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     Jerry Moore (Admin) Board Administrator Username: Admin Post Number: 29510 Registered: 01-2000  Rating: N/A |
Shame Is Not the Solution By BILL GATES / NEW YORK TIMES Feb 23, 2012  Government can always find a reason to conceal information from citizens. If teachers want their evaluations to be kept secret, then let them convert education to private schools, where students can leave if they don't approve of teacher performance. Since public school students are essentially stuck in these schools, parents ought to have access to teacher quality data for all teachers working with the child's cohort. Seattle LAST week, the New York State Court of Appeals ruled that teachers’ individual performance assessments could be made public. I have no opinion on the ruling as a matter of law, but as a harbinger of education policy in the United States, it is a big mistake. * * * At Microsoft, we created a rigorous personnel system, but we would never have thought about using employee evaluations to embarrass people, much less publish them in a newspaper. A good personnel system encourages employees and managers to work together to set clear, achievable goals. Annual reviews are a diagnostic tool to help employees reflect on their performance, get honest feedback and create a plan for improvement. Many other businesses and public sector employers embrace this approach, and that’s where the focus should be in education: school leaders and teachers working together to get better. * * * * 
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| Jerry Moore (Admin) Board Administrator Username: Admin Post Number: 29503 Registered: 01-2000 Rating: N/A |
Teachers unions say "no" to Malloy's tenure plan By Jacqueline Rabe Thomas and Uma Ramiah / CT Mirror February 21, 2012 The state's teachers unions may have reached agreement on how their members should be graded weeks ago, but on Tuesday, union leaders came to the state Capitol complex to display buyer's remorse. Calling it a "leap of faith," when they signed on to the historic teacher evaluation framework, Phil Apruzzese, head of the state's largest teachers union, told Education Committee members that he has second thoughts. "We run the risk of losing good teachers, of evaluation becoming a 'gotcha' practice, and of establishing a culture of fear, rather than collaboration in our schools," he said, describing the evaluation as "based on shaky factors" and "very subjective." The evaluations -- which would be based largely on student performance, peer reviews and classroom observations -- are the cornerstone of an education agenda proposed by Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, who was a late addition to the list of public-hearing witnesses. * * * *
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| Jerry Moore (Admin) Board Administrator Username: Admin Post Number: 29498 Registered: 01-2000 Rating: N/A |
No Student Left Untested Diane Ravitch / New York Review of Books blog Feb 21, 2012 All these people saying that the evaluation system is flawed are simply saying, "There is no objective way to measure teacher performance." That is 100% right. And the hobgoblin of teacher evaluation reform is the requirement that the measures must at least appear to be objective even though they can't possibly be such. We don't need an objective evaluation system. We need a subjective one. But educators tremble at the thought of losing their jobs because of arbitrary or capricious decisions by administrators. Every system can be abused. Good people can get fired. The question is whether the advantages of subjective evaluation systems are outweighed by the likely few abuses that actually occur. I admit that current evaluation systems ARE subjective and they produce results that find every teacher to be an expert. This is not a consequence of subjective evaluations. It's a consequence of tenure. Why anger a permanent employee with a poor evaluation? It's pointless. Making all employees feel good may create a positive atmosphere that encourages them to do a little better than they would, otherwise. But, cynicism pervades even these systems. Subjective evaluation systems require weaker tenure rights if not their elimination. * * * New York’s education officials are obsessed with test scores. The state wants to find and fire the teachers who aren’t able to produce higher test scores year after year. But most testing experts believe that the methods for calculating teachers’ assumed “value-added” qualities—that is, their abilities to produce higher test scores year after year—are inaccurate, unstable, and unreliable. Teachers in affluent suburbs are likelier to get higher value-added scores than teachers of students with disabilities, students learning English, and students from extreme poverty. All too often, the rise or fall of test scores reflects the composition of the classroom and factors beyond the teachers’ control, not the quality of the teacher. A teacher who is rated effective one year may well be ineffective the next year, depending on which students are assigned to his or her class. * * * This agreement will certainly produce an intense focus on teaching to the tests. * * * No standardized test can accurately measure the quality of education. Students can be coached to guess the right answer, but learning this skill does not equate to acquiring facility in complex reasoning and analysis. It is possible to have higher test scores and worse education. That's exactly what the professionals have deliberately decided to provide the public with, today. NO professional would deliberately hurt his/her client for the sake of making him/herself look better. But, amazingly, teachers are completely willing to do it. I don't get it. * * * *
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| Jerry Moore (Admin) Board Administrator Username: Admin Post Number: 29495 Registered: 01-2000 Rating: N/A |
Principals' opposition to teacher evaluation grows 18 principals from northern Westchester and Putnam publicly oppose state policy Written by Gary Stern / White Plains (NY) Journal News Feb. 21, 2012 Eighteen high school principals from northern Westchester and Putnam counties have joined the growing ranks of school administrators who are publicly opposing the state’s new teacher evaluation system. The group said the new system, which will grade teachers in part on student test scores, is “problematic at best, damaging to our students and our profession at worst.” A statement from the Northern Westchester/Putnam High School Principals Association said that the new system would pressure teachers to “teach to the test” and would focus attention on English and math — the subjects most tested — at the expense of social studies, science, the arts and physical education. “Schools that were moving away from ubiquitous, test driven curricula in an effort to offer deeper, richer, more authentic curricula will now be forced back into a test driven curriculum,” it said. * * * *
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| Jerry Moore (Admin) Board Administrator Username: Admin Post Number: 29485 Registered: 01-2000 Rating: N/A |
'Value Added' Concept Proves Beneficial to Teacher Colleges By Stephen Sawchuk / Education Week Published Online: February 17, 2012 The use of “value added” information appears poised to expand into the nation’s teacher colleges, with more than a dozen states planning to use the technique to analyze how graduates of training programs fare in classrooms. * * * The two states with the most experience using such data, Louisiana and Tennessee, have shown that it can be a powerful catalyst for change. Both can point to programs that have seen improvements in value-added scores after altering aspects of their programming. Nevertheless, teacher-educators and state officials alike continue to wrestle with how best to translate what are, in essence, fairly blunt measures of program effectiveness into a regular cycle for improving teacher education curricula. * * * *
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| Jerry Moore (Admin) Board Administrator Username: Admin Post Number: 29473 Registered: 01-2000 Rating: N/A |
