| Author |
Message |
    
Jerry Moore (Admin)
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 31210
Registered: 01-2000
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, December 18, 2012 - 8:15 pm: | 
|
SED APPROVES 442 DISTRICT EVALUATION PLANS
MORE THAN TWO DOZEN DISTRICTS
HAVE NOT SUBMITTED PLANS
NYSED press release
Dec 18, 2012
Commissioner: The Clock is Ticking
State Education Commissioner John B. King, Jr. announced that he has approved 442 district teacher and principal Annual Professional Performance Review (APPR) evaluation plans. To date, 665 school districts have submitted APPR plans for review. In addition to the 442 district plans approved, State Education Department (SED) staff has provided feedback on submitted evaluation plans to more than 180 of the school districts that do not yet have approved plans. The plans were submitted as required under the revised teacher and principal evaluation law passed earlier this year. Approximately two dozen districts, including New York City, have not submitted APPR plans.
“Evaluation plans are an integral part of the Board of Regents Reform Agenda,” Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl H. Tisch said. “Teacher evaluations are vital to help identify struggling teachers and provide them with the professional development they need. And they help identify excellent teachers who can serve as mentors and role models. These plans are a critical tool to ensure all of our kids have a high quality teacher at the front of the classroom. It is urgent that those districts that have not submitted evaluation plans or need to resubmit plans do so immediately. Our students are waiting."
King said the approval process at SED is on track.
“We’re providing constant feedback to school districts,” King said. “And hundreds of districts and local unions have worked hard and gotten the job done. But there are still districts that have more work to do. We’ve given more than 180 districts feedback and told them how to correct the problems in their plans. Now they have to fix those problems and resubmit.
This is not just about the increase in aid. It’s about helping students. APPR plans focus on effective teaching. The plans will help principals and teachers improve their practice and help students graduate ready for college and careers. But the clock is ticking. The Governor and Legislature set a deadline of January 17. There are still over two dozen districts that have not submitted APPR plans. The longer they wait, the more difficult it will be to complete our review by the deadline. We’ll move as fast as we can, but we will not sacrifice the quality of the review.”
King noted that under the enacted state budget, school districts must have an approved APPR plan in place by January 17, 2013 or they will lose their share of this fiscal year’s education aid increase. King said his staff is expediting its review of submitted APPR plans, but typically reviews take four to six weeks to complete.
Updated lists of approved APPR plans can be found at: http://usny.nysed.gov/rttt/teachers-leaders/plans/home.html. The website is updated on an on-going basis.
As of December 18, the following 27 districts have not submitted any plans for review: Altmar Parish, Cobleskill-Richmondville, Coxsackie-Athens, East Ramapo, Elizabethtown, Elmont, Fallsburg, Greenburgh-North Castle, Hamburg, Harrison, Hempstead, Hopevale, Hyde Park, Montauk, New York City, New York Mills, North Greenbush, North Syracuse, Onteora, Pine Plains, Remsen, Rhinebeck, Rondout Valley, Sauquoit Valley, Schoharie, Scotia-Glenville, and Yonkers.
|
Jerry Moore (Admin)
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 31129
Registered: 01-2000
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, December 06, 2012 - 11:36 pm: |
|
Fla. teachers score well in new state eval system
Most Florida teachers score well in new evaluation system, but results marred by glitches
By Kelli Kennedy, Associated Press | Yahoo! News
Dec. 6, 2012
MIAMI (AP) -- Nearly 97 percent of Florida teachers were rated as "effective" or "highly effective" under a controversial new evaluation system released by state officials Wednesday, but within hours they acknowledged there were problems with the results.
 Honestly, did anyone really think educators would design a system to make themselves look anything but exceptional?
The scores varied widely among school districts, leaving critics to questions their validity.
There were also concerns about the accuracy of the data in the value-added model, or VAM, which is derived from student test scores. Hillsborough County was listed as having about 23,000 teachers, even though only 13,000 teachers were evaluated.
"The numbers appear to be questionable so we're having a hard time coming to any conclusions based on the data," said Hillsborough County school district spokesman Steve Hegarty.
* * *
Broward County rated nearly 92 percent of teachers as "effective" and about seven percent as "highly effective", whereas Flagler County's figures were almost the reverse. Hillsborough had 42 percent as "highly effective" and 55 percent deemed "effective", while Alachua County scored 61 percent as "effective" and nearly 15 percent as needing improvement.
* * *
Only about 2 percent of teachers in the state were marked as "needs improvement" and less than 0.5 percent were deemed "unsatisfactory." About 1 percent of teachers fell under a category for teachers in their first three years and considered still developing.
In the past, teachers were only rated as "satisfactory" or "unsatisfactory" with about 99 percent scoring favorably, said Hebda.
* * * *
|
Jerry Moore (Admin)
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 31124
Registered: 01-2000
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, December 06, 2012 - 9:36 pm: |
|
Schenectady superintendent says teacher reviews sharpening focus
By Kathleen Moore / Schenectady (NY) Gazette Reporter
December 6, 2012
SCHENECTADY — The new teacher evaluation requirements are time-consuming and making teachers anxious, but they’ve already had a big effect on city schools.
“We see an intense focus on instructional quality that wasn’t there before,” Schenectady City School District Superintendent Laurence Spring said during a presentation at Wednesday’s Board of Education meeting on the Annual Professional Performance Review, the new, state-imposed teacher review process. “That really is a powerful change.”
* * * *
|
Jerry Moore (Admin)
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 31075
Registered: 01-2000
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, November 27, 2012 - 10:44 pm: |
|
Syracuse students will have a say in their teacher's job evaluation
Maureen Nolan / Syracuse (NY) Post-Standard
November 27, 2012
This year, Syracuse students, even the kindergartners, will have a voice in their teacher’s formal job evaluation.
