The Worse King's System Is, The Better It Is

The Daily News and the Post editorial boards are asking NYSED Commissioner/rookie teacher John King to institute the harshest, most punitive teacher evaluation system in the state.

NYSED Commissioner/rookie teacher John King is going to announce what the new system will be tomorrow at 4 PM.

The spinning has already begun, with UFT President and APPR pom-pom supporter Michael Mulgrew sending out an email to members last night telling them he believes the King system will be fair because the union helped develop it.

It's difficult to see how rookie teacher/charter proponent John King, the man who saw no issue with the Hare and Pineapple Pearson piece and who has defended every piece of crap corporate reform the state has pushed with every breath he has, will give us a fair evaluation system.

Rather, it is more likely that the system will be as punitive as the DN and Posties want it.

But in the end, the worse the system is, the better it is.

Because the more complex and convoluted they make it, the more they use junk science like value-added measurements that suffer from wide swings in stability and large margins of error, the more they add absurdities like growth measures on Student Learning Objectives that entail keeping student portfolios in every subject in every grade that will be used not to assess student performance but to evaluate whether teachers have "added value" to their students' performances, the more they force the Our Way Or The Highway lesson plan onto every teacher, the more likely this piece of garbage will fall apart under its own unworkability or die under the weight of court challenges.

There are, of course, two problems with this:

First, there will be teachers whose careers and reputations will be destroyed while that is playing out.

That is the most tragic part of this whole mess.

Second, Michael Mulgrew and the UFT leadership are bragging how this is their baby, how they helped develop it and how, if there are problems, it will not be with the system itself but rather with the implementation of the system by the DOE.

That suggests to me that the UFT leadership will not be challenging this system in court any time soon, unlike the Buffalo union, and if we in NYC want protection from it, we're going to have to mount the court challenges without the help of the UFT.

But even that problem might have a positive side effect.

See, that will show UFT members how little the UFT leadership cares about them or can protect them from the ravages of the corporate education reform movement and how, maybe they need a new UFT leadership who can do just that.

So in the end, I say, give the Posties and the DN and the DFER's and the Asshats and the rest of edu-reformers their harsh, punitive system with the many different moving parts.

Because in the end, the worse you make this system, the more complex and convoluted you make it, the more you rig the system so that a teacher can be ranked effective or developing on all three parts but still be ranked ineffective overall, the more likely this will not last.