Mulgrew Admits He Doesn't Think The State's Value-Added Model Will Be Any Better Than The City's VAM Model

Wow - check out this doozy of a statement from UFT President Mike Mulgrew today:

In their lawsuit attempting to stop the ratings from being released, United Federation of Teachers officials identified more than 200 such errors. UFT President Michael Mulgrew said today that the errors showed that the city had not been respectful of teachers in developing or releasing the ratings.

“This was a complete debacle in terms of how the DOE has handled [the reports] and the mismanagement of the data inside of the system,” he said.

Asked whether he thought the state’s model would avoid the pitfalls the UFT identified in the city’s reports, Mulgrew said, ”I’m not confident.”

But he said the state’s evaluation requirements are an improvement over the Teacher Data Reports because the new evaluations will showcase the value-added calculations alongside other measures of teacher quality.

Okay, let me get this straight - Mulgrew's not confident that the state's VAM model will be an improvement over the city's VAM model used in the TDR's - you know, the one with the margin of error as high as 75% in math and as high as 87% in ELA - but he STILL agreed to make it THE determining factor in a teacher's evaluation?

After all, come up "ineffective" on the part of the eval based just on test scores (40%) and you have to be declared "ineffective" overall as a teacher, no matter how you score on the other 60% based upon classroom observations and other measures.

Two consecutive years of that ignominious "ineffective" designation and you're fired.

And STILL Mulgrew of the UFT and Iannuzzi of the NYSUT agreed to that evaluation system even though Mulgrew's not confident that it will be any better than the one the city used with the high MOE's and the wide swings in variability?

Gee - that makes no sense.

Mulgrew better send out Lying Leo Casey to spin that doozy.

Leo is a master crafter of b.s., so perhaps he can spin this into something people support.

But on the face of the statement Mulgrew made to Gotham Schools today, the UFT president is saying he agreed to a teacher evaluation system based on student test scores that he lacks confidence in.