As part of a new, district-wide evaluation system, students will be surveyed about their teachers and their perceptions will account for 6 percent of a teacher’s overall rating.
“It will give teachers some valuable feedback on their practice,” Syracuse Teachers Association President Kevin Ahern said.
The teachers union agreed to using student feedback. The union favors using multiple measures to gauge a teacher’s effectiveness rather than relying only on student test scores, Ahern said.
* * * *
|
Jerry Moore (Admin)
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 31074
Registered: 01-2000
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, November 27, 2012 - 10:41 pm: |
|
Teacher eval hitch could cost Yonkers
State may pull millions in aid from district
Written by Colin Gustafson / White Plains (NY) Journal News
Nov 27, 2012
YONKERS — The state is threatening to withhold millions of dollars in aid from the cash-strapped city schools next year if the district can’t iron out a deal with the teachers union on new performance appraisals by week’s end.
The move puts scores of educator jobs in jeopardy, district officials say.
In a Nov. 15 letter, the state Department of Education urged Yonkers to submit a new teacher evaluation plan by Saturday to leave enough time for a four- to six-week state review.
All New York school districts face a Jan. 17 deadline to have their state-approved evaluation plans in place for next school year. Otherwise, they will forfeit promised state aid increases. In Yonkers, that state funding amounts to $9.5 million.
“There’s a lot at stake, and our students are counting on us,” the state wrote.
Yonkers Superintendent of Schools Bernard Pierorazio said Monday that losing that funding could force the district, already reeling from mass layoffs, to eliminate an additional 180 to 200 positions halfway into this school year.
* * * *
|
Jerry Moore (Admin)
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 31059
Registered: 01-2000
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, November 25, 2012 - 7:45 pm: |
|
When ‘Grading’ Is Degrading
By MICHAEL BRICK / NEW YORK TIMES
November 22, 2012
Austin, Tex.
IN his speech on the night of his re-election, President Obama promised to find common ground with opposition leaders in Congress. Yet when it comes to education reform, it’s the common ground between Democrats and Republicans that has been the problem.
For the past three decades, one administration after another has sought to fix America’s troubled schools by making them compete with one another. Mr. Obama has put up billions of dollars for his Race to the Top program, a federal sweepstakes where state educational systems are judged head-to-head largely on the basis of test scores. Even here in Texas, nobody’s model for educational excellence, the state has long used complex algorithms to assign grades of Exemplary, Recognized, Acceptable or Unacceptable to its schools.
So far, such competition has achieved little more than re-segregation, long charter school waiting lists and the same anemic international rankings in science, math and literacy we’ve had for years.
And yet now, policy makers in both parties propose ratcheting it up further — this time, by “grading” teachers as well.
It’s a mistake. In the year I spent reporting on John H. Reagan High School in Austin, I came to understand the dangers of judging teachers primarily on standardized test scores. Raw numbers don’t begin to capture what happens in the classroom. And when we reward and punish teachers based on such artificial measures, there is too often an unintended consequence for our kids.
* * * *
|
Jerry Moore (Admin)
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 30894
Registered: 01-2000
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, October 15, 2012 - 9:00 pm: |
|
School superintendents group to hire experts to double-check state teacher ratings
Written by Gary Stern / White Plains (NY) Journal News
Oct. 14, 2012
School superintendents from across the region plan to hire experts to double-check state ratings of teachers that are based on student growth on test scores.
I guess school budgets still have lots of fluff left.
The Lower Hudson Council of School Superintendents will join with their colleagues on Long Island to identify psychometricians who can study the scores, which are part of the new state-imposed system for evaluating teachers and principals.
* * *
Suspicions about the ratings reflect the council’s general discontent with the top-down education reforms coming out of Albany, including the teacher-ratings system and the new Common Core learning standards, which are being rolled out this year in English and math for grades 3 to 8.
The council, which met Friday in Tarrytown, plans to press the state Legislature to return local control to school districts, rather than continuing to press an agenda of expensive, state-mandated reforms.
* * *
“We are interested in legislative policy that will gives us flexibility and the resources to do the work we do,” Wool said. “Give us the tools we need, hold us accountable and we will see better results than with this bureaucratic approach.”
Explain that accountability part because that's exactly what educators are fighting.
* * *
“The concepts behind the reforms are good,” Ossining Superintendent Phyllis Glassman said. “It’s the strategies to get there that are causing concern.”
* * * *
|
Jerry Moore (Admin)
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 30879
Registered: 01-2000
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, October 14, 2012 - 8:20 pm: |
|
‘Something is wrong when….”
Posted by Valerie Strauss / The Answer Sheet blog
October 12, 2012
This past summer, New York high school Principals Carol Burris and Harry Leonadartos attempted to testify about school reform before New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s Education Commission in New York City. They were not given the opportunity to speak, and they wrote about it in this post. Yesterday the commission — which is chaired by former Citibank chairman Dick Parsons — visited Long Island and Burris was allowed to speak. She received a standing ovation when she was done. Below is her testimony.
Burris is the principal of South Side High School in Rockville Centre, New York and a co-author of the New York Principals letter of concern regarding the evaluation of teachers by student scores. Over 1,500 New York principals and more than 5,400 teachers, parents, professors, administrators and citizens have signed the letter which can be found here.
Testimony by Carol Burris:
Thank you very much for this opportunity. My name is Carol Burris, principal of South Side High School in Rockville Centre. I was an assistant principal, a teacher, a school board member and a board president. I am but one of many dedicated educators on Long Island. A remarkable 33% of all of the Reward Schools in the State of New York are in Nassau and Suffolk counties. If Long Island were a state, we would be first in the nation.
And still not giving students what they need in the 21st century.
