federation's stance on student absenteeism as it relates to teacher evaluations -- but when it comes to the district losing money or a major university partner as a result, public opinion veers away from the union, a recent survey has found. The same survey found voters overwhelmingly unhappy with the School Board. "It doesn't appear that there are any winners. There only appear to be losers in this thing," said local pollster Barry Zeplowitz, who said he decided to conduct the survey independently, without being paid by any person or group. Five hundred Buffalo voters, over two days last week, answered questions about the board and the teachers union. The margin of error is plus or minus 4.5 percentage points. The majority of poll respondents throughout the city said they agree with the union specifically regarding its opposition to a teacher-evaluation plan that counts all students, regardless of attendance: 51 percent of those polled agreed with the union, and 38 percent disagreed. "I would think if more people were aware of the extent of the absentee problem, more people would agree with the union on that," BTF President Philip Rumore said. Rumore signed a recent version of the plan, which did count all students but set different benchmarks for teachers in schools with severe student attendance problems. His signature, though, was contingent on approval by the union's council of delegates, which never voted on that plan.  So, the solution to the disagreement over counting all students is to count them unequally, or to set a different "benchmark" that diminishes the value of students who may detract from performance standards. Swell. If educators were only this clever in teaching students no one would be evaluating them. * * * *
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| Jerry Moore (Admin) Board Administrator Username: Admin Post Number: 30079 Registered: 01-2000 Rating: N/A |
BTF battle applauded by teachers statewide Unions back challenge to state on evaluations By Tom Precious / BUFFALO NEWS ALBANY BUREAU with over 30 comments May 6, 2012 ALBANY — The Buffalo Teachers Federation has been getting its share of lumps for refusing to go along with the school district and the state Education Department in the creation of a new evaluation system for teacher performance. But teachers unions across the state are watching the fight being waged in Buffalo, and for some, the BTF has become an overnight hero. "They're standing up and saying the emperor has no clothes," said Patricia Puleo, president of the Yonkers Federation of Teachers in Westchester County. "Someone has to turn to the state Education Department and say, 'Your tests are faulty, you're not taking into account student attendance, you're not giving us enough time.'" * * * *
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| Jerry Moore (Admin) Board Administrator Username: Admin Post Number: 30043 Registered: 01-2000 Rating: N/A |
Commissioner: Why all students have to be counted on teacher evals Mary Pasciak / Buffalo News April 30, 2012  * * * On Friday, [Commissioner] King finally answered my question: Why is he requiring that all students' performance be counted toward teacher evaluations? Here is his answer, in its entirety: On the issue of attendance, it's very clear. I believe that every student is entitled to an excellent education. Any policy that would render students invisible is not acceptable -- there have been proposals that would render the majority of students in a building invisible, proposals that would render the majority of students in a subgroup invisible. * * * *
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| Jerry Moore (Admin) Board Administrator Username: Admin Post Number: 30038 Registered: 01-2000 Rating: N/A |
A look at teacher ratings system Education Department to unveil streamlined online system for evaluations By Scott Waldman / Albany (NY) Times Union April 30, 2012 ALBANY — On Wednesday, the state Education Department will unveil a new online system to streamline submitting and implementing teacher evaluation plans. The department created a Web portal similar to the TurboTax software program that will allow school districts to input their teacher evaluation plans for state approval and public viewing. It is designed to make the process of evaluations more efficient and transparent and to ensure that schools are complying with the law according to state deadlines. * * * All the state's nearly 700 school districts must implement teacher and principal evaluations by Jan. 17, 2013, or risk losing some state aid. The specifics of each evaluation system will vary by district, and state officials expect it will take four to six weeks to review each plan. After plans are approved by the state, they will be available to the public through the new website. At least 100 districts across the state have already reached agreements on teacher evaluations with their unions. * * * The features of the new system also will allow districts to upload documents, PowerPoint presentations as well as video and audio. Parents eventually will be able to use the new system to compare the teacher evaluation plans in their district with those of the surrounding districts. The new system will also provide a general overview of the approved plan for each district. It will not make public individual teacher evaluations, an issue at the Capital that Gov. Andrew Cuomo has promised to resolve before the end of this legislative session.
