UFT Spins The Evaluation System As A Win

NYC Educator has a post up this morning noting that  Peter Goodman, retired Unity hack extraordinaire, left a comment at Gotham Charter Schools on their post about the just released teacher evaluation results.

Goodman wrote the following:

On the just released state teacher evaluation 50% of teachers were "highly effective" and 41% "effective" with 1% "ineffective," these do include NYC, our plan just started, so, just maybe, teachers were overreacting .. On the grades 3-8 scores teachers in NYC scored considerably better than the rest of the state.
Take a deep breath, maybe the guys and gals who negotiated the plan on the union side knew what they were doing.

Coming from Goodman, that's the official UFT spin, but I can tell you in my school, teachers don't care to take a deep breath as they worry about the Danielson rubric, teach the same short story for 17 straight lessons as part of the NYSED curriculum module project, collect "artifacts" so that they can document they're not incompetent, grade thousands of "performance assessments" in September and worry how the June performance assessments are going to go when the kids are all tested out, and wonder just how the state plans to compare the Regents results to the PSAT scores and churn out a value-added measurement for them.

Goodman, as usual, is putting a friendly spin on a UFT sell-out, but given that he writes all this from the comfort of his living room and doesn't have to set foot into a classroom and worry about VAM, Danielson, lesson modules, et al., he has no idea what he is talking about.

If he got out of his living room once in a while and went to visit with the teachers who were not part of the Unity/New Action chorus line, he might even learn how little he knows about how teachers are receiving the new evaluation system with the 4-6 observations, the lost tenure protections and the 40% testing component.

The UFT leadership insulates itself from the rank and file and they shut down any dissent at their political functions.

That insularity and imperial way of running the union has kept the Unity people in power for a long, long time, but it also isolates them from what's going on with the rank and file, since they never really talk to any members who aren't already yes "guys and gals."

In the end, if the Unity/New Action leadership wants to think it can spin its way into making people like the evaluation system, go for it guys and gals.

You have no idea how much rank and file members hate it and how willing rank and file members are to take their anger and frustration out on the UFT leadership that signed off on Race to the Top and negotiated this piece of garbage.

As NYC Educator wrote:

With all due respect, comments like Goodman's don't reflect the remotest notion of what's going on out here with those of us who actually work for a living. While I'm beginning to see this as UFT party line, I hope for all our sakes they come up with something better.

I pity the chapter leader who has to tell members facing high-stakes evaluation, "Take a deep breath, the guys and gals at UFT did a swell job."

I agree with everything NYC Educator wrote except for that "with all due respect" part.

I have no respect for Unity/New Actions hacks - especially retired ones - who write how swell everything is from the comfort of their living rooms.