Long Island is also where the principals’ letter in opposition to APPR, the evaluation system, began. That letter is signed by 80% of all of Long Island’s principals along with more than 1500 other principals across the state, and thousands of parents and teachers. We are not afraid to be evaluated nor are we afraid to evaluate our teachers — those who claim we are simply “anxious” do not know us at all.
In the testimony which I submitted [pdf], I explain why APPR will not improve teaching and will negatively impact the learning of our students. Rather than repeat that reasoning, Mr. Chairman, I would pose this scenario instead. Suppose the legislature decided that the solution to the financial crisis was to mandate an evaluation system for every loan officer in the state, even mandating a value added metric to be used. Suppose that 80% of your best managers and vice presidents told you that using that inaccurate metric was going to hurt, not help Citibank. Mr. Chairman, would you have complied, or would you have resisted in order to save your bank?
The obsession with test based evaluations of students, schools and teachers is tearing the schools we love apart. Something is very wrong when nine year olds sit for tests that are longer than the SAT and the Graduate Record Examination combined.
Something is wrong when policymakers contemplate tests for kindergarteners to predict whether they are on the path to college readiness.
Something is wrong when my students must take a pre-test comprised of Regents Physics questions BEFORE they have taken the course, so that their teachers can be evaluated.
Thank goodness my school does not offer sky diving! It sounds irrational — it is. Worst of all, taxpayer dollars and instructional days are being wasted.
Parents get it. They are opting out of testing. From Niagara Falls to Long Island they are uniting against the proliferation of standardized tests, and test based reform.
At the same time, the most critical reasons for poor student achievement are being ignored. As I documented in my testimony, New York is ranked number 4 in inequitable funding. Among the states in the Northeast, New York State is #1 in childhood poverty. We are at the top of the list for racially and socioeconomically segregated schooling.
I ask you to recommend that the millions upon millions of taxpayer dollars used for multi-day testing, test security and shredding, APPR and the creation of student data systems be dedicated instead to wrap around services for poor children and to fund excellent pre-schools and to the classrooms of New York that need it the most.
I ask you to recommend that the governor visit Long Island Schools and study just how well disadvantaged students can do if their school is not overwhelmed and has sufficient resources.
Some of the best schools in the nation are here on Long Island. In our schools that have ample support systems and not extraordinary poverty, students who receive free or reduced price lunch excel.
I understand that it is far more popular to blame teachers, tenure, unions, and principals. However, by ignoring the core reasons — that account for 85% of the variance in student performance — you do not make things better, and you risk making our schools worse as dollars flow to the wrong solutions.
I thank you for your service on this committee. I truly appreciate your visit to Long Island. Come visit our schools and speak with our teachers and us. We understand quality and we practice it. Thank you for considering my testimony.
|
Jerry Moore (Admin)
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 30799
Registered: 01-2000
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, September 27, 2012 - 11:06 pm: |
|
The hangover: Thinking about the unintended consequences of the nation's teacher evaluation binge
Sara Mead, Andrew J. Rotherham, Rachael Brown | American Enterprise Institute
September 26, 2012
Full Report [pdf]
Over the past three years, more than twenty US states have passed legislation establishing new teacher evaluation requirements and systems, and even more have committed to do so in Race to the Top or Elementary and Secondary Education Act Flexibility Waiver applications. These new evaluation systems have real potential to foster a more performance-oriented public education culture that gives teachers meaningful feedback about the quality and impact of their work. But there are pitfalls in states’ rush to legislate new systems, and there are real tensions and trade-offs in their design.
* * * *
|
Jerry Moore (Admin)
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 30796
Registered: 01-2000
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, September 27, 2012 - 10:28 pm: |
|
Gov. Andrew Cuomo releases 'tracker map' to follow teacher evaluation progress
Paul Riede / Syracuse (NY) Post Standard
Setember 26, 2012
Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who has pushed school districts to move aggressively to develop new teacher evaluation systems, released an interactive “tracker map” today to help citizens see exactly where their districts stand.
The map lists every school district in each county and indicates whether the district has submitted a plan to the state Education Department and whether that plan has been approved.
By state law, districts must have their plans approved by Jan. 17. If they fail to do so, they will be ineligible for a state aid increase for 2012-13.
Districts must hammer out the evaluation systems with their teachers unions, many of which fought against the state requirement to base at least 20 percent of each teacher’s rating on their students’ improvement on state tests.
Cuomo’s office said fewer than half of the state’s 715 school districts have submitted plans so far. More than 100 of the plans have been approved.
* * * *
|
Jerry Moore (Admin)
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 30790
Registered: 01-2000
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, September 25, 2012 - 11:09 pm: |
|
In nation’s capital, firing teachers for poor performance is ‘business as usual’
By Associated Press, Washington Post
September 21
WASHINGTON — Tough new teacher evaluations led to a strike this month in Chicago, but in the District of Columbia, such evaluations are “business as usual.”
* * *
In Washington, evaluations based in part on standardized tests have been used since 2009 to rate teacher performance, putting the city at the forefront of major school systems that are working to reform their personnel practices. All told, nearly 400 teachers have lost their jobs since the new evaluations were put into place.
* * * *
|
Jerry Moore (Admin)
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 30724
Registered: 01-2000
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, September 14, 2012 - 10:11 pm: |
|
Teacher scores devoid of context
An Albany (NY) Times Union Letter to the Editor
September 13, 2012
At face value, there is not much to argue in state Education Commissioner John B. King Jr.'s commentary, "Give students their moment," Sept. 5. The issues arise in the particulars that Dr. King conveniently left out.
Many of his points (higher standards, better outcomes, higher graduation rates, etc.) are goals shared by every educator. Most educators also agree with the state's adoption of the Common Core Standards.
