Weingarten And Mulgrew Look To Take Us Backward

If and when the pro-Andrew Cuomo forces backed by UFT President Michael Mulgrew and AFT President Randi Weingarten take over the NYSUT this weekend, the fight that NYSUT President Richard Iannuzzi and others in the NYSUT leadership have shown against Andrew Cuomo, SED Commissioner King and Regents Chancellor Tisch in recent months will disappear, replaced by complacency with the education reform status quo.

That's what this internecine fight in NYSUT, pushed by Mulgrew and Weingarten at a time when teachers and the the unions are most vulnerable across this state, is about - the "collaborationist" union leaders at the UFT and AFT wanting to turn the clock back to a time when the union went along with whatever Andy Cuomo, John King, Merryl Tisch and the plutocrat who owns us all, Bill Gates, want in their education reform agenda.

The way the votes are calculated in this election, the Mulgrew and Weingarten forces of surrender have the upper hand and are expected to win pretty easily.

Given the track record of Mulgarten at the UFT and AFT, that's a very bad thing indeed.

Just recently we watched Randi Weingarten and Michael Mulgrew do NOTHING as Andrew Cuomo took Bill de Blasio to the woodshed over charter school expansions.

The NY Times reported that the de Blasio had no allies in the fight, not even the unions, and soon lost everything to Cuomo and the charter entrepreneurs.

Weingarten issued some muted jive on Twitter about how she criticized the budget, but the truth is, Weingarten and Mulgrew could have mobilized their respective unions to fight these charter giveaways that amount to an absolute right to expansion for charter entrepreneurs on the city's dime, but chose to remain effectively quiet in the fight - a fight literally created by Andrew Cuomo as a payback to his campaign donors.

Michael Fiorillo summed up the AFT/UFT response to Cuomo and the charter entrepreneur putsch like this:

Does this (mis)leadership ever fight anything?

So, the APPR deal, which never should have been agreed to in the first place, will be tweaked - which would have happened anyway, since the admins are being crushed by it - in exchange for allowing charters to run wild, which is guaranteed to reduce UFT membership substantially in the coming years, as the charter cap is enlarged or eliminated altogether.

I have said that the UFT is a dues collection agency, but I was obviously wrong, since a real dues collection agency would have a better sense of self-preservation.

Cuomo and his backers from Hedgistan must be laughing among themselves when they observe the rubes from the UFT; it's no wonder that, behind their occasional condescending remarks, they think of us as chumps.

And:

These people are bought and sold. 

Weingrew thinks that the members will be mollified by a (five year late) contract - obtained while stabbing De Blasio in the back - despite the unending concessions (Common Core, APPR, VAM, charters run wild, etc) that he has made.

Are these people deluded, actually thinking they will organize charter schools? Or is something else allowing them to agree to the public school's and the union's eventual destruction?

That's the leadership we now have poised to take back control of NYSUT after Iannuzzi and others in the NYSUT leadership starting fighting back against the corporate education reform forces by issuing a no-confidence vote in SED Commissioner King, withdrawing support for Common Core and calling for an end to the "Sit and Stare" policies meant to harm children who opt out of state tests.

The Mulgarten forces of surrender aren't very good at protecting teachers because they don't care anything about that - they care only about maintaining their own power and privileges, maintaining their "seat at the table" with Andy Cuomo, Barack Obama and the plutocrat behind those functionaries, Bill Gates.

It's a shame that just when the NYSUT leadership started to show real fight against the corporate education reform forces, Weingarten and Mulgrew decided they needed to take the union backward.

But it shouldn't be a surprise to anybody who is a faithful reader of this blog or Norm Scott's Ed Notes Online, James Eterno's ICEUFT blog, Arthur Goldstein's NYC Educator blog, or Chaz's School Daze blog.

That's what Weingarten and Mulgrew are in power to do - to make it look to members like they're fighting for teachers while in reality they cave on issue after issue after issue.