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| Jerry Moore (Admin) Board Administrator Username: Admin Post Number: 29987 Registered: 01-2000 Rating: N/A |
Teacher evaluation bills would inhibit accountability A White Plains (NY) Journal News Editorial Apr. 24, 2012 If teacher evaluations are not made public, at least to the extent of providing anonymous data (scores and unique identifiers without connections to names) for free, you can be sure that the evaluation system will be a complete sham, perhaps right out of the gate. Imagine the hoax the state could have pulled on the public had student scores not been made public. They repeatedly reported that students were learning more. Without the data, who would have known that the hype was contradicted by other sources of data? Educators simply can't be trusted to police themselves. Tenure and a make-no-waves culture will trump teacher improvement. Without public oversight, nothing will change. Legislation New York made the right call when it decided to get behind a nationwide effort to make public school teachers and principals more accountable for student and school performance; we just wish local lawmakers fully bought into the concept. Some lawmakers, whose constituents routinely pay some of the highest school taxes in the nation, are leading the charge — toward less disclosure and, unavoidably, less accountability. Bills from local legislators would either deny or severely limit public access to new public school teacher and principal rating information — data aimed at heightening accountability for what transpires in the classroom and in whole schools. The ratings will be based on factors including classroom observation, student progress on state tests and how students perform on locally chosen assessments — all part of a White House-led effort to boost student achievement and make the education buck, so to speak, stop somewhere. Accountability None of the pending bills evinces a commitment to accountability or openness — or trusts the bill-paying public and parents with the most complete picture of their teachers and schools. If anything, the lawmakers should be looking for ways to augment the ratings with even more data — such as the names and parties of all the elected officials associated with each school building in a given district. How come? The schools are the province of all of us; accountability should be inclusive of all the players, reaching elected officials as well. The pending measures do little to promote accountability or shared responsibility; they do quite a bit to accommodate secrecy and the status quo. State Sen. Greg Ball, R-Patterson, and Assemblywomen Ellen Jaffee, D-Suffern, and Sandy Galef, D-Ossining, have each introduced bills that would prevent the general public from getting access to teachers’ ratings. Galef’s bill, the most restrictive of the bunch, would make teachers’ evaluations off-limits in their entirety, leaving students, taxpayers and parents as uninformed as they are now. Ball’s measure would be just as secretive, treating teacher and principal data as confidential, but he plans a halfhearted amendment to create a narrow information loop, offering some parental access. Jaffee’s measure is an especially cumbersome abomination of Galef and Ball’s bad approaches; her bill would place the teacher and principal data beyond public reach, except that a parent or guardian could jump through paperwork hoops to see the rating category for the “student’s current teacher”; such review would come in a private meeting with the building principal; and the initial inquiry would have to be made in a Freedom of Information Law request. Translation of the foregoing limits and procedural hurdles: We know this information is important; we know students and parents have a vital interest in the information; we will make it as hard as possible to fully inform you and others; only a select and persistent few will gain enlightenment. Ex-East Ramapo teacher Jaffee sees matters differently: “We will lose the best teachers if evaluations are made public,” Jaffee told staff writer Gary Stern, whose article on the controversy appeared Monday. “If we go down this road, it would undermine the entire education system.” A less apocalyptic view comes from Assemblywoman Amy Paulin, D-Scarsdale, who said she would prefer to see the data made public; she had every confidence that parents could assimilate the information. “I think parents are more sophisticated than that,” she said. “We make judgments about teachers based on informal conversations, anyway. We all think we know who the best third-grade teacher is.” New York can do better than what these legislators offer. Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who pressed so hard to ensure the ratings system would be implemented, should make plain to lawmakers and the public that accountability and disclosure go hand and hand. We cannot be serious about the former without insisting upon the latter.
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| Jerry Moore (Admin) Board Administrator Username: Admin Post Number: 29971 Registered: 01-2000 Rating: N/A |
Struggle over how to evaluate special ed teachers By CHRISTINE ARMARIO | Associated Press via Yahoo! News April 24, 2012 MIAMI (AP) — * * * "A large number of special education students are able to make learning gains," said Will Gordillo, administrative director for the division of special education at Miami-Dade County Public Schools, the nation's fourth-largest school district. Those with the most significant cognitive disabilities, however, may not. "There's concern with this group," he said. Some special education teachers teach only 5 students a day. You cannot possibly get reliable data from such a small sample. One-size-fits-all teacher evaluations isn't feasible. What really needs to happen is for most special education teachers to become the supervisors of several teacher assistants. Spending $20,000 a year for a child to learn to say his/her name is excessive, even though it may be a miracle given the child's abilities. * * * *
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| Jerry Moore (Admin) Board Administrator Username: Admin Post Number: 29937 Registered: 01-2000 Rating: N/A |
Education reform protests pick up steam By Valerie Strauss / The Answer Sheet 04/20/2012 Politics, speculation and fear mongering. Teacher evaluations can be improved by the recommended changes. However, improving teacher evaluations will do very little to improve the education success of students, and that's what we're after. The whole enterprise is a waste of money but it shouldn't be condemned for bogus reasons. In Texas, New York, Illinois and other states, protests by parents and educators are getting louder against school reform that insists on using standardized test scores as the basis for evaluating students, educators and schools. It is too early to call it a full-fledged revolt; Washington D.C. has yet to see tens of thousands of people marching through the streets against high-stakes standardized testing, which has been prominent in American education for a decade and is at the core of the Obama administration’s school accountability efforts. But opposition is clearly growing, most prominently over “value-added” teacher evaluation models that purport to measure how much “value” a teacher adds to a student’s academic progress by using a complicated formula involving a student’s standardized test score. Researchers have repeatedly warned that this evaluation method is not reliable — and doesn’t take into account all of the out-of-school reasons that could affect how a student does on a test — but the Obama administration has pushed it and states have been adopting new teacher accountability systems that are heavily weighted to test scores. In New York, hundreds of professors at colleges and universities have banded together and signed a letter to political and education officials protesting the state’s new educator evaluation system, Annual Professional Performance Review, or APPR, which rests largely on test scores, and asking them to reconsider the reliance on high-stakes tests. This effort follows one by school principals in New York to protest APPR with a petition that describes APPR is “an unproven, expensive and potentially harmful evaluation system” that “is not the path to lasting school improvement.” At this point, more than 1,432 New York State principals and more than 4,860 friends have signed the petition. Meanwhile, in Texas, some 345 school districts — out of about 1,030 districts — have adopted a resolution that says that standardized tests are “strangling” public schools and asking the state Board of Education to rethink the testing regime. Those school districts represent more than 1.6 million students. It was in Texas where the era of high-stakes testing was born. George W. Bush started a test-based accountability program when he was governor and then blew it out into a national education initiative known as No Child Left Behind during his presidency. Thus it is somewhat ironic that this year Robert Scott, the Republican commissioner of education in Texas, caused a public stir when he told the Texas State Board of Education that the mentality that standardized testing is the “end-all, be-all” is a “perversion” of what a quality education should be. California Gov. Jerry Brown had said essentially the same thing last year. Scott also agreed to postpone by a year a requirement that the results of each end-of-course exam account for 15 percent of a student’s final grade in that course. It’s impossible to know if Scott’s comments had an effect on any other officials, but The New York Times reported last month that the chief academic officer of New York City’s public schools, Shael Polakow-Suransky, said publicly that he, too, has concerns about APPR because of the value-added formulas that carry so much weight. “A principal should not ever be in a situation where ultimately their judgment gets trumped by a mechanistic formula,” he was quoted as saying. Meanwhile, in Illinois, scores of professors and researchers from at least 16 universities throughout the Chicago metropolitan area recently signed an open letter to the city’s mayor, Rahm Emanuel, and Chicago school officials warning against implementing a teacher evaluation system that is based on standardized test scores. The letter says, among other things, that “students will be adversely affected by the implementation of this new teacher-evaluation system” for a number of reasons. They include: *A narrowing of curriculum as teachers focus more on test prep; *Teachers whose jobs depend on their students doing well on standardized tests will “surely be incentivized to avoid students” with any kind of problem that could lead them to do poorly on the test * Teachers will stop collaborating and become competitive, creating a bad environment for a school. In addition to these protests, local groups of parents and educators in a number of states have started to seek ways to coordinate their efforts to protest standardized testing and help parents “opt” their children out of these tests. Where this fledging revolt is going is unclear, but it is real, and for the moment, it is growing.
