This new evaluation system will be a nightmare.
The VAM that will be used to evaluate teachers via test scores is biased and inaccurate.
The SLO process that will be created will be unworkable.
And the UFT leadership knows the whole thing has been put together to increase the number of teachers who are "U" rated and fired every year and. according to this Accountable Talk post, are on board with that.
Get ready for a very bad time, folks, with "ineffective" ratings coming to teachers all over the system based upon a value-added algorithm with a margin of error bigger than Bloomberg's ego, a student learning objective process so convoluted that no one will know how to do it, and a Danielson rubric so complex that a teacher can be "I-Rated" for hundreds of reasons, many of which will be immaterial to her/his quality as a teacher.
For this we pay the salaries of Michael Mulgrew and the rest of the UFT leadership?
We can DO BETTER THAN THIS.
As soon as the deal is announced, and it should be announced any day now, it is time to hang this thing around Muglrew's neck.
Make sure every time you talk to your colleagues about the the unworkable SLO's, the error-riddled VAM, the insanity of adding tests to every subject in every grade simply to grade teachers, you call this MULGREW'S EVALUATION SYSTEM.
Mulgrew doesn't have to agree to this system.
He can take to the airwaves and tell parents EXACTLY what it entails:
Tests in every subject in every grade, both city and state, simply to grade teachers.
A value-added measurement using those scores that is error-riddled and unstable.
A classroom observation rubric with a checklist the size of War and Peace.
An evaluation system that puts the test makers and data crunchers first, the children last.
Money and resources stripped from the classroom and given over to testing.
That's the message they ought to be sending out.
But instead there is silence out of 52 Broadway.
You can take that silence as surrender and acquiescence for Cuomo's and Bloomberg's fear-based, test-based education reform movement.
Do you think Karen Lewis and the CTU would be agreeing to this deal?
Do you think they would be silent in the face of the lies and distortions put out there by the media, the politicians, and the ed deform movement?
We can do better than this, folks,
We NEED to do better.
We Need MORE.
I work in a school where they are a bunch of sheep. The principal has been completely unprofessional and has done so many illegal things, that there were investigators there all last year. In every SBO vote they gave the principal everything. It is so disgusting. I will go around and tell everyone in my building to vote no on anything that the sellout union leadership sends our way, because it will screw teachers royally. And while we grab our ankle and beg "sir" for another, Mulgrew, Bloomberg, Klein & Weingarten will get together and toast another job well done. Disgusting, it is completely shameful.
ReplyDeleteThere will be no vote on this. It will be agreed to by Mulgrew and the leadership and we will have to abide by it.
Delete"I will go around and tell everyone in my building to vote no on anything that the sellout union leadership sends our way, because it will screw teachers royally." Teach my class... It won't matter since Mulgrew and Unity decides this by themselves without any real input from teachers inside the classrooms. What you can do is spread the truth ASAP as to what is really happening. Use a FB account if possible or spread the word verbally or through copies within your building like I have. Might not make a difference but atleast we tried.
ReplyDeleteHe'll be most vulnerable to most uninterested teachers (the sheep) when he agrees to it without a new contract to gibalong with it (and Im convinced at this point that he will). That's what most everyone who isn't a blogger is telling me they're upset about. That's what should be hung around his neck.
ReplyDeleteThen again, I got all over Leo Casey on Twitter about that last night (they were having a nice, civilized debate about teacher training programs) and no one (including a few MORE people) seemed to care. I think they were more upset that I trolled their friendly debate.
Sometimes I wonder if activitsts talk in depth to teachers who aren't interested in being active and just want to go about their business without paying much attention to this stuff,p. THOSE PEOPLE are pissed -not at the idea of VAM (they don't see themselves as defending the profession) but at the idea of not getting a raise to go along with the extra workload -and there is going to be an enormous increase in the workload from the APPR with absolutey no contact to go with it.