States Try to Fix Quirks in Teacher Evaluations By JENNY ANDERSON / NEW YORK TIMES Feb. 19, 2012 * * * Spurred by the requirements of the Obama administration’s Race to the Top competition, Tennessee is one of more than a dozen states overhauling their evaluation systems to increase the number of classroom observations and to put more emphasis on standardized test scores. But even as New York State finally came to an agreement last week with its teachers’ unions on how to design its new system, places like Tennessee that are already carrying out similar plans are struggling with philosophical and logistical problems. How can that be? "Governor Andrew M. Cuomo ... announced a groundbreaking agreement on a new statewide evaluation system that will make New York State a national leader in holding teachers accountable for student achievement." More leading from behind, except when it comes to salaries, of course. * * * *
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| Jerry Moore (Admin) Board Administrator Username: Admin Post Number: 29446 Registered: 01-2000 Rating: N/A |
Colorado teacher-evaluation bill signed into law By Yesenia Robles / The Denver Post 02/16/2012 Rules that change how teachers and principals will be evaluated — and how they will earn or lose tenure — were signed into law this morning by Gov. John Hickenlooper. * * * The definition of an effective teacher includes six quality standards, including the need to demonstrate content knowledge, leadership and taking responsibility for student growth. * * * A few pieces of the rules still are not finalized. One that is now making its way through the state board of education is the development of an appeals processfor teachers who receive two consecutive ineffective ratings, which triggers a loss of nonprobationary status, known as tenure. The law also now requires 50 percent of teacher evaluations to be based on student test scores, but 70 percent of licensed teachers do not have standardized assessments for their grade level or the content they teach. Colorado is working on developing guides and assessments for those untested subjects, so that districts have tests to pick from that can provide reliable data. Dallman, who is also the president of the Jefferson County Education Association said now it's up to school districts to work with their communities to find ways to implement the rules. "Our district is looking at a cost of $4.2 million or $4.8 million for the first year. In a district where we just cut $37.5 million last year, that's really going to be a struggle," Dallman said. "To ensure educators have the proper training and administrators have enough time, I don't know that we will come up with that $4.8 million." What a waste of money. We know from standards testing that all that happens is that educators end up simply putting a number on what they already do. Then, whatever the number is, they call that "good" or "excellent." Nothing much by way of improvement happens. If we took these billions of dollars being spent around the country on evaluations and created schools designed for The 21st Century Student, we'd soon find that the most important factors in academic success are the student and the quality of the software providing and monitoring the instruction, practice and evaluation. It is unbelievable the amount of money being spent to keep horse-and-buggy education processes in play. Educators simply cannot achieve the kind of consistency or rapid course evolution that our children need, to say nothing of their needs for flexible schedules. * * * *
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| Jerry Moore (Admin) Board Administrator Username: Admin Post Number: 29441 Registered: 01-2000 Rating: N/A |
An Evaluation Architect Says Teaching Is Hard, but Assessing It Shouldn't Be By Theodoric Meyer / SchoolBook blog Feb. 15, 2012 Sixteen years ago, Charlotte Danielson, an Oxford-trained economist, developed a description of good teaching that became the foundation for attempts by federal and state officials and school districts to quantify teacher performance. The Danielson method — articulated in her book, “Enhancing Professional Practice: A Framework for Teaching” (ASCD, 1996) — describes good teaching using numerous criteria within four broad areas of performance: the quality of questions and discussion techniques; a knowledge of students’ special needs; the expectations set for learning and achievement; and the teacher’s involvement in professional development activities. Lots more . . . * * * *
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| Jerry Moore (Admin) Board Administrator Username: Admin Post Number: 29440 Registered: 01-2000 Rating: N/A |
Governor Cuomo Announces Agreement on Evaluation Guidelines That Will Make New York State a National Leader on Teacher Accountability NY Governor Press Release February 16, 2012 See, also, Evaluating at EdVANTAGE. Governor Andrew M. Cuomo, New York State Education Commissioner John King, and New York State United Teachers President Richard C. Iannuzzi today announced a groundbreaking agreement on a new statewide evaluation system that will make New York State a national leader in holding teachers accountable for student achievement. * * * Details of the plan are as follows: Teacher Performance – 60 points Under the agreement, 60 percent of a teacher's evaluation will be based on rigorous and nationally recognized measures of teacher performance. The agreement requires that a majority of the teacher performance points will be based on classroom observations by an administrator or principal, and at least one observation will be unannounced. The remaining points will be based upon defined standards including observations by independent trained evaluators, peer classroom observations, student and parent feedback from evaluators, and evidence of performance through student portfolios. Student Achievement in State and Local Assessments– 40 points Under the agreement, 40 percent of a teacher's evaluation will be based on student academic achievement, with 20 percent from state testing and 20 percent from a list of three testing options including state tests, third party assessments/tests approved by the SED and locally developed tests that will be subject to SED review and approval. Under the plan, school districts will also have the option of using state tests to measure up to 40 percent of a teacher's rating. So, what the unions won in court, they gave back in this agreement. Rating System The agreement significantly tightens the scoring system to ensure student achievement and teacher performance are both properly taken into account for teacher ratings. Teachers or principals that are rated ineffective in the 40 points could not receive a developing score overall. Ineffective: 0 – 64 Developing: 65 – 74 Effective: 75 – 90 Highly Effective: 91 – 100 Assigning a Curve for the Ratings The agreement sets forth, for the first time, a standard for school districts and teacher unions to set the allocation of points or the "curve" for the teacher ratings. The curve must be allocated in a manner that a teacher can receive one of the four ratings, and the SED Commissioner will be able to reject insufficiently set curves. In other words, rigor, standards and ratings are an illusion. The truth is in the curve. SED Commissioner Final Review The agreement also, for the first time, gives the SED Commissioner the authority to approve or disapprove local evaluation plans that are deemed insufficient. This will add rigor to the process and ensure evaluation plans comply with the law. That kind of depends on the rigor of the Commissioner. We know how that goes, don't we? The Commissioner's number 1 goal is to have a teaching force of high morale. The way he does that is to publicly tout rigor and scrutiny while privately letting educators do pretty much whatever they want to do. THE ONLY WAY you get rigor is to assign the duty to an INDEPENDENT BODY. New York City Expedited Appeals Process Today's announcement also includes an expedited and streamlined appeals process for the New York City School District that becomes effective on January 17, 2013 if New York City and the UFT agree to an overall evaluation system.