Yet, what Dr. King writes of the new Annual Professional Performance Review evaluation system for teachers and principals is simply not sure.
He says the system is "designed to help teachers teach better and students learn more." A portion of the evaluation system gives a score to "the teacher of record" based on the collective results from their students' performance on state tests (the so-called "growth" score).
As a grades 4-8 principal, I had the displeasure of meeting individually with more than 20 teachers to give them their "scores." Teachers with whom I have worked for five years and for whom I have much respect were reduced to a number, accompanied by a nine-page explanation.
Every teacher asked how to improve, but none of this "data" can be used to "help teachers teach better and students learn more." The scores do not identify the skills or content with which the students had difficulty nor where the teachers had difficulty in teaching.
Again, no one in education is for low graduation rates or low standards. The goals that we all want can never be achieved by Dr. King's prescription of more and more standardized tests. Research is quite clear on this. Let's give students their moment and the teachers some long overdue respect.
Does research prove that giving students their moment and teachers respect will produce the results we want?
TIM FARLEY
Kinderhook
|
Jerry Moore (Admin)
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 30716
Registered: 01-2000
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, September 13, 2012 - 10:35 pm: |
|
Meet Ashley, a great teacher with a bad ‘value-added’ score
By Valerie Strauss / The Answer Sheet blog
09/13/2012
How teachers are evaluated has become one of the big issues in the ongoing strike by Chicago public school teachers as well as in the many debates on school reform being conducted around the country.
Assessment experts say that the method of using student standardized scores to gauge a teacher’s effectiveness is unreliable, but reformers still insist on using this “value-added” method of evaluation. Some reformers, such as Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, want as much as half of a teacher’s evaluation to be linked to student test scores.
“Value added” scores sometimes label very effective teachers as ineffective, and vice versa. How can that happen? Here’s a case that tells you how an excellent teacher got a low value-added score. This story is not an aberration.
It was written by Sean C. Feeney, principal of The Wheatley School in New York State and president of the Nassau County High School Principals’ Association. He is the co-author of an open letter of concern about New York state’s new test-based educator evaluation system that has been signed by thousands of people.
* * * *
|
Jerry Moore (Admin)
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 30705
Registered: 01-2000
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, September 11, 2012 - 8:58 pm: |
|
State finds assessing eval systems to be harder than expected
by Philissa Cramer / Gotham Schools
Sept. 11, 2012
The weakest link . . .
For months, state education officials have been hounding school districts to draft teacher evaluation plans and submit them for approval.
But now that the plans are streaming in, the officials are realizing the state is not adequately prepared to assess them. Each plan must be combed through to ensure that it complies with the state’s evaluation law and meets the State Education Department’s hard-and-fast rules and subjective guidelines.
“I think it’s fair to say we underestimated the time and resources that we needed to review these plans,” Valerie Grey, SED’s deputy commissioner, told members of the Board of Regents Monday in Albany.
Grey said the department would seek “additional resources to get through January,” when Gov. Andrew Cuomo has said districts must put new evaluation systems in place or risk forgoing an increase in state aid. She also said the department would ask districts to turn in their plans early to leave time for the approval process.
Grey later clarified that increasing manpower would not require any new funds but instead could be paid for by reallocating some of the state’s Race to the Top funds. The state committed to overhauling teacher evaluations as part of its application for the federal funds.
So far, Grey said, the department has enlisted law students as interns to wade through the complicated, encyclopedic applications that districts turn in. The extra funds will allow the department to hire full-time temporary employees to help with the task. Both the interns and the temporary workers are supervised by department officials. The department is also conscripting employees who do not normally work on teacher quality issues to assist with the project.
* * * *
|
Jerry Moore (Admin)
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 30693
Registered: 01-2000
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, September 10, 2012 - 8:40 pm: |
|
Teacher Grading Off to Uneven Start
Evaluation Systems Vary Widely by District, and Most Have Not Yet Reached Agreements With Unions on How to Do It
By LISA FLEISHER / WALL STREET JOURNAL
Sept. 9, 2012
* * *
A review of the first approved plans [in NY] shows a hodgepodge of methods for determining which teachers deserve to stay and which don't. While the law outlined a broad framework for the job-performance reviews—40% based on tests or other gauges of student learning, and 60% based on principals' observations and other subjective measures—the details were left to the local districts and unions.
* * *
A version of this article appeared September 10, 2012, on page A21 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Teacher Grading Off to Uneven Start.
|
Jerry Moore (Admin)
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 30687
Registered: 01-2000
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, September 09, 2012 - 8:44 pm: |
|
Report: Student Test Data Predicts Teacher Quality
Joy Pullmann / Heartlander
September 5, 2012
Statistical analyses of student scores can accurately rate their teachers’ effectiveness in instruction, according to a new report published this morning by the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research.
The report, by Marcus Winters, reviews a controversial method of evaluating teachers: Value-added modeling. VAM analyzes test scores as students progress through school to discover how a particular teacher contributes to or detracts from students’ knowledge.
“VAM is not a perfect measure of teacher quality because, like any statistical test, it is subject to random measurement errors. So it should not be regarded as the “magic bullet” solution to the problem of evaluating teacher performance,” the report says. “However, the method is reliable enough to be part of a sensible policy of tenure reform—one that replaces ‘automatic’ tenure with rigorous evaluation of new candidates and periodic reexamination of those who have already received tenure.”
* * * *
|
Jerry Moore (Admin)
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 30610
Registered: 01-2000
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, August 26, 2012 - 7:45 pm: |
|
Don’t rely on so many tests for student, teacher evaluations
A Schenectady (NY) Gazette Letter to the Editor
Aug. 26, 2012
How many false dichotomies can you find in this letter?