What most folks here see as two different issues (eval and contract) the (many) other folks who don't do those things see as one. I'm franklyna little surprised that that's not reflected in more of the blogs.
tweet, blog, comment or blog or read see
(more typos than usual there. Pardon)
DeleteI never thought a contract was in the offing on this. I never understood why people thought that was going to be the case. It is clear to me that Bloomberg is never going to give a contract that keeps salary steps and differentials - all he will give now, post-New Haven, post-Baltimore, post-Newark, is a contract that is merit pay-based. So why anybody ever thought they were going to get a contract out of this APPR deal is beyond me. Maybe I'm just more cynical then most. Check that: I am more cynical then most. But I have always expected a total sell-out on APPR without the incentive of a signed contract. I know some union hacks have given indications a contract would come from this. But the cynic n me doesn't believe that they are not totally capable of going with a backroom sell-out instead and dropping the one bargaining chip we have as teachers and as a union.
DeleteAs for the rank and file, for a long while most teachers in my school did not even know this was happening to them. I have tried to tell them about this stuff, first when RttT was happening, then two years ago when King and Tisch were pushing APPR, then last Jan/Feb when Cuomo was pushing for the APPR deadline and the change to the 20% test score criteria. Most people ho hummed it, saying nothing would really change, it was just more bullshit.
But this year, some of those very teachers have had their eyes opened as they've been forced to go to two focus groups a week, do instructional rounds, attend PLC's and all the rest of the mostly useless jive that's been added to our job description not to make us better teachers but simply to suck our energies and our souls of the resources we need to do our jobs.
That's the change I am seeing in people. They now believe that the leadership at Tweed and the state mean business in destroying the profession and the union seems either powerless or uninterested in stopping them.
The Hurricane Sandy PD Friday and the stolen Feb days add to the misery people are feeling.
I dunno if the Unity and NA hacks know it or not, but there is a lot of hostility out there and for the first time that I can remember, even apolitical people are starting to aim it at the union leadership and Muglrew.
Lump me in with that last group. The past few months have been a real eye-opener for me
DeleteI would love to be able to trust the people at Tweed, the NYSED, the Regents, the governor's office, City Hall, the USDOE and the White House on education issues. And I didn't start my career this cynical and hardened to reform. But it has become clear to me over my 12 years teaching that these people are not trying to improve schools or education. They use the language of fairness and equality and justice, but their actions speak of unfairness, inequality and injustice.
DeleteJust look at the way they starve schools they want to move charters into - look at what the DOE and Eva Moskowitz are doing to the students at Innovation Diploma Plus by sending them packing years before Eva needs the space. Are those the actions of people who actually care about students or schools? Or are those the actions of powerful people with ulterior motives?
To me, they're the latter. Same goes for Walcott's refusal to conduct mold tests in PS 114. What was that about? He wants to save a few bucks? Meanwhile when they do test, they find mold AND asbestos AND copper in the water. Putting kids and staff at risk, and they're the guys who claim it's "Children first. Always"?
So listen, I wish my cynicism was off base and I could be more open-hearted to the reform movement. But my experience with many of them (not all, but many) is that they are disingenuous about their motives and agenda at best, totally dishonest at worst.
One deformer I kinda like, Rick Hess, put it all out there in that Ed Week piece about Common Core recently. If you didn't get a chance to see that, take a look. It really gets to the heart of why so many in the deform movement cannot be trusted:
http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/rick_hess_straight_up/2012/11/the_common_core_kool-aid.html
Or the head of the Michigan Education Reform Task Force who admitted in print that the destruction of the public education system was the goal of his task force:
http://perdidostreetschool.blogspot.com/2012/12/head-of-education-reform-task-force.html
It's difficult to collaborate or work with groups of people who want to destroy you. And that's what we have in the deform movement. That's why I have been opposed to APPR from the beginning. It was quite clear to me that King, Tisch, and Cuomo had ulterior motives for pushing it that had nothing to do with improving schools but everything to do with improving the state's and the districts' bottom lines.