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| Jerry Moore (Admin) Board Administrator Username: Admin Post Number: 29423 Registered: 01-2000 Rating: N/A |
City to Release Teacher Ratings After Union Loses Suit By Anna M. Phillips / NY TIMES SchoolBook blog Feb. 14, 2012 The United Federation of Teachers on Tuesday lost what appeared to be its final chance to block the release of thousands of New York City teachers’ ratings, and school officials said they would make the reports public within a couple of weeks. The union had sued to keep the ratings of 12,700 teachers private, but on Tuesday the New York State Court of Appeals denied its appeal of a November ruling by the Appellate Division of State Supreme Court in Manhattan, which threw out the union’s lawsuit. The ratings, known as Teacher Data Reports, are based entirely on student test scores, and were issued over the last three years. In September, city officials announced that they would no longer produce the reports, which will instead be created by the State Education Department for teachers across New York State. * * * *
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| Jerry Moore (Admin) Board Administrator Username: Admin Post Number: 29412 Registered: 01-2000 Rating: N/A |
Connecticut approves teacher evaluation reform tied to student achievement By Mary E. O’Leary, New Haven (CT) Post-Chronicle Register Topics Editor February 12, 2012 HARTFORD – Connecticut Friday became the 14th state to adopt an evaluation system for teachers and principals tied to student achievement, a milestone that will lay the foundation for a waiver from No Child Left Behind mandates and advance a major educational reform agenda. * * * Evaluations for teachers will include: 45 percent tied to student advancement with one-half of that based on results of standardized tests; 40 percent reflecting observations of performance and practice; 10 percent to peer or parent feedback surveys and 5 percent to student feedback or the whole-school achievement. * * * [T]he new system for evaluation and tenure will take two years to build out.
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| Jerry Moore (Admin) Board Administrator Username: Admin Post Number: 29404 Registered: 01-2000 Rating: N/A |
Time’s (Almost) up! A NY POST Editorial February 12, 2012 See, also Final Week of School Duel at the Post. D-Day for teacher evaluations is rapidly approaching. It will be 30 days on Thursday since Gov. Cuomo warned that he would draft his own system to root out bad teachers if the state Education Department and teachers unions didn’t make a deal on substantive reform within a month. To demonstrate his seriousness, he said he would make it part of his budget legislation — tying serious teacher-evaluation standards to increased state aid. “Education is not supposed to be an employment program for the adults,” he said last month, stressing that good teaching takes priority over teacher job-protection. Cuomo's Challenge But at this point, there’s no sign of any agreement. Indeed, New York State United Teachers, the state’s largest teachers union, is still actively pursuing a lawsuit challenging the regulations. Throwing a huge roadblock in the path of meaningful reform, in other words. The union’s lawyer told appellate division judges, who were hearing the department’s appeal of a lower-court judgment, that the system was working fine — until Cuomo got involved. At issue in the lawsuit is the specific formula for determining which teachers are ineffective. But the biggest problem is that the unions, under a 2010 law that Cuomo has called a failure, essentially hold a veto power over any new system. And they’ve shown that they’ll use that veto to block any meaningful reform. In New York City, for example, the United Federation of Teachers is insisting on an appeals process that would actually make it even harder to fire bad teachers. The UFT wants to drag out the process by giving teachers rated “ineffective” a new automatic right of appeal, to be taken up by supposedly neutral arbitrators — who owe their jobs, in part, to . . . the union. Wisely, the city has said no dice. Bottom line: no reform. As long as Cuomo leaves the union with a veto over reforms, there’ll never be any — even if districts lose state aid next year. We understand that a lot of what ails public education in New York is beyond fixing by even the best of teachers — and that wrongheaded and incompetent administrators are also a huge part of the problem. But it remains that absent a flexible and effective teacher-evaluation system, there is no hope for too many New York children. Cuomo has made a solemn pledge to make things right. This week, he must redeem it. It’s that simple.
