Teacher Evaluation Changes

Watching the Regents meeting for the teacher evaluation changes.

This is going to be a nightmare.

Winning the Race to the Top money was the rationale for making all these changes.

The award was $700 million dollars.

It is going to cost at least double that to create and administer these new "assessments" (i.e., tests.)

How many tests are going to be given in order to grade teachers?

Dunno, but it's going to be a lot of them.

Observations are going to skyrocket - ap's and principals are going to do nothing but observations.

One member of the Regents (didn't get his name) just said this is a nightmare evaluation system, he intends to vote no because it is too costly a system, it is too cumbersome and it's not particularly effective.

Tisch, Steiner and King are stepping up after each criticism to push back and shill for the changes.

I will go out on a limb here - I think within five years of the evaluation changes, the system will have to be changed again because this one - with so much emphasis on high stakes tests, so much additional work for administrators - just isn't going to be workable.

Especially because education levels of children aren't going to improve through these changes.

And when parents figure out that their children are going to be taking high stakes tests in every subject at every grade multiple times a year, well, I just think there will be a rebellion.

We'll see.

I hope if this happens, the people who put this into place - Obama, Duncan, Steiner, Tisch, King, Cuomo - will be suitably blamed for the results.

The education system, starting in math and English next year, every subject after that, will be all test prep all the time.

UPDATE: So the new evaluation system either will have students taking BOTH local "assessments" and state "assessments" in order to grade teachers (20% for each, then in a few years, 25% for the state, 15% for the local) or just the state assessments (for 40% of the teacher's evaluation.)

Children could be taking two high stakes tests a year in every subject - math, ELA, social studies, science, foreign language - for a total of 10 high stakes tests a year.

Oh, yeah - this will improve education.

We have a difficult time now trying to get students motivated for five Regents exam over a four year high school career.

Wait'll they have to take 10 tests a year.

Thousands of teachers are going to be declared "ineffective" in this system.

These will be excellent teachers who will be publicly humiliated and fired for no other reason than that the system devised is a bad one and either politicians want to be seen to be doing something about the "education crisis" so they're doing this without much forethought about the "unintended consequences" or their deliberately trying to fire thousands of teachers, bust the unions, break up school systems and sell them off to Merryl Tisch's brother for online schooling.