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| Jerry Moore (Admin) Board Administrator Username: Admin Post Number: 29936 Registered: 01-2000 Rating: N/A |
Battles over teacher evaluations rage on Peoples-Stokes suggests state takeover of schools if district loses grant money By Robert J. McCarthy / Buffalo News staff reporter April 21, 2012 Actually, the teachers unions should tell the state and the feds that their evaluation plans will do PRACTICALLY NOTHING to improve academic outcomes. Buffalo should say, "Let us be the control group. We'll see if you can dramatically improve academic outcomes with rigorous evaluation plans in other districts." I already know the answer is, status quo or data-driven evaluations, student outcomes cannot dramatically improve because the overwhelming and fundamental limiting factor is one-size-fits-all, subject-based, lock-step, teacher-centered classroom instruction. Until you change the system you CANNOT give our children the education they need and deserve. More billions of dollars wasted tinkering with a design that cannot possibly meet expectations. For the money wasted "reforming" public education during the past 10 years we could have completely revamped it by creating schools designed for The 21st Century Student. It's a crying shame. If the Buffalo Public School District loses millions in state grants because its teachers union fails to ratify a proposed evaluation system, an influential state lawmaker says New York State should take over the district. Assemblywoman Crystal D. Peoples-Stokes Saturday suggested the state takeover for the first time, and said it should be imposed if an evaluation system adopted by virtually every other teachers union in the state cannot be negotiated. * * * Buffalo Teachers Federation President Philip Rumore said Saturday night that "constructive" suggestions would better serve the situation. "It would be better if parents, teachers, students and administrators took over the Department of Education," he said, "because at least we would have people who really know what's going on in the schools as opposed to people who have no clue." Rumore also said he spoke with the superintendent on Friday about continuing to discuss the situation. He noted the union has approved three separate evaluation agreements in recent months, only to have them vetoed by the state. "We are willing to go forward if the state gives us a reasonable amount of time to do the job," he said. "I'm beginning to believe nothing we do will pass muster with them." Over the past several months and once again on Thursday, teachers have rejected a proposal for evaluation. Samuel L. Radford III, president of the parent council, called the Saturday news conference to encourage a large turnout at the Monday protest. He said the teachers union should return to the negotiating table and not leave until an agreement is reached. "We're right on the doorstep of the greatest opportunity a public school system can have and status quo will effectively hamper our efforts," he said. "We're asking the BTF to reconsider its position and come back to negotiations." Radford was referring to a Johns Hopkins University program to aid two Buffalo high schools that could be rescinded if an agreement is not reached. Also at stake is $5.6 million in school improvement grants for the current school year at six schools. If the plan is not approved by the state or by the union, more than 50 teachers could receive layoff notices. Smith also urged participation in the Monday protest, pointing to millions of dollars in potential state grants at jeopardy only because of the union position. "This is ridiculous," he said. And attorney Anthony L. Pendergrass said the protest will highlight not a "request" from the community that the situation be resolved, but a "demand." "All we are demanding is that the Buffalo Teachers Federation, the Board of Education and the superintendent give our children the opportunity to reach full potential," he said. "We're not asking nicely any more that the Buffalo Teachers Federation submit to teacher evaluation, we're demanding." Speaker Bryon J. McIntyre said the protest will send a message to the teachers union. "If the teachers federation does not sign off on this, we're going to have a disaster in this community," he said. "Let the teachers federation know we are not going to allow things to remain the same." Blame Rumore Teachers union creates wreckage, then points a finger elsewhere A Buffalo News Editorial April 21, 2012 When cornered, blame someone else. That's the predictable strategy of the Buffalo Teachers Federation. The teachers union has refused to agree to a teacher evaluation system that has been adopted elsewhere around the state, yet the problem, according to BTF President Philip Rumore, is that State Education Commissioner John B. King Jr. doesn't care about children who, Rumore says, King is using as "pawns." Similarly, Rumore calculates that Johns Hopkins University doesn't like children, either. The university's Center for Social Organization of Schools is also using children as pawns, he said, for threatening to back out of its plans to help turn around Lafayette and East high schools over the failure to produce a teacher evaluation agreement. Presumably, then, Rumore believes Interim Superintendent Amber M. Dixon also despises children, since she expressed disappointment that the union on Thursday once again rejected a proposal for evaluating teachers. If the superintendent liked children, she would have been thrilled at the union's response. But she wasn't thrilled. Obviously, Dixon doesn't like children. And what of Samuel L. Radford III, president of the District Parent Coordinating Council? Radford and the parents he represents have been harshly critical of the union's record on this issue. Even the parents hate children. The State Board of Regents hired King and continues to support him. Clearly, the Board of Regents can't stand children. And, of course, you also have to worry about Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, who has linked a teacher evaluation system to increased state funding, and President Obama, whose Race to the Top program produced the funding that King is holding up. Everyone but the union is guilty. Or is there another way to consider this problem? Could it be that the problem lies within a union that accuses the world around it of crimes against children but can't bring itself to accomplish what other unions have done? Is the problem in an outdated style of leadership that manufactures and stokes resentment as a way of maintaining a useful status quo? The union, after all, is the only entity involved that lacks a legal or parental requirement to act on the behalf of children. Plainly, it takes that role seriously. We don't advocate in New York the kind of assault on public-sector unionism that Wisconsin and other states have adopted, but this is the kind of behavior that incites drastic responses. This is a gathering disaster. What alternatives are left for students who are going to lose yet another year of education to a dysfunctional system? What about the millions of dollars that are at stake? What about the potential loss of partners like Johns Hopkins? What about the losses to Buffalo as a whole? It's all because the union won't agree to a reasonable process for evaluating teachers. That's the crime. Ah, but that's King's fault. And Johns Hopkins'. And Dixon's. And Radford's. And the Regents'. And Cuomo's. And Obama's.