Recently I sat in my elementary classroom, preparing for the school year ahead.
What format and when will the baseline testing required by the state be completed? What should my student learning objectives look like? How should I organize and complete my annual professional performance review? How many days do I have prior to the state evaluations in reading/language arts and math? What materials do I require for the students to read, write, and respond to?
Then I sat back and asked myself, what happened to “think and do”?
In past years, I would think, what novel or historical fiction could I integrate in a cross-curricular manner? What students do I have, and how can I motivate them individually through their interests? What activities can I provide to get them to think and internalize a concept? How do I vary the performance indicators to evaluate their strengths? Actually teaching them to “think and do,” not just to read, write and respond to an individual text or paired texts — not to read, write and respond [just] to excel on the New York state evaluations.
I feel that the evaluative systems of both students and teachers impose nothing but stress. The focus has been altered from student-based teaching to test-based teaching. Each student should not have a name tag on the front of their desk. It should be their score, 0-4.
Then I should move their desks throughout the year as their scores, which are highly and frequently monitored throughout the year, improve. Thus more time is taken from the teaching day. The remainder of the time can be spent on test prep.
The imaginations of students are filtered, the creativity of the teacher is stifled, and the individual in both cases is lost. We both are dehumanized and robotic in nature.
The state evaluations system has achieved its goal. The state Education Department scores a 4 this year, teachers 1, and students 0.
So welcome back, kids! Get those pencils ready; time to read, write, and respond. Feeling a little stress, Jane? Cry Jane, cry! A little bored, Dick, by the monotony of the school day and test preparation? Act out, Dick! Feeling like you’re not measuring up to the state standards, Sally? Drop out!
I, my students, and my district read, write, and respond to the state’s mandates out of necessity. But perhaps the state should “rethink and do” what is in the best interests of our children.
Let us teach them to think, relate to, and utilize information. Let each student grow, be inspired to achieve, and be free from evaluative oppression. Let each teacher be creative, spontaneous and goal-oriented, not test-motivated. Let each school district be a happy, educationally innovated, and child-centered environment.
I believe in my abilities, my students’ ability to achieve, my community’s support, and my district’s mission. But I sincerely believe the state should “re-think and do” something else, so that Jane, Dick, and Sally will be motivated to succeed, rejoice in the educational process, and inspired to become lifelong learners.
Robert Roszak
Albany
|
Jerry Moore (Admin)
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 30605
Registered: 01-2000
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, August 23, 2012 - 10:57 pm: |
|
State education commissioner cites Schenectady's teacher evaluation plan as model
By David Lombardo / Schenectady (NY) Gazette with Scribd copy of the 88-page plan
August 22, 2012
NYSED Press Release
The Schenectady City School District's teacher and principal evaluation plan has been highlighted by State Education Commissioner John King Jr. as one of 10 model examples.
Plans are being submitted to the state as part of a revised teacher and principal evaluation law passed earlier this year. Since then, school districts slowly have been reaching local agreements on evaluation plans that are then submitted to the state for approval. Schenectady submitted its plan in the end of June and it can be seen below.
The 10 model examples have all been approved by the state, which has provided feedback to more than 100 other districts that submitted plans.
* * * *
|
Jerry Moore (Admin)
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 30572
Registered: 01-2000
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, August 19, 2012 - 9:58 pm: |
|
2011-12 TEACHER GROWTH SCORES SENT TO DISTRICTS
Evaluations for Most Principals, Teachers Start Next School Year
NYS Education Dept Press Release
AUGUST 16, 2012
The State Education Department today announced the distribution to school districts of the State-provided growth scores for Grades 4-8 English Language Arts and Math teachers and their principals based on the 2011-12 school year. The educator measures are calculated based on the growth of each student on State assessments between two years as compared to similar students on the basis of past test scores and certain demographic information. Each educator earns one of four growth ratings (Highly Effective, Effective, Developing, Ineffective) and a growth score from 0-20 points. A limited number of districts that have 2011-12 Annual Professional Performance Review (APPR) plans (under Section 3012-c of the Education Law) will use the scores as the 20 percent growth subcomponent for the educators covered under the plans.
Growth report files will be available for districts to download.
"This marks another major step toward implementing the reforms the Board of Regents has adopted," Regents Chancellor Merryl H. Tisch said. "Growth scores are just one of the multiple measures included in the new evaluation law, but they are an important tool to help principals and teachers improve their practice and help students graduate college and career ready. The growth scores include and account for a number of factors – prior academic history, student poverty, English Language Learners, students with disabilities, and test measurement variance – to make sure they paint a fair and accurate picture."
"The scores are just one of the multiple measures that will be used to evaluate teachers and principals," Education Commissioner John B. King, Jr. said. "The evaluations will help teachers and principals improve teaching and learning. The goal of evaluations and all the Regents Reforms is to help all our students graduate from high school with the skills they need to succeed in college and careers.
"The evaluation law won’t be fully implemented until the coming school year, so most districts won’t be using the scores we’re releasing today for evaluations. But they can use the scores to help improve instruction."
Growth measures are one of multiple measures that contribute to the evaluation of teacher and principal effectiveness, and account for 20 percent of an educator’s evaluation. The remaining 80 percent include options selected locally, consistent with collective bargaining and distributed as follows: 20 percent for locally selected measures of student growth or achievement, and 60 percent for other measures, such as observations by supervisors using rubrics, and parent and student surveys.
King noted that only 3,556 principals and approximately 15 percent (33,129) of teachers statewide will have growth scores based on State assessments in 2011-12, and the growth scores will represent only one-fifth of the overall evaluation. He said for most school districts in the State, under the new law passed earlier this year, evaluations will be implemented over the course of the 2012-13 school year and full evaluation scores will not be available until Fall 2013. King added that in accordance with measures enacted in State law earlier this year (Chapter 68 of the Laws of 2012), the identities and individual scores of teachers and principals will not be identifiable when the scores are publicly disclosed. Aggregate 2011-12 scores will be released later this year.