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| Jerry Moore (Admin) Board Administrator Username: Admin Post Number: 29367 Registered: 01-2000 Rating: N/A |
Evaluating teachers using faulty tests is to no one’s benefit A Schenectady (NY) Gazette Letter to the Editor Feb 10, 2012  Re Feb. 4 editorial, “Cuomo’s hardball approach merited on teacher evaluations”: Relying on student test scores as a means to measure teacher quality has many flaws based on research done in this area. The problem with education in the United States is that we often place the cart before the horse. For example, No Child Left Behind (NCLB) was supposed to address equity issues in education but instead amplified them because of lack of funding needed to produce high-quality tests and professional development of teachers to better prepare them for standard-based teaching. A faulty opinion. Educators have been giving tests for more than a century. Perfectly valid standardized tests have been in use since the 1960s. Money wasn't the issue. If quality is the issue, why have the professionals been grading students with low-quality tests for decades? And what's this about no money for professional development? Professionals seek out the development they need and pay for it themselves, if necessary. Is there some kind of law that prohibits teachers from spending their own money to become better at their jobs? Teachers have been taking tests for at least 16 years, and giving them for just as many, on average. What is it that they don't know about test preparation? Based on reports, both public and private, the answer is sadly, "Not much, apparently." They prepare our children for tests through practice tests and cramming--exactly what experts say not to do, but pretty much reflective of how many of them got through college, along with self-reported incidents of frequent cheating. Why are tests unreliable measures of teacher quality? In a study that examined how content coverage in high school science courses relates to later success in college science classes, the researchers came to some interesting conclusions. Teachers who concentrated on breadth over depth in content had students perform better on state tests. These teachers did not stress critical thinking because that takes too long. However, the students of teachers who emphasized depth in content performed better in college because of improved critical thinking skills. Who is the better teacher? The state exams we have now stress breadth. This is not proof of a flawed exam or pedagogy. It's proof of a deliberate choice. In a given amount of time, you can either focus narrowly and deeply or broadly and superficially. You can't do both. Each has their advantages and disadvantages. One could argue that the purpose of secondary education is to give students a broad introduction to materials rather than a specialized knowledge. State exams stress breadth precisely because that's what educators wanted. Moreover, every educator has his/her own strength and weaknesses. If a narrow focus were taken, you couldn't possibly have every class statewide do the exact same projects with the same degree of depth because teachers are not identical. One history teacher might delve into the Civil War to provide students depth of learning, while another's expertise may be the evolution of the welfare state. How can the state prepare a reliable test that matches the emphasis given by individual teachers? It can't. That's why teachers agree that exams should be broadly based. It is ludicrous to place emphasis on a flawed test to evaluate teachers. We need to fix the test before we use it for that purpose. For expediency, the bulk of U.S. tests are multiple-choice or some variation of short answers. The exams aren't flawed, at least not in the way the writer describes. They are based on choices. Educators will eternally bicker over the choices made. If it's not ludicrous to evaluate students with these exams, then how is it ludicrous to evaluate teachers with them? Another issue regarding tests is that there is no quality control from state to state. Getting an “A” in one state could be equal to failure in another state. Does that mean the teachers in states with higher scores are better teachers? According to the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), U.S. students perform poorly when compared to their international cohorts. The TIMSS test emphasizes less is more, and concentrates on critical thinking skills. So what if an "A" means different things in different states? Teachers are not being graded across state lines for purposes of merit pay or tenure. As long as each district has a rational approach to teacher evaluations, it's sufficient, isn't it? When everything has to be the same everywhere, creativity and innovation stagnate. There are advantages and disadvantages to every approach and none are perfect. In the grand scheme of things, most differences among rational approaches don't matter at all. Another study that refutes the emphasis on test scores as a major means to evaluate teachers examined a more valid method of test evaluation by incorporating student growth over time and controlling for demographic variables. This more reliable method is called “value added modeling (VAM).” In this method, student tests scores are tracked over time, comparing the recent test score with past scores. But even this approach is often an unstable indicator of teacher quality. For example, a teacher may be given a very high rating one year and a low one the [next]. Did the teacher suddenly become ineffective in one year? It happens. Illness, domestic problems, financial problems, burnout, and more all affect individual teacher performance from year to year. My guess is that at least half of the good teachers have one or more slump years. But, evaluation models can produce indications of slumps when they don't exist. No useful evaluation system can avoid errors that impose unfair consequences. That's true everywhere for everything. Step back and look at what this teacher is doing. Teachers unions have agreed that teachers should be evaluated, "as long as the process is fair." The problem is, they've never seen a fair process. No matter what is proposed, there is always a problem with it. So, while educators insist that they don't oppose evaluations in theory, they reject all evaluation systems in practice. That's what's known as hypocrisy. Many state exams are cumulative. They measure content over a four-year time span. For example, the Intermediate Level Science Test covers standards from Grades 5-8. The test is given in eighth grade. Is it fair to evaluate a teacher on a test in which a number of teachers were supposed to play a role? Every prior teacher plays a role in setting the bounds of what a student is able to learn from the current teacher. There are statistical techniques that can be used to deal with these issues. The models aren't perfect. Most of them err to the benefit of the teachers for the simple reason that no one in charge of education wants to have large numbers of ineffective teachers, regardless of the reality. However, there are factors that can be identified that impact student success. Schools need to look at the cumulative impact of all the teachers that shaped a student’s education, plus any enrichment they are exposed to, both in and out of school. These factors do make a difference and can be part of VAM. Is the test reliable? Is it measuring student learning or memorization? Are teachers monitoring learning through formative assessment, an informal strategy to monitor student progress? Examples of formative assessment can be simple questions asked in class, short quizzes, homework and activities completed by the student. The problem with locally created tests is that they are even less reliable than state exams. They are self-serving and biased. So, what we have, here, is a teacher who doesn't mind being evaluated by tests as long as she gets to write the tests. This is one of the top strategies of educators. They agree to make changes, then they gain control of some part of the change process and they thwart the essence of the change so the status quo remains essentially unaffected. That way they can publicly say "Yes" to change while secretly sabotaging it. There are reasons why education reform after reform fails. Teachers [who use] formative assessment can better adjust their teaching to meet the needs of their students. How students perform year to year on a summative test, such as a state test, is greatly impacted by formative assessment strategies. Many teachers would benefit from professional development that improves on this important classroom strategy. Are schools offering this support? Why do they need to? Are teachers helpless? Aren't they the learning professionals? Teachers are often placed in classrooms with little support; it is sink or swim. More resources need to be provided for the professional development of teachers. Little or no funding is provided by the state for this. An unfortunate result of using tests to evaluate teachers is that teachers will teach to the test instead of the standards. Why? What competent professional would do something that's bad for his/her client? Test scores may go up, but long-term learning will be compromised. No doubt, student assessment should play a role in teacher evaluation, but it must be part of a more extensive review, such as the learning environment provided by the teacher and the amount of learning observed in the classroom. In other words, the person being evaluated should control a significant part of the evaluation process or evaluation input. That's how you get reliable, consistent evaluations, right? We have to stop placing the cart before the horse in education reform. Actually, we need to get rid of the horse (teachers) and cart (classrooms) and create schools designed for the 21st Century Student. Evaluating teachers simply will not dramatically improve either teaching or academic outcomes. Joan Wagner Saratoga Springs The writer is a former teacher who now works as a special development consultant for teachers.