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| Jerry Moore (Admin) Board Administrator Username: Admin Post Number: 29906 Registered: 01-2000 Rating: N/A |
Firing teachers based on bad (VAM) versus wrong (SGP) measures of effectiveness: Legal note Bruce D. Baker / School Finance 101 blog March 31, 2012 In the near future my article with Preston Green and Joseph Oluwole on legal concerns regarding the use of Value-added modeling for making high stakes decisions will come out in the BYU Education and Law Journal. In that article, we expand on various arguments I first laid out in this blog post about how use of these noisy and potentially biased metrics is likely to lead to a flood of litigation challenging teacher dismissals. In short, as I have discussed on numerous occasions on this blog, value-added models attempt to estimate the effect of the individual teacher on growth in measured student outcomes. But, these models tend to produce very imprecise estimates with very large error ranges, jumping around a lot from year to year. Further, individual teacher effectiveness estimates are highly susceptible to even subtle changes to model variables [pdf]. And failure to address key omitted variables can lead to systemic model biases which may even lead to racially disparate teacher dismissals (see here & for follow up , here) . Value added modeling as a basis for high stakes decision making is fraught with problems likely to be vetted in the courts. These problems are most likely to come to light in the context of overly rigid state policy requirements requiring that teachers be rated poorly if they receive low scores on the quantitative component of evaluations, and where state policies dictate that teachers must be put on watch and/or de-tenured after two years of bad evaluations (see my post with NYC data on problems with this approach). Much more here. * * * *
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| Jerry Moore (Admin) Board Administrator Username: Admin Post Number: 29861 Registered: 01-2000 Rating: N/A |
Hawaii teacher evaluation bill dies for the session after heavy lobbying from union members THE ASSOCIATED PRESS / Columbus (IN) Republic April 11, 2012 HONOLULU — Hawaii lawmakers have essentially killed a bill that would have required teacher performance evaluations. Evaluate teachers, or not, academic outcomes will remain essentially unchanged. The Hawaii State Teachers Association had lobbied heavily against bill, arguing it would supersede collective bargaining rights and comparing to anti-union moves in Wisconsin. The Honolulu Star-Advertiser (http://bit.ly/IlmSm8 ) reported Wednesday House lawmakers chose to recommit the bill instead of bring it to the floor for a vote. Senate leaders say they'll do the same. Senate Education Committee Chairwoman Sen. Jill Tokuda says she's disappointed. The state has promised teacher evaluations as part of the Race to the Program that won Hawaii $75 million that's now in jeopardy because of unsatisfactory progress on reforms. Teachers rejected a contract proposal that would have included evaluations. * * * *
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| Jerry Moore (Admin) Board Administrator Username: Admin Post Number: 29824 Registered: 01-2000 Rating: N/A |
Deal near on ‘secret’ teacher evaluations Fredric U. Dicker / NY POST April 9, 2012 EXCLUSIVE Gov. Cuomo and state lawmakers are closing in on a deal to give parents full access to the new teacher-evaluation report cards, while banning their general release to the public, The Post has learned. * * * *
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| Jerry Moore (Admin) Board Administrator Username: Admin Post Number: 29812 Registered: 01-2000 Rating: N/A |
Publishing Teacher Value Added Rankings: Shame on Whom? The release of teachers’ VA rankings should not be viewed as an attack on teachers, but as a wake-up call for the rest of us. By Larry Sand, Union Watch (CA) April 3rd, 2012 * * * Unsurprisingly, the anti-VA charge has been led by the teachers unions which constantly demonize the whole process as unreliable and unfair. But that is just a front; their “philosophy” is that there is no such thing as a bad teacher, just one that needs more training to become a good one. * * * So if there is any shame to be identified, it is that, as a country, we are more informed about the intricacies of baseball than about how best to assess the people who are educating the next generation of Americans. * * * About the author: Larry Sand, a former classroom teacher, is the president of the non-profit California Teachers Empowerment Network – a non-partisan, non-political group dedicated to providing teachers with reliable and balanced information about professional affiliations and positions on educational issues.