Under the State’s evaluation system, educators earn one of four overall ratings on their final performance evaluations – Highly Effective, Effective, Developing or Ineffective. (These categories are also assigned based on each of the subcomponents of evaluation.) Using the 2011-12 State growth scores, approximately 7% of teachers earned Highly Effective, or student growth was "well above the State average for similar students"; 77% of teachers earned Effective, or student growth "equal to the average for similar students"; 10% earned Developing or "below average growth for similar students"; and 6% earned Ineffective or "well-below average growth for similar students." The distribution of principal-level scores was 6% Highly Effective; 79% Effective; 8% Developing; and 7% Ineffective.
Earlier this year, districts provided information to SED about which students were taught by which teachers in 2011-12. Teachers were given the opportunity to verify this information.
A small number of school districts have implemented APPR plans for the 2011-12 school year in some or all of their schools. Those districts need to incorporate the overall growth scores released today into the APPR results for applicable educators. Other districts can use the information to support instructional improvement in conjunction with other information about educator effectiveness.
In addition to the data files and reports distributed to school districts today, this Fall SED will provide educators access to a secure, password-protected online reporting system that will be accessible only to district and school personnel. Using this system, superintendents will be able to view growth data for schools within the district, including teacher-level scores; principals will be able to view growth data for schools to which they are assigned, including teacher-level scores; and teachers will be able to view their own growth scores.
Consistent with Chapter 68 of the Laws of 2012, SED will also release to the public aggregated overall evaluation ratings, composite scores, and subcomponent ratings and scores including State-provided growth scores. King said SED will take every precaution to ensure that such public release of data does not include personally identifiable information for any teacher or principal.
SED has provided a variety of materials to help districts and educators understand and use the State-provided growth scores. The resources, along with additional materials including a technical report, a user guide, and a reference manual, can be found on the ‘Resources about State Growth’ page on EngageNY.org:
http://engageny.org/resource/resources-about-state-growth-measures.
* * * *
|
Jerry Moore (Admin)
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 30558
Registered: 01-2000
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, August 16, 2012 - 11:33 pm: |
|
East Aurora to Add Administrator for Teacher Evaluations
by Jeremy Morlock / East Aurora (NY) Advertiser
Aug. 16, 2012
The East Aurora School District is looking to add to its administrative staff in order to accommodate new state standards for evaluating teachers. Superintendent Brian Russ discussed the part-time administrative post and possible changes to the district's administrative structure at a special School Board meeting on Aug. 8.
You knew that was coming, right? In a couple of years, this will be a full-time admin job.
* * *
In describing the district’s APPR plans to the School Board, Russ noted that administrators will need to meet with each teacher 14 times during the evaluation process, finding time to meet with teachers to set the year’s goals, dropping in for both announced and unannounced observation of teachers in the classrooms, and meeting to review the progress of teachers and their classes. In all, he noted that Parkdale would have a total of 490 teacher/administrator interactions for APPR, with 434 at the Middle School, 644 at the High School and separate meetings for special education teachers and physical education and health instructors.
I suspect those meetings will devolve into 30-second base-touching.
* * * *
|
Jerry Moore (Admin)
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 30554
Registered: 01-2000
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, August 15, 2012 - 9:30 pm: |
|
A new way to evaluate teachers — by teachers
By Valerie Strauss / The Answer Sheet blog
Aug. 15, 2012
This was written by Stanford University Education Profession Linda Darling-Hammond, who directs the Stanford University Center for Opportunity Policy in Education and was founding director of the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future. A former president of the American Educational Research Association, Darling-Hammond focuses her research, teaching, and policy work on issues of school restructuring, teacher quality and educational equity. This first appeared at www.InsideHigherEd.com
By Linda Darling-Hammond
Teacher education has been under siege in the last few years, the first line of attack in the growing criticism and more aggressive regulation of higher education.
Most recently, the U.S. Department of Education proposed — in a highly contentious negotiated rule-making exercise — to use test scores of graduates’ students to evaluate schools of education, despite the warnings of leading researchers that such scores are unstable and invalid for this purpose. Furthermore, in an unprecedented move, the department would limit eligibility for federal TEACH grants to prospective teachers from highly rated programs, denying aid to many deserving candidates while penalizing programs that prepare teachers for the most challenging teaching assignments.
This was only the most recent example of how education reformers have made teachers and teacher education a punching bag, painting those in the entire field as having low standards and being unwilling to accept responsibility for the quality of their work.
However, teacher educators from across the country are stepping up to create new, more valid accountability tools. An important part of this effort is the spread of the edTPA, a new performance assessment process that examines — through candidates’ plans, videotapes of instruction, evidence of student work and learning, and commentary — whether prospective teachers are really ready to teach. As highlighted recently in The New York Times, the assessment focuses on whether teachers can organize instruction to promote learning for all students, including new English learners and students with disabilities, and how they analyze learning outcomes to create greater student success.
* * * *
|
Jerry Moore (Admin)
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 30535
Registered: 01-2000
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, August 13, 2012 - 7:32 pm: |
|
Back to school: How to measure a good teacher
By Amanda Paulson, Christian Science Monitor Staff writer
August 12, 2012
Boulder, Colo.
* * *
Spurred by Race to the Top, the competitive Obama administration grant program, numerous states are now rushing to implement intensive teacher evaluation systems that, in most cases, are heavily influenced by test-score gains, which can affect a teacher's employment status and pay.
Done right, say advocates, strong evaluation systems could be a game changer for both teachers and their students, reshaping the profession and pushing teachers to improve.