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| Jerry Moore (Admin) Board Administrator Username: Admin Post Number: 29343 Registered: 01-2000 Rating: N/A |
Unfair to blame teachers stuck with bad students A Schenectady (NY) Gazette Letter to the Editor Feb. 9, 2012  I read and hear so much talk about students’ performance being a means of judging a teacher’s merit, and I read so little about how to meaningfully measure the performance of the students taught by a particular teacher. Even the governor wants teachers to be evaluated on how well they do their jobs by measuring student performance. He wants the state to fund a school district’s efforts to do this. Also, he has threatened having the state withhold funds from districts that don’t evaluate their teachers. If it sounds too simple, it probably is. The idea that students’ performance depends entirely on teacher skill seems naďve. In any teacher’s classroom, some students perform better than others. Some students are more gifted than others. I believe that a well-performing student will do well with any teacher. Likewise, a poor-performing student will not improve performance with a different teacher. A myth. Different teachers can get different outcomes from the same student. It happens all the time. One student gets an A in English and Math in Year 1. In Year 2 s/he gets a C and an A. In Year 3 s/he gets and A and an A. Sometimes it's personality. Sometimes it's hormones. Sometimes it's a bad teacher. Additionally, a teacher who is great with gifted students may be terrible with some kinds of special education students and vice versa for special education teachers. You put a good suburban teacher from a high-performing district into an urban district with multiple gangs, national origins, domestic issues and economic levels, and some of them would be completely lost. They'd be taking sick and personal leave and popping pills to cope. The bottom line is that a teacher is great partly because of the fit between the teacher's interests, values and skills and the job s/he is given. In part, what causes a poor teacher is a poor hiring decision leading to a poor fit. Sometimes, all it takes to make a bad teacher good is a new job assignment. (That should sound a Red Alert, because sometimes all it takes to make a good teacher bad is a poor job assignment intentionally made to get rid of the teacher). What might happen if a particular teacher showing poor performance of his or her students while teaching in a district of socioeconomically disadvantaged students were to move to a school of more-advantaged students? It would be expected that grades would be higher. Would the teacher’s skill have improved? I think not. If the value-added method of performance is used, the absolute performance of students is irrelevant. What matters is the amount of improvement attained relative to a statistically derived expected improvement. Is there a way to take into account socioeconomic factors when defining measurements? I wouldn’t even hazard a guess. Probably shouldn't be writing a letter about things you don't know. Finally, it seems to me that student effort has a very important effect on student performance, however measured. How many parents berate a teacher if their child brings home a bad report card? I don’t know of any. Parents hold their children accountable. Why, then, do the education commissioner and governor abdicate student responsibility to a teacher’s skill? Because teachers claim they are the most important factor in the education of students. If that's not true, maybe we should be paying someone else to get better student outcomes, or at least spreading the money among those who make a difference rather than allocating it all to staff. Although not directly mentioned here, many teachers think they should be excused from poor student outcomes when the student is absent a lot -- one manifestation of poor effort. The idea is that a student can't learn from the teacher if s/he isn't in class. But part of being a teacher, and what makes for great teachers, is the ability to motivate students to come to class and to learn. In fact, I would guess that is about 30% of the difference between the best and worst teachers. You can't give teachers a waiver for poor student attendance. Additionally, some students actually learn better when they are absent a lot. My daughter was absent from school for 3 consecutive weeks, which under evaluation models demanded by some teachers, means her performance couldn't be used to hurt a teacher's evaluation. But during her absence, her mother and I taught her and she earned high-level As on everything -- even under the duress of recovering from a serious illness. Teachers know this happens, so they will likely ask for a rule that prevents harm to their evaluations from absences but fully integrates all benefits from them, even though their instruction has nothing to do with it. They may make a phone call once a week just so they can argue their 5 minute encouragement causes 100% of the learning. Stephen Mintz Ballston Lake The writer is a substitute teacher. A way to measure teacher effectiveness A Schenectady (NY) Gazette Letter to the Editor Feb 14, 2012 | Page A7 Re Feb. 9 letter, “Unfair to blame teachers stuck with bad students,” by Stephen Mintz: First, let me say to Stephen that no student is bad. You may call them struggling students, but not bad. A struggling student placed with a teacher who has mastered her craft will know how to get the very best from that student. I agree that measuring a teacher’s success on norm-based test will not work. However, if these struggling students were measured yearly, both at beginning and end of the school year, say, using a Woodcock Johnson 3 test of achievement; that is a way to measure a child’s performance and the teacher’s. Students whose learning comes naturally will always show gains on these test. But struggling students will only show gains if the teacher has properly taught them. I hope [the] governor will adopt this method in his design for measuring students and teachers. PATRICE WELSH Glenville The writer is a parent of a dyslexic student.