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| Jerry Moore (Admin) Board Administrator Username: Admin Post Number: 29728 Registered: 01-2000 Rating: N/A |
State leaders discuss plan to keep teacher evaluations private Unclear if Gov. Cuomo would go along with idea By Kenneth Lovett / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS March 25, 2012 If teacher evaluations are not made public, at least to the extent of providing anonymous data (scores and unique identifiers without connections to names) for free, you can be sure that the evaluation system will be a complete sham, perhaps right out of the gate. Imagine the hoax the state could have pulled on the public had student scores not been made public. They repeatedly reported that students were learning more. Without the data, who would have known that the hype was contradicted by other sources of data? Educators simply can't be trusted to police themselves. Tenure and a make-no-waves culture will trump teacher improvement. Without public oversight, nothing will change. Cf. Iannuzzi: Drawing the Line on Teacher Privacy. ALBANY — State leaders are quietly discussing a plan that would restrict the public release of future teacher evaluations, the Daily News has learned. The teacher unions are pressuring lawmakers, who approved controversial changes last week to state and city pension systems, to deliver on the issue of evaluation privacy, sources said. The issue has popped up this past weekend as part of the last-minute budget talks among state leaders, multiple sources said. “There’s discussions being had, but I don’t know if it’s been resolved,” said a legislator familiar with the situation. Teacher unions went ballistic after the recent court-ordered release of controversial city teacher evaluations from 2007 and 2010. Pushed by Gov. Cuomo, the Legislature last week enacted a law requiring school districts statewide to come up with new teacher-grading systems by January or face the loss of their state school aid increases. Assembly Democrats are said to be particularly supportive of keeping the results of future evaluation rankings secret from the public — or at least severely restricting their release. It’s unclear whether Gov. Cuomo would go along with the idea. Mayor Bloomberg has spoken of the importance of letting parents know how effective their kids’ teachers are. One insider with knowledge of the talks called it “Albany at its worst.” “This is a last-minute, dark-of-night play by the unions and the politicians they control, without regard for what’s good for kids,” the source said. Reps for Cuomo, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos had no comment Sunday, while officials from the city teachers union didn’t return calls for comment. Carl Korn, a spokesman for the state teachers union, would not confirm whether there are talks to keep the teacher evaluations private, but made it clear that’s what the union wants. “We will fight to ensure teachers’ privacy is protected and teachers are not shamed or humiliated by the news media,” Korn said. The RIGHT of citizens is to humiliate and shame their public servants. Once that right is impaired or taken away, citizens lose control over their government and their liberty. Aides to Cuomo and the legislative leaders worked through the weekend trying to complete the budget negotiations. There were expectations that some budget bills could be printed late Sunday while the rest of the talks may wrap up as soon as Monday.
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| Jerry Moore (Admin) Board Administrator Username: Admin Post Number: 29722 Registered: 01-2000 Rating: N/A |
Teachers' Support For Reform Depends In Part On Experience -- Gates/Scholastic Survey Joy Resmovits / Huffington Post March 26, 2012 Revamping the makeup of the teaching profession through tweaks such as altering tenure and teacher evaluations has become a policy debate du jour, one that has riled many a state house in recent years. As it turns out, teachers themselves support that overhaul, according to recent survey data. But that support may depend on a factor central to many of these teacher reforms: experience. A survey [pdf] released recently by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, in collaboration with Scholastic Education, asked 10,000 pre-K-12 public-school teachers questions about their satisfaction, environment and views on school policies. The metric of teacher support for certain policies is increasingly important as a chorus of voices claims educators have been excluded from the biggest debates over laws affecting America's classrooms. An actual metric of teacher support is also crucial as education-reform groups trot out their policies to statehouses, claiming [pdf] a such a groundswell of educator support. The education-reform movement's rallying cry -- fueled by support from the Obama administration -- has been that teachers should be judged, compensated, hired and fired based on "effectiveness" on student learning, and not seniority. This translates into more intense teacher evaluations that often take students' standardized test scores into account. The Gates/Scholastic survey found that on average, teachers think it should take up to five years to get tenure -- in many places, tenure comes after three years. About 90 percent of teachers say tenure "should reflect evaluations of teacher effectiveness," and answered that tenure should "not protect ineffective teachers." Teachers also called for more frequent and rigorous evaluations, echoing the education-reform movement. Eighty-five percent of teachers surveyed signaled that they support the use of student achievement data in their evaluations, but only 26 percent said they saw standardized test scores as a reflection of student learning. Much more . . . .
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| Jerry Moore (Admin) Board Administrator Username: Admin Post Number: 29712 Registered: 01-2000 Rating: N/A |
Evaluation plans could drive teachers out of the profession A Schenectady (NY) Gazette Letter to the Editor March 26, 2012 New teacher evaluation systems at the federal and state levels could backfire big-time. According to these new systems, teachers who spend an average of $70,000 to $100,000 on their bachelors and master’s degrees would no longer experience security and protection in their profession. As for state scores being part of the teacher evaluation process: Many times a good teacher, who may also be a good disciplinarian, is given a roster of students who are either educationally low-gifted or who have discipline issues. Sometimes miracles don’t happen and thus, these students’ scores can be low, [causing] a strike against the good, tenured teacher. Does this seem fair? School administrators, who don’t want to pay for salaries and benefits of teachers who are in the upper pay brackets, could always find ways to get rid of these teachers, who would no longer be protected by tenure, by giving them poor classroom evaluations, even if not warranted. Teachers would no longer have any security or protection as tenured experienced professionals. The stress and tension in an already stressful job would become even greater. If I was a young student choosing a lifetime career, I would not want to spend what it would cost to become a teacher with these new rules and regulations hanging over my head. Most teachers are enthusiastic and dedicated. They end up spending hundreds, and in some cases, thousands of dollars of their own money by the time they retire, on equipment, materials and supplies, audio-visual aids and many other miscellaneous materials in order to improve the education of their students. Because of the added pressure, many young teachers decide to change their careers. It is also fair to say that young high school students [might] choose not to enter the teaching profession and jeopardize years of time, energy, effort and money. The result: Children [might be] taught by non-certified individuals. The majority of teachers are in the profession because they care about children. It’s time to ease off them, or expect a much poorer educational system in the future. Mike Fusco Albany The writer spent 31 years teaching in New York’s public schools.