"How do you change results for kids if you don't change the way we're teaching?" asks Dan Weisberg, executive vice president at The New Teacher Project (TNTP), a teacher-training and policy nonprofit that advocates the overhaul of teacher evaluations. "If you don't know who your best teachers are, how do you work to promote and retain them? You need to identify teachers struggling and do your best to get them to a satisfactory level or, if you can't, get them exited. There's no way to change results for kids without doing those things, and you can't do those things if you don't have a good system to accurately measure performance."
Research indicates that the quality of teaching has more impact on student learning than any other factor that a school can control. A year with a good teacher, studies show, can mean a child learns as much as three times more than a student with a poor teacher.
You know, research in 1909 showed that horses had more impact on crop yields (farm productivity) than any other factor a farmer could control. But focusing on the quality of horses, their food, care and shelter, to improve crop yields would have been the mistake of the century. Tractors began replacing horses in 1910, and the right thing to do was to focus on improving tractors and the equipment run by tractors. See, e.g., The Diffusion of the Tractor in American Agriculture: 1910-60.
All this focus on teachers is exactly the wrong thing to do. We need schools for The 21st Century Student. We need to dramatically reduce our reliance on one-size-fits-all, lock-step, subject-based, age-determined, teacher-centered classroom instruction. All the resources we are spending to keep a horse-and-buggy education system alive is a horrendous waste.
Lots more from this story, here.
|
Jerry Moore (Admin)
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 30474
Registered: 01-2000
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, August 01, 2012 - 8:31 pm: |
|
Teacher scores unfair numbers
An Albany (NY) Times Union Letter to the Editor
July 31, 2012
Earlier this summer, I spent two days with other school administrators learning how to become a "lead evaluator" of the new annual professional performance review for teachers. This continues to be a flawed process that will undoubtedly yield flawed outcomes.
District administrators are now required to conduct multiple evaluations to judge the effectiveness of teachers (60 percent of their scores). The students' results on flawed state assessments account for another 20 percent. The final 20 percent comes from local assessments. This system will give teachers a number based on a 100-point scale and determine whether they are highly effective, effective, developing or ineffective.
The state will provide the scores to the districts because they are "secured tests." But teachers won't be able to glean significant data from the tests to see how they can improve their instructional practice because the state won't provide adequate data to allow for detailed and accurate item analysis.
It is not difficult to see where this train is going. Teachers will vie for students who could have a positive impact on their scores. When the scores of individual teachers are made public (parents who will be allowed access to their children's teachers' score will assuredly share them on Facebook before they hit the parking lot), parents will vie for the teachers with the highest scores. Teachers will be pitted against other teachers, students and parents.
This system was put in place allegedly to make it easier to fire ineffective teachers. However, if one looks at the law, it is now much more onerous to terminate an ineffective teacher.
As an educator for 20 years, I am proud of our schools and our teachers. They work hard and deserve our respect. Teachers and students should never be reduced to a number. It is bad for education and it is bad for our nation. Our children deserve better.
So, exactly what is better? The problem is the status quo is unacceptable, at least for the prices we pay.
Tim Farley
Kinderhook
|
Jerry Moore (Admin)
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 30426
Registered: 01-2000
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, July 19, 2012 - 7:31 pm: |
|
Report: Tennessee Teacher-Observation Scores Inflated
Stephen Sawchuk / Teacher Beat blog
July 18, 2012
Too often, the officials charged with evaluating Tennessee teachers on their practices have failed to properly identify and help low-performing teachers, concludes a report [pdf] by the Tennessee department of education on the implementation of its statewide teacher evaluation system.
Teachers generally earned high scores on their observations, but their students often didn't show corresponding levels of academic growth.
"If you're struggling and the student achievement data shows you that, but your boss tells you you're OK, you are not going to change your practices," Tennessee Commissioner of Education Kevin Huffman said in an interview. "We have to make sure that the system is applied consistently."
In addition, the report recommends reducing the weight placed on schoolwide performance in teachers' reviews, one of the main complaints educators have had about the evaluation system.
The report draws from the feedback of some 7,500 teachers, every district superintendent, and thousands more surveys of teachers and principals.
Implementation of the Tennessee system has been closely watched because it was one of the first post Race To the Top-funded evaluation systems to be taken statewide. Some of the implementation glitches—teachers and principals alike who felt overburdened by its requirements—have been widely documented, including at Education Week. Such complaints led to the offering of some flexibility by the education department last fall.
Still, the Tennessee Education Association has been largely critical of the program, and has pressed unsuccessfully for this year's results to be, retroactively, considered a pilot year with no stakes attached to the results. (Teachers that repeatedly earn low scores can lose tenure status.)
One component of the system seems likely to change as a result of the report. The schoolwide "value added" score, which represents the schools' performance overall in helping to boost students' math and reading test scores, counts for those teachers who don't have specific student exam results in their field or subject. Many teachers complained that this score didn't reflect their individual work, and that the schoolwide weight should be reduced.
An independent report [pdf] issued by a state nonprofit watchdog group came to a similar conclusion in June. (The lack of individual results in nontested grades and subjects has been a nationwide challenge.)
The department's report says it will recommend reducing the weight given to this component. For one, it will seek to include more teachers in individual growth measures, partly by drawing on the work of groups of teachers who have worked to develop alternative measures in subjects like fine arts and physical science. While the development of additional measures may result in some more standardized tests in other subjects, "we are definitely not trying to come up with an individual assessment for every subject and situation," in the mold of Florida's Hillsborough County district, Huffman said.
The schoolwide measure won't be eliminated altogether, however. Principals reported that they saw their staff collaborating more to introduce academic concepts into subjects like fine arts as a result of that measure, and the report recommends preserving it to some degree.