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| Jerry Moore (Admin) Board Administrator Username: Admin Post Number: 29296 Registered: 01-2000 Rating: N/A |
Teacher scores are tough test for schools; Bedford progresses on new evaluations Written by Gary Stern / White Plains (NY) Journal News Feb. 5, 2012 * * * Bedford is one of the region’s school districts that is furthest along in hashing out the new evaluation requirements, closing its ears as Gov. Andrew Cuomo, the federal government and New York State United Teachers trade insults over why the system is difficult to set up. Cuomo has threatened to withhold state aid from districts that don’t have new evaluations in place by January. * * * State law requires that annual teacher evaluations be based 20 percent on how students progress on state tests, 20 percent on local tests or other measures, and 60 percent on classroom observations. * * * Bedford is among those districts that will produce teacher scores at the end of this school year. * * * *
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| Jerry Moore (Admin) Board Administrator Username: Admin Post Number: 29246 Registered: 01-2000 Rating: N/A |
Under education reform, school principals swamped by teacher evaluations School principals, including some who back more rigorous review of teachers, are balking at education reforms required by Race to the Top. New teacher evaluations are all-consuming, they say. By Amanda Paulson, Christian Science Monitor Staff writer January 26, 2012 Sharon McNary believes in having tough teacher evaluations. But these days, the Memphis principal finds herself rushing to cram in what amounts to 20 times the number of observations previously required for veteran teachers – including those she knows are excellent – sometimes to the detriment of her other duties. “I don’t think there’s a principal that would say they don’t agree we don’t need a more rigorous evaluation system,” says Ms. McNary, who is president of the Tennessee Principals Association as well as principal at Richland Elementary. “But now it seems that we’ve gone to [the opposite] extreme.” In New York, which is also beginning to implement a new teacher evaluation system this year, many principals are even less constrained in their opinion. “There is no evidence that any of this works,” says Carol Burris, a Long Island principal who co-authored an open letter of concern with more than 1,200 other principals in the state. “Our worry is that over time these practices are going to hurt kids and destroy the positive culture of our schools.” There is never any evidence that new things will work. Does that mean new things can never be tried in public schools? * * * *
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| Jerry Moore (Admin) Board Administrator Username: Admin Post Number: 29209 Registered: 01-2000 Rating: N/A |
Lawmakers blast online teacher evaluations in Kansas Kansas legislators give cool reception to Brownback’s plan, which is part of his effort to overhaul school financing. By BRENT D. WISTROM / Kansas City Star Topeka correspondent Jan 26, 2012 TOPEKA -- Gov. Sam Brownback is proposing that evaluations of Kansas teachers be posted online for the public to see. Are they highly effective, effective, progressing or ineffective? * * * The measure would prohibit any student from being taught by educators rated ineffective two years in a row. And it would let districts fire a teacher designated as ineffective two years in a row — if that teacher had had a chance to get professional development to address the shortcomings. No other professional gets two years to remediate. It's 30 to 60 days, then OUT! Who's going to let an ineffective pilot fly for 2 years or an ineffective surgeon operate for 2 years?!! * * * *
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| Jerry Moore (Admin) Board Administrator Username: Admin Post Number: 29194 Registered: 01-2000 Rating: N/A |
New N.C. teacher data coming By Ann Doss Helms / Charlotte (NC) Observer Jan. 19, 2012 * * * The state will post school-by-school numbers on teacher evaluation results in five categories, which range from subject knowledge to ability to deal with diversity. The report does not spell out how individual teachers rated. * * * "What it should tell the public is there are some good teachers in every school, and in every school there are some that need to improve in certain areas," Garland said this week. * * * *
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| Jerry Moore (Admin) Board Administrator Username: Admin Post Number: 29175 Registered: 01-2000 Rating: N/A |
Tennessee teachers urge evaluation changes Written by Chas Sisk / The Tennessean Jan. 19, 2012 The Tennessee Education Association is calling on Gov. Bill Haslam and state lawmakers to revise the state’s new teacher evaluation system and throw out the results from this year. * * * “We would like to ensure that nowhere in the state are teachers being held to any kind of negative implications from this year’s evaluations,” Summerford said. “There are just too many variables, too many problems, too many discrepancies.” * * * *
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| Jerry Moore (Admin) Board Administrator Username: Admin Post Number: 29112 Registered: 01-2000 Rating: N/A |
Cuomo’s bullying of teachers on evaluation system isn’t going to work By John Metallo / Schenectady (NY) Gazette January 22, 2012 * * * The governor also has threatened that if the Education Department and NYSUT don’t get their act together, he will implement his very own teacher evaluation system and will attach it to the budget.... * * * Ultimately, they [the governor and legislature] do not control teacher evaluation and they should not, any more than they should evaluate doctors, lawyers or any other profession. No amount of bullying is going to change that. What an idiot. Of course the governor and legislature control the evaluation of state employee doctors and lawyers and all other professions within the state. The obligation to provide a public education is mandated by the constitution. So, of course, the state has all the authority it needs to control public school teacher evaluations. John Metallo, a former teacher and administrator, lives in Slingerlands.