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| Jerry Moore (Admin) Board Administrator Username: Admin Post Number: 29701 Registered: 01-2000 Rating: N/A |
Teachers aren’t the only part of education equation A Schenectady (NY) Gazette Letter to the Editor March 23, 2012 See, related, Stop pointing fingers at teachers when the parents are to blame. For the past 25 years, I have been one of the chosen few to actually have a job that I love. Like so many of my colleagues who share their time, money and life experiences, I represent a group of empathetic individuals who had a calling for one of the most important jobs anyone can have. I am a teacher, and despite the many challenges of working in an urban school district, believe it or not, I actually chose this specific career path. When I read a statement from Gov. Cuomo a few weeks ago saying that, “Today’s a great day for schools in the state of New York and for schoolchildren within the state,” I realized that he was referring to the recently agreed-upon evaluation process for teachers and administrators. This process is part of a larger plan known as “Race to the Top,” where the Obama administration has tied federal funding to teacher effectiveness and evaluations. I was hopeful that Cuomo’s statement would also include meaningful dialogue about the real problems facing public education. While I certainly do not oppose a fair and objective evaluation system, if this is the only thing that means “Today’s a great day for schools in the state of New York and for school children within the state,” I am dubious. Although the professionals I work with are primarily responsible for delivering instruction, can they be the only factor that affects student achievement? Consider these factors: The vital role parents play in their child’s health and education; the communities our kids live and spend most of their free time in; and the cult of celebrities who glamorize violence, disrespect of women, and lifestyles of promiscuity and abuse of alcohol and drugs that are in our kids’ faces during prime time. These examples are by no means the only issues that require a meaningful dialogue. The professionals I work with are very good, but can we be the only component responsible for academic achievement? When our politicians become truly concerned about public education, they will be looking at a lot more than just teacher and administrative evaluations. When that happens, we can then say that today’s a great day for schools in the state of New York and for schoolchildren within our state and nation. Tom Catrambone Schenectady Every learner faces obstacles. The best teachers minimize them; the worst use them to excuse their performance shortcomings.
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| Jerry Moore (Admin) Board Administrator Username: Admin Post Number: 29671 Registered: 01-2000 Rating: N/A |
Teacher: I dare you to measure my ‘value’ By Valerie Strauss / Washington Post The Answer Sheet blog March 19, 2012 This was written by Donna McKenna, an elementary ESL teacher who is passionate about language learners and language learning, and a new mom trying to raise her daughter in a bilingual/bicultural home. This first appeared on her blog, No Sleep ‘til Summer. By Donna McKenna Tell me how you determine the value I add to my class. Tell me how you measure anyone's value. What's the value of the pilot who lands your plane safely? The value of the EMT who saves your life? The value of a secretary who does everything you need to keep earning money? The value of a bus driver who transports your children? The value of the letter carrier who delivers your mail, or the sanitation worker who hauls your trash. There is no perfect way to measure anyone's value, but the benefits of using imprecise measurements outweigh the disadvantages of not doing it at all. Tell me about the algorithms you applied when you took data from 16 students over a course of nearly five years of teaching and somehow used it to judge me as “below average” and “average.” Tell me how you can examine my skills and talents and attribute worth to them without knowing me, my class, or my curriculum requirements. Tell me how and I will tell you: How all of my students come from different countries, different levels of prior education and literacy, and how there is no “research-based” elementary curriculum created to support schools or teachers to specifically meet their needs. How the year for which you have data was the year my fifth graders first learned about gangs, the Internet, and their sexual identities. How the year for which you have data was the year that two of my students were so wracked by fear of deportation, depression and sleep deprivation from nightmares, that they could barely sit still and often fought with other students. How they became best of friends by year end. How one of them still visits me every September. How that year most of my students worked harder than ever, (despite often being referred to as “the low class” or “lower level” within earshot of them), inspiring me and the teachers around us, despite the fact that many of these same students believed they could never go to college because of their immigration status. How that year many of my students vaulted from a first to third and fourth grade reading levels but still only received a meaningless “1” on their report cards because such growth is not valued by our current grading system. How that was the year I quickly gained six new students from other countries and had my top three transferred out in January to general education classrooms because my school thankfully realized I shouldn’t have 32 students in a multilevel self-contained ESL class. How the year for which you have data was the year that two of my students, twins who had come from China just the year before to live with parents they hadn’t seen since they were toddlers, finally started to speak in May. And smile. And make friends. How they kept in touch with me via edmodo for two years after leaving my school. How that year I taught my class rudimentary American Sign Language for our research project; inspired and excited, they mostly taught themselves the Pledge of Allegiance, songs for our school play, John Lennon’s Imagine, and songs for graduation, all in ASL. Then we created an online video-translation dictionary using their first language, English, and ASL. They wrote scripts for skits we videotaped to teach many of these words in context. ********** This year, my class represents seven countries, two continents, and three languages in one room. Together, they create a tapestry you can neither see, nor feel, nor imagine. I have students who grew up practicing Kung Fu and Tai Chi before school and now always get in trouble in gym for running. I have students in my fifth grade who never went to school before they crossed the US border last year or the year before. I have students who, although in fifth and fourth grade, are capable of doing 7th grade math while others are still learning to add and subtract well. I have a student who just came this year and is already reading on grade level. I choose to revel in the richness this kind of diversity can bring to my classroom. The challenges, obstacles and pitfalls that teaching a group like this to work together, to learn, to create and grow both tire and thrill me. Not a day goes by that I don’t feel both excited and exhausted at the idea of tomorrow because of all that teaching a class like this entails. But never will you be able to judge me or my students by one day or one test. Never will I give one iota of care about your tests, no matter how hard I work to help my students to do their best on it, knowing they aren’t meant to pass it because it is written far above their reading levels, and were written with native English speakers in mind. You can’t measure me as a teacher, because you haven’t imagined teachers like me or classes like mine. Their experiences are outside yours. Tell me how important your data and tests are, and I will tell you how I don’t value your data because it tells me so little about my students yet so much about your educational system. Your data says one thing: your system is what fails my students. That's exactly the right attitude. Ignore the evaluations. Do what is professionally best for your clients/students, and let the chips fall where they may.