Score Disparity?
In a troubling finding, the report shows a disparity between the the systems' two main components: The observation scores given by principals, and the academic growth of students. For instance, 16 percent of teachers got a 1, the lowest score, on the student-growth component, but only 0.2 percent of teachers got that score on their observations. The report suggests that observers are giving teachers higher scores than are warranted, a situation that prevents them from receiving high quality feedback on their performance or how to improve.
The cultural norms of the teaching profession, which have often tried to minimize differences of performance, as well as the everyone-knows-your name nature of some of the state's school districts, may be partly resulting in this disparity Huffman said. "There are real human challenges here," he said. "In a rural community where people know each other well, you're not just my principal. You sit the next pew up from me at church."
But a TEA official suggested in comments in a Tennessean article that perhaps it's the value-added scores that are out of whack, rather than the observation scores.
The education department made a series of recommendations for improving the system, though some of them, such as reducing the focus on schoolwide growth, need legislative approval. The state's board of education will take up others at a meeting later this month.
Among other recommendations in the report:
• Teachers getting top scores helping students progress would be able to count it as the final evaluation score, though they would still receive feedback from observations. They would also qualify for a streamlined evaluation process.
• Evaluators that give scores that deviate significantly from the value-added measures would be retrained in the observation rubric, a four-day certification process run by the Santa Monica, Calif.-based National Institute for Excellence in Teaching.
• Teachers getting the lowest score on either the qualitative or quantitative component would receive additional observations.
• The state board of education should exert its right to withdraw approval of district-devised alternative evaluation models if the results show a disparity between value-added and observation scores.
|
Jerry Moore (Admin)
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 30353
Registered: 01-2000
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, July 02, 2012 - 11:31 pm: |
|
COMMISSIONER KING: 164 SCHOOL DISTRICTS HAVE SUBMITTED NEGOTIATED EVALUATION AGREEMENTS
NYSED Press Release
July 2, 2012
State Education Commissioner John B. King, Jr. announced that as of 12:00 noon today (July 2) 164 school districts have submitted negotiated teacher and principal evaluation agreements to his office for review. The agreements are mandated under the revised teacher and principal evaluation law passed earlier this year (Chapter 21 of the Laws of 2012).
The State Education Department (SED) created and manages an on-line portal for school districts to submit evaluation agreements that have been negotiated with local teacher and principal unions.
King said that while the deadline for submitting evaluation agreements was July 1, he recognized the complexity of the negotiations.
"This is a sea change in education," Commissioner King said. "It’s not just about an increase in education aid. We’re trying to improve teaching and learning in every school across the state. The goal is to make sure every student graduates from high school with the skills needed to succeed in college and careers. Fair, accurate evaluations are an important step to help educators help our students meet that goal."
King said he would update the number of negotiated agreements submitted periodically. A list of the districts [pdf] that have submitted negotiated agreements to the on-line SED portal is attached.
|
Jerry Moore (Admin)
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 30335
Registered: 01-2000
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, June 27, 2012 - 10:05 pm: |
|
Many factors to students' success
An Albany (NY) Times Union Letter to the Editor
June 26, 2012
There has been a lot of discussion lately about teacher evaluations. The fact is we do need them. We cannot entrust our children to incompetent educators. After all, who does not recall the positive or negative effects a teacher had?
What makes a good teacher or a bad teacher?
Pick any local school and consider: Students who sit in the same class, with the same book, withstanding the same temperature, subjected to the same lesson within the same time frame have differing outcomes. Is this all on the teacher?
It comes down to four equal parts: the student, the parent, the teacher and the school administration. Therefore, should not those four parts comprise a teacher's evaluation? There needs to be some accountability on the student to want to learn; the parent to encourage them; the teacher to teach; and the school administration to facilitate all of this.
Let's evaluate our teachers on 25 percent of the student's performance (attendance, completed homework, tests, etc.); 25 percent on parental input (attendance at parent/teacher meetings or open houses, signatures on tests, etc.); 25 percent on standardized benchmarks for teachers; and 25 percent on the curriculum, supplies, physical plant, training opportunities, etc., offered by the school administration.
If we do not, the shortcomings of the students, parents and administrators will be deflected onto the teachers.
John A. DiNovo
Loudonville
|
Jerry Moore (Admin)
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 30316
Registered: 01-2000
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, June 22, 2012 - 12:43 am: |
|
Albany Acts to Shield Teacher Data
By LISA FLEISHER / WALL STREET JOURNAL
June 21, 2012
ALBANY—The job-performance reviews for hundreds of thousands of individual teachers across New York would be shielded from the general public under legislation passed by the Legislature and supported by Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
* * *
The new law would allow parents to see scores for their child's current teacher but would block school districts from disclosing those ratings more widely. An unprecedented amount of data about teachers' performance—stripped of names—would still be available to the public, fundamentally reshaping the way parents are able to judge schools.
* * *
The debate over disclosure of teacher evaluations consumed the Capitol this year after New York City released job-performance data on about 18,000 teachers to media organizations, including The Wall Street Journal. The move outraged the city's United Federation of Teachers, which had lost a court battle to block news organizations from obtaining the scores.
The Legislature acted to shield evaluations after it became clear that inaction would mean test scores for thousands of teachers could be made public in August.
* * *
"New York can now claim the prize for having spent more time debating the release of these evaluations than the makeup of the evaluations themselves," said Joe Williams, executive director of Democrats for Evaluation Reform, which supported the new evaluations and remained neutral on their public release. "While it is great to get this issue behind us, it clearly will only be a few days before the next fake hurdle to implementation surfaces."
Teachers union officials, however, said they were ensuring the evaluations were fair and meaningful.
* * * *
|
|
Closed: New threads not accepted on this page