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| Jerry Moore (Admin) Board Administrator Username: Admin Post Number: 29077 Registered: 01-2000 Rating: N/A |
Cuomo set to impose teacher evaluation system if unions balk By ERIK KRISS, FREDRIC U. DICKER and YOAV GONEN / NEW YORK POST Exclusive January 17, 2012 Gov. Cuomo will give New York’s teachers one month to agree to a statewide performance evaluation plan — or he’ll write his own educator-rating scheme into the budget for legislative approval, The Post has learned. In the ultimatum — which Cuomo will level at the United Federation of Teachers and New York State United Teachers as he presents his budget today — the governor will also insist the state union drop its lawsuit challenging certain provisions of the evaluation system, a source close to the administration said. The governor would have up to 30 days to present a budget amendment that spells out the details of a teacher-rating system, something he promises to do if the unions don’t sign on. Districts would then have until early next January to get the new system up and running or else the state would withhold a 4 percent increase in school aid, sources said. That time frame would also keep the feds from pulling more than $700 million in Race to the Top and other education funds that are contingent upon the adoption of a meaningful evaluation system of New York’s educators. A source close to the teachers unions claimed Cuomo is taking the hard stance only because he has already been informed that unions and districts are already nearing a resolution on the evaluation system. The ratings system, which calls for an expedited process for removing teachers who rank near the bottom for two straight years, was supposed to cover math and reading teachers in grades 4 to 8 this year. The statewide system was signed into law in 2010 and approved by the state Board of Regents last year, but it crumbled this winter when school districts and unions couldn’t round out certain details. * * * Additional reporting by David Seifman
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| Jerry Moore (Admin) Board Administrator Username: Admin Post Number: 29059 Registered: 01-2000 Rating: N/A |
Bad teachers 'will be sacked after a term' AFP via Yahoo! News Jan 13, 2012 Teaching unions clashed with ministers on Friday over plans to let state schools in England sack underperforming teachers after just a term. The changes would allow staff to be removed from the classroom after nine weeks rather than the current minimum of 24 weeks, although it often takes far longer. The leader of the biggest teaching union said the tougher regime, due to start in September, could end up as a "bully's charter". "The changes to the appraisal and capability policies will rightly be seen by teachers as an attack on their professionalism," said Christine Blower, general secretary of the National Union of Teachers (NUT). "What the government proposes is potentially a bully's charter." But the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) trade union said the plans were in the "best interests" of teachers. "The simplest way to protect teachers is to be seen to be taking responsibility for our own performance," said Russell Hobby, its general secretary. "There is so much good practice out there that I think the profession has nothing to fear," he added. Under the new arrangements first announced last May, a three-hour limit on observing teachers in the classroom for assessment will also be scrapped, allowing schools to decide their own observation times. Teachers will be assessed every year on key skills. Ministers are also consulting on plans to let schools share information on whether a teacher is being investigated for poor performance. This could prevent incompetent teachers from moving from school to school, the government says. Education Secretary Michael Gove said schools had been "tangled in red tape" for too long when dealing with underperforming staff. "Nobody benefits when poor teaching is tolerated," said Gove. "It puts pressure on other teachers and undermines children's education." * * * *
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| Jerry Moore (Admin) Board Administrator Username: Admin Post Number: 28983 Registered: 01-2000 Rating: N/A |
Will Bureaucratic Evaluation Systems Nourish Great Teaching? Julia Steiny / Education News Jan. 4, 2012 Stop. Take a deep breath. What do we hope to accomplish with America’s new fanaticism for teacher evaluation? Other than ridding ourselves of the small proportion of truly wretched teachers – at long, long last! – will these evaluation systems promote excited, avid teaching and learning? Will they rally public support for teachers and their work? Or will they be yet another exercise in using data to enforce compliance, like No Child Left Behind (NCLB)? NCLB was a howling success at pushing states and districts to build robust and useful data systems. But then it used the data to focus on failure. It did not disseminate examples of kids and teachers working well and HAPPILY together and, by the way, kicking butt on the numbers – the tests, attendance and graduation rates. It did not promote vibrant, engaged teaching. Given America’s generally simplistic and punitive mindset, we tend to use numbers as bludgeons. In a moment I’ll suggest how we might make the numbers more useful. But first let’s remember that NCLB’s emphasis on meeting-the-numbers-or-bust led to an epidemic of testing scandals. And its achievement gains were impressively modest considering the money and angst that went into getting them. Evaluating teachers seems to be school reform’s new silver bullet. The harsh light of punitive “accountability” is turning to individual teachers. How are fair evaluations of employees harsh and punitive? Julia is right that this evaluation fire drill will do next to nothing to improve education, but she is entirely wrong to distort the endeavor. Educators seem to believe that only praise is appropriate. That's why under current evaluation systems 99% of teachers get superior ratings in some places. How has this improved education? It hasn't. All it has done is to give educators inflated notions about how good they are. The idea is that if they believe they are great they have a better chance of actually becoming great. It's the predecessor of the self-esteem movement for students, which has produced students with inflated notions about how good they are. Mind you, teacher evaluations and data systems are both critical to improving education. Teachers need and deserve rich feedback on their work so they can promote and model life-long learning. Data helps them and their colleagues confirm the fruits of their labor and flag points of weakness. But the most recent effort, the federal Race to the Top grant process, pushed states to create evaluation systems in which student test scores often count for as much as 50 percent of the evaluations. NCLB set the absurd goal of having all kids 100 percent proficient by 2014. Is this teacher-evaluation 50 percent similarly realistic? Won’t these numeric targets for individual teachers just add more heat to the boiling crock-pots that so many frustrated, struggling schools already are? The NCLB goal of 100% proficiency was necessary to impress upon educators that they need to work as hard as they can to meet the goal. Of course, with guaranteed jobs, effort remained practically unchanged, and the same can be said of student performance. The problem here is that the system of subject-based classroom instruction is the core limiting factor of education outcomes. No amount of tinkering--not NCLB and not new evaluations--can change that. The only way to dramatically improve education outcomes is to remove instruction duties from teachers to the greatest extent feasible and to create real-life simulations that integrate knowledge and skills from multiple subjects into schools designed for The 21st Century Student. Furthermore, districts are turning themselves