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| Jerry Moore (Admin) Board Administrator Username: Admin Post Number: 29667 Registered: 01-2000 Rating: N/A |
Evaluations split teachers, union Faculty upset NYSUT defends new evaluation system Gary Stern / White Plains (NY) Journal News Mar. 20, 2012 As public school principals lead a growing insurgency against the state’s new teacher-evaluation system, some teachers are beginning to question why their largest state union is defending the system and not supporting the principals’ movement. Several presidents of local teachers unions told The Journal News that there is a growing dissatisfaction within their ranks with union leadership on the controversial system, which will grade teachers on a 100-point scale based in part on how their students progress on state tests. Most did not want to be identified because they did not want to be seen as criticizing New York State United Teachers. * * * *
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| Jerry Moore (Admin) Board Administrator Username: Admin Post Number: 29636 Registered: 01-2000 Rating: N/A |
NYS Principals Place Full Page Ad as Part of Lobbying Effort Posted by Michael Keany / School Leadership 2.0 March 15, 2012 The following message was distributed by Sean Feeney, one of the orginal authors of the Principals' Protest letter against the new NYSED Teacher Evaluation Plan. Dear Friends: You are receiving this message because you have indicated your support for the New York State Principals' Open Letter Regarding the NYS APPR Legislation (http://www.newyorkprincipals.org/). We thank you for your support and would like to provide you with an update on activities of the past few weeks. As always, the most recent version of the APPR Position paper (with all signatures) is available at: http://www.newyorkprincipals.org/appr-paper. Given that the paper with signatures is over 119 pages long, we have also created a separate link for the four-page paper alone. It Is Not Over! Despite what you might have heard in the press, the approval of the evaluation system is not a done deal! The legislators have left Albany and the lobbying frenzy is just beginning. Please make your voices heard! The advertisement we prepared will be running early next week. There is a copy of the ad in the Announcements section of our website (http://www.newyorkprincipals.org/). Please circulate the advertisement as widely as possible! As a reminder, we are proposing the following three modifications to the law: 1. Apply the confidentiality provisions of Civil Rights Law §50-a to teachers and principals. This would prevent evaluation scores from being released to the public. 2. Adjust the scoring ranges so that the 40% attributed to test scores cannot be the deciding factor in an educator’s evaluation. 3. Pilot the NYS APPR system for effectiveness before full implementation. Of course, we will continue to argue our points: · The use of scores as an evaluation tool is unreliable --- there are significant margins of error reported by even the most optimistic supporters of using scores to evaluate teachers · The use of value added measures are unstable --- studies have shown teachers experience huge changes in their score from year to year · The use of scores to evaluate teachers will change the nature of schools for the worse · We are not afraid of “rigorous” evaluations; we welcome them! We cannot, however, accept seriously flawed evaluations. Contact your Local Legislator! Let the Legislators know that you are not pleased with this deal! Fax a copy of the advertisement to their office. Remember, you can find contact information to your local legislator through the following link: http://www.newyorkprincipals.org/legislators Thank you for your courage to stand up for our students and schools. Sean and Carol
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| Jerry Moore (Admin) Board Administrator Username: Admin Post Number: 29611 Registered: 01-2000 Rating: N/A |
What will be the effect of evaluations? By Carl Strock / Schenectady (NY) Gazette Columnist March 15, 2012 This is why all the money being spent on teacher evaluations will do next to nothing to improve student outcomes -- just like all the money spent on testing has done nothing except to immaculately document the current state of learning. Evaluations are not the pathway to systemic improvement, especially in education, where the employees control the system. Let me see if I understand this teacher evaluation business, which has been agreed to by the governor and the main teachers’ union. True, the union was under duress, since the governor was going to withhold money from school districts that didn’t come to terms, but still, we have a deal. As a result of annual evaluations there will now be four categories of teachers — highly effective, effective, developing, and ineffective. Those are the official terms, and they sound official, don’t they? The third category by rights ought to be something like “mediocre,” but in official-speak that would be like calling poor countries poor. “Developing” sounds better, the idea being they’re making progress, and any minute now they’ll be rich, or effective. The whole point of this process is to make it easier to get rid of lousy teachers, it long having been a complaint of school boards and administrators that it’s almost impossible to fire a teacher once he or she gets tenure, which normally occurs after a three-year probationary period. My friends at the Times Union recently reviewed Education Department records for the period from 2006 to 2011 and found that disciplinary proceedings against teachers last an average of 502 days and cost an average of $216,588. And they more often ended in some kind of settlement than in firing. So you can see why school administrators are deterred from even initiating the proceedings. The Annual Professional Performance Review system, as these new evaluations are grandly called, is supposed to speed things up. If a teacher gets rated “ineffective” two years in a row, then he or she goes into a disciplinary hearing that is supposed to take no more than 60 days. But let’s think about that. First of all, 80 percent of the evaluation process has to be negotiated with the local teachers’ unions — only 20 percent will depend on standardized state tests — and you can be sure the unions are not going to be looking for standards that facilitate the firing