Daily News: Superintendents Warned By The DOE That The Teacher Data Reports Were Unreliable For Tenure Decisions

Okay, I think this ought to rank as a bombshell considering how Bloomberg and Tweed were happy to have the news media publish these TDR's with names and photos attached:

Education officials lacked confidence in the controversial ratings of teachers who oversaw the city’s highest- and lowest-performing students, cautioning schools about considering them in tenure decisions, the Daily News has learned.

The city Education Department called superintendents last spring about the shakiness of ratings for teachers at the very top and bottom of the spectrum, which 33% of all ratings, including those of teachers not up for tenure, fell into.

And all of the teachers at more than 30 schools fell into this category, a News analysis finds.

Officials said the ratings were unreliable for teachers whose classes had an average score above 3.4 or below 1.68 out of 4 on the state math and reading exams, because the tests are meant to measure students in the middle and not subtle changes among the highest and lowest performers.

For teachers with classes at the top or bottom, ratings could increase or decrease by 20 points if a class of students, on average, got one more question right or wrong.

Nearly 3,900 of 11,800 multiyear ratings for all teachers in 2009-10 were based on these classes — meaning they were outside the range the city deemed reliable.

Education Department spokeswoman Barbara Morgan warned superintendents of the 27 teachers in this category who were up for tenure last year.

“We shared this lesson with our schools and with the state as it creates a new model for teacher evaluations,” she said.

And yet they still provided those TDR's to the media to publish with names and photos attached under headlines like NEW YORK'S WORST TEACHERS.

So will the the state do any better with this VAM voodoo?

Doubtful.

And under this new Cuomo-driven evaluation system, teachers will be fired if they come up rated "ineffective" on a value-added measurement PLUS they'll get their names and photo in the paper under headlines like NEW YORK'S WORST TEACHERS.

I'm sure this "scientific" and "objective" system of evaluation will improve education.

I'm sure it will bring in many quality teachers to the state as well.

I mean, who wouldn't want to subject themselves to a voodoo VAM system with high margins of error (as high as 87% in the TDR's) and wide swings in variability and educrats happy to give these numbers out the media and base high stakes personnel decisions on them even though they know they are garbage?