into pretzels trying to apply the state test scores to evaluations of teachers who do not teach tested subjects or grades. “Fair” evaluation systems must apply the rules equally to gym, music, 4th grade and biology teachers. What a lot of work, and for what? Public relations teams in districts and states are frantically asserting that these new evals will be “formative.” They’ll provoke rich conversations about teaching. They will not be witch hunts. I’m dubious. The numbers will get in the way. Because the real problem of public school evaluations is devising a system that will stand up to a court challenge. No matter how incompetent, teachers have every right to insist their union fight for their jobs. If the case goes to court and the district loses, the whole system is shot down. So just to make evaluations minimally viable, they must be based on objective, verifiable, unquestionable data. So here’s what could happen. Since district administrations are the ones with the data systems, they could generate crisp, easy-to-read data analyses about problem teachers and ask nicely that the unions exercise some quality control. For example, a GoLocalProv analysis of the Providence School Department data revealed that 37 percent of the teachers were absent 19 days or more. That’s over 10 percent of a 180-day year. Furthermore, 11.5 percent were out twice that much time. Start there. Certain kinds of bad teachers are easily flagged with readily-available data. Union officials could quietly point out that the data strongly indicate that the teacher’s not really into his job. Maybe there’s a story behind the data. Maybe classroom mold has been making a certain teacher sick a lot. Okay, unions are generally good at helping teachers solve those kinds of problems. But if they find a teacher who persists in abusing sick leave, they could explain that the data make it unwise or unethical to expend union dues protecting him or her. Think: the American Medical Association and the Bar Association maintain standards for the profession and weed out those who ignore them. These associations are NOT unions. They have no duty to defend and protect their members from any form of unfairness. Their allegiance is to the profession. If unions were the ones to show up asking questions about non-controversial data like absenteeism, the ranks of the obviously bad would thin quickly. Pure nonsense. Absentee rates vary around the country. There is no correlation between low absentee rates and high staff effectiveness. And even if there is a correlation between individual performance and absences, sick employees have the right to take time off. What are you going to do about that? Take away sick leave? I doubt it. Require notes from doctors? So what? When MN teachers took off from school to protest legislation, doctors wrote notes for them saying that they need to be absent from work for health reasons! That's right. They needed to protest anti-union legislation because if they didn't, they would worry themselves sick. Doctors aren't an effective means of preventing abuse of sick leave. Besides, it's not the absent teachers who aren't effective, it's their substitutes. You expect unions to hold that against the full-time teacher? The public would applaud. Achievement might rise. The perpetual promise of improvement without producing it. Decades have passed with promises following one abandoned reform after another. And the stupid reasons for poor teaching would be addressed quickly and discretely. The unions could start shedding their reputation for protecting incompetence. Union help with removing dead wood would go a long way to defuse the adversarial standoff that bogs down many of our schools. Most importantly, it would free ALL parties for a cooperative conversation about what makes terrific teaching. When the meaning of “quality” is more clearly fleshed out, and adapted to each kind of teacher, THEN we can work on evaluations that will help us be absolutely sure all kids are getting what they need from us. Without bludgeons. So much of teachers’ daily frustration concerns non-compliance among the kids. They’re ill-mannered and disengaged. But brow-beating teachers into compliance with numerical goals threatens to make them as surly and uncooperative as those kids. It’s no way to nourish teachers stoking students’ appetite for learning. The only reason they can become surly and uncooperative is because they can't be fired for doing it. Employees who can be fired for any reason, or no reason, have to deal numerical goals or go hungry. They do it and they keep their bad attitudes, if any, at home. Educators want only praise and encouragement. That's what they've had for decades. It hasn't worked. Which should be the point of teacher evaluations.
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| Jerry Moore (Admin) Board Administrator Username: Admin Post Number: 28973 Registered: 01-2000 Rating: N/A |
A Push to Have Students Evaluate Teachers by REBECCA VEVEA | Chicago News Cooperative Dec 20, 2011 The Chicago Public Schools and the Chicago Teachers Union opened negotiations earlier this month on a state-mandated requirement about what should–and should not–be included in teachers’ performance evaluations. CPS and the union have until March to grapple with the specific terms, such as what tests to use for measuring academic growth, how much the results should factor into the evaluations, and how to measure the performance of teachers whose subjects are not tested on state exams. To add to the mix, an organized group of public school students, the Voices of Youth in Chicago Education (VOYCE), are preparing a formal request to CPS in the coming months to include student input in the new teacher evaluation system. Some teachers want their students to weigh in on their performance. “I think my students are in a unique position to evaluate me because they are the only people who see me teach every day of the year,” said Alex Seeskin, an English teacher at Lakeview High School. Still, many Chicago teachers remain hesitant and the CTU has not formally endorsed the inclusion of student surveys. Last month, CPS and the Chicago Public Education Fund released a report [pdf] that summarized the feedback they received from teachers on new evaluations. Many were concerned that students may be “too immature” to evaluate teachers, turning the measure into a “popularity contest.” “I think students are mature enough to recognize the difference between a teacher who they like but don’t learn anything from and a teacher that they don’t like but expands their mind,” Seeskin said, but noted that student input should probably count for less than 10 percent of a teacher’s evaluation. Preliminary results from a two-year, national research project show higher achievement on test scores among students who said their teacher challenged them, kept them on task, made lessons interesting and cleared up confusion. Results from the second year of the study, called Measures of Effective Teaching, are expected to be released in January. * * * *
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| Jerry Moore (Admin) Board Administrator Username: Admin Post Number: 28967 Registered: 01-2000 Rating: N/A |
Teacher Evaluation Effort Derails By LISA FLEISHER / WALL STREET JOURNAL Dec. 31, 2011 Plans for a new teacher rating system for New York City schools that would include measures of student performance—a hallmark of national education reform efforts—were dealt a setback on Friday after negotiations broke down between the city and the teachers union. * * * State Commissioner John King called the breakdown "beyond disappointing" and said he'd seen "no evidence of real progress" on an agreement over several months. "The adults in charge of the city's schools have let the students down," he said in a statement on Friday. "The failure to reach agreements on evaluations leaves thousands of students mired in the same educational morass." * * * *
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