In my 13 years as a UFT member, I have seen my union "collaborate" to give up seniority rights, tenure protections (make no mistake, APPR does JUST that) and teacher autonomy while agreeing to a new test-based evaluation system so complex no one can explain it (and brag about how good it was!) and Teacher Data Reports that saw teacher's error-riddled test score-based ratings end up in the newspapers with their names attached.

That's the track record of the AFT/UFT Mulgarten forces of surrender and that's what they are about to ensure comes back to the NYSUT again.

God help us all if and when they succeed.

It's Not How Many Tests, It's The Stakes Attached To Them

DFER Joe Williams and TNTP's Tim Daly write in the Daily News over the absurdity of the teachers unions protesting the test score-based teacher evaluation system that they helped put together and push into law:

Lately, student testing has become everyone’s favorite political punching bag. Just this week, New York State United Teachers, the state’s powerful teachers union, issued a statement decrying the proliferation of new tests and insisting on a moratorium for their use in teacher evaluations.

The union didn’t mention its dirty little secret: It’s a big part of the problem. Yet instead of owning up to its role or trying to fix the problem, the union is scapegoating state Education Commissioner John King, Gov. Cuomo and the state Board of Regents.

It’s a little like the Cookie Monster demanding to know who emptied the jar.

Here’s what happened: In 2010, New York joined more than a dozen other states in bringing its outdated teacher evaluation systems out of the Dark Ages. For nearly a century, teachers across the state had been simply deemed either “satisfactory” or “unsatisfactory” by their supervisors. Great teachers got no additional recognition, and almost nobody was ever deemed “unsatisfactory.” State law prohibited student learning outcomes from being considered.

Then, a coalition of New York leaders from both parties came together to pass legislation modernizing educator evaluations and embracing richer learning standards.

Despite the union’s longstanding desire to exclude any connection between student learning and teacher performance assessments, the law decreed that 40% of a teacher’s performance would rest on progress in student learning. Existing state tests would be a factor in the grades where they are given.

But seeking to preserve its considerable clout and ensure that as little weight as possible be given to statewide tests, NYSUT lobbyists sought and won a concession that half of that 40% would be negotiated locally at the bargaining table, where union leverage is often overwhelming.

Fast-forward to today. The union-driven provision has created a monster. To comply with collectively bargained contracts, districts are layering new tests upon tests. Some of them are useful; many are unnecessary.

Now that communities are noticing the trend and complaining that the new tests are taking too much time away from instruction, the union seems to have forgotten all about its role.

The 20%-20% was done so that the unions could tell their members that the test-based rating component for teachers would not be based all on one high stakes test score.

That was supposed to be a better alternative than 40% based on the state tests.

The authors are right to say that the 20%-20% rules are a big part of the overall testing problem.

And they are right to point out the unions agreed to the system and indeed were in at the development of it every step of the way - something I have pointed out over and over and over here at Perdido Street School.

But if the authors think switching the test score-based component to 40% state tests will alleviate the problems with the evaluation system and the overtesting, they are sorely mistaken.

While it is true that the numbers of tests are a problem, the bigger problem is the insane emphasis on testing overall - the high stakes attached to the tests for students, school, administrators and teachers.

You can get rid of all the "local assessments" and just give one state test a year in every subject to every student to evaluate the children, the schools, the administrators and the teachers.

But that will not solve the overtesting problem because the stakes will still be attached to the test scores and the insanity in the system will remain - the endless test prep, the anxiety over the scores, the unreliability of the VAM used to rate the teachers, etc.

In other words, the problems stem not only because of the number of tests given but from the stakes attached that has everybody from students and parents to teachers and administrators in fear if the numbers don't go up.

I should add that the authors fail to acknowledge that the Danielson rubric is another part of the overtesting problem too, since it mandates constant "assessment" - pre-assessments, formative assessments, interim assessments, summative