of their own members. Secondly, once you’ve done a year’s worth of evaluation, measuring how much progress students are able to make under a certain teacher, and you have determined that a teacher is “ineffective,” you still can’t fire him or her. Not only do you have to give him (I’ll just say “him”) another year, but you have to provide him a “teacher improvement plan,” also to be negotiated with the union. This would be something like one-on-one mentoring or coaching, at the school district’s expense, of course. So you can see that would be an immediate disincentive to label a teacher ineffective. The school would be in for an added expense and an added bureaucratic headache, entailing more paperwork, more record-keeping. Let’s say the school goes ahead and provides a year’s worth of coaching. What do you suppose is the likelihood that at the end of the year the school will want to say the teacher is still a loser? Wouldn’t that be an indictment of its own program? It would be like saying, we failed. After all that expensive mentoring the teacher is not even “developing.” And even if you do make that determination, you still can’t fire the person. You still have to have a hearing, at which the union promises it will provide a lawyer to fight the school district. So how much easier is it going to be to fire lousy teachers? We’ll wait and see, but I do not have high hopes. But, oh, how I would like a system like that for myself. After a three-year try-out, I get a permanent gig as a columnist. Then somewhere along the line, management studies how I’m actually performing and decides I’m no good at it. But the onus is on them. They have to train me to be better! For a year! And if after a year of their training and coaching I’m still no good, then they have to provide me with a hearing at which I have a lawyer to represent me, and only after that hearing can they finally fire me. I would consider myself very roundly protected in such an arrangement, and I would be happy to take out a 30-year loan. When I think about it that way and don’t just fall for the word “evaluation,” I am not encouraged that we’re looking at any very dramatic change.
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| Jerry Moore (Admin) Board Administrator Username: Admin Post Number: 29562 Registered: 01-2000 Rating: N/A |
Teacher Data Aid Parents, Mayor Asserts By LISA FLEISHER / WALL STREET JOURNAL Feb 29, 2012 New York City released another set of performance rankings for teachers on Tuesday as Mayor Michael Bloomberg strongly defended making the scores public amid a rancorous debate over their value. In his most forceful words since the first batch of rankings was released last week, Mr. Bloomberg took aim at critics who have derided the data—often in heated rhetoric—as muddled and incomplete. "Parents have a right to know every bit of information that we can possibly collect about the teacher that's in front of their kids," he said during a press event on Coney Island. "The arrogance of some people to say that the parents don't have the ability to look at numbers, and put them in context and to make decisions is just astounding to me," the mayor said. * * * * Teacher performance ratings based on test scores are not the whole picture, but any teacher in the bottom 10% of those ratings is to be avoided at all costs, regardless of other positive traits. You wouldn't want a prosecutor who lost 70% of his/her trials no matter how nice s/he is or the many other things s/he does well. You expect prosecutors to convict criminals and you expect teachers to advance the knowledge and skills of your students.
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| Jerry Moore (Admin) Board Administrator Username: Admin Post Number: 29532 Registered: 01-2000 Rating: N/A |
Just what do tests measure? An Albany (NY) Times Union Letter to the Editor February 25, 2012 Announcing a new teacher evaluation system ("Deal saves $1B in aid," Feb. 17), Gov. Andrew Cuomo was quoted: "Today is a great day for the schools in the state of New York. Government works today." But how sound are the procedures to be followed, especially the use of standardized test scores as critical aspects of the system? In all the media coverage that I have read — and it has been bountiful — I have never seen any question as to what standardized achievement tests measure. A glib response, of course, would be: Academic achievement, what else? But scholars in the field of psychometrics — psychological and educational testing — have grappled with this issue for 100 years. It is well-known that students who perform well on standardized tests also do well on tests such as cognitive abilities, verbal reasoning, scholastic aptitude, intelligence, etc. and vice versa. But what do they measure? In 1927, psychologist Truman Kelley argued that they are all measures of the same ability. Others have disagreed, but no one has been able, successfully, to deny the relationship. That leaves us with the question: To what extent can it be demonstrated that teachers play a major role in changing standardized test scores? The simple notion that all one has to do is test in September and again in June, with the difference in scores then attributed to the teacher, is an exercise in futility. JOHN ROSENBACH Guilderland Professor emeritus, Educational Psychology and Statistics, University at Albany
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| Jerry Moore (Admin) Board Administrator Username: Admin Post Number: 29524 Registered: 01-2000 Rating: N/A |
Teacher Rankings Opened to View For First Time, Parents Allowed to See Internal Evaluations of City Educators By LISA FLEISHER / WALL STREET JOURNAL with over 100 comments FEBRUARY 25, 2012 See, also, City Teacher Data Reports Are Released at the NY Times. New York City on Friday released for the first time a database ranking nearly 18,000 public schoolteachers based on their students' test scores, a historic move that lifted the curtain on one measure of quality in the classroom. * * * Department of Education officials issued strong warnings against reading too much into test scores, which are only one aspect of a teacher's value. The data also have large margins of error and potential mistakes, officials said. If the data are useless, then why did NYC spend millions to create it? What incentive does NYC have to discredit its own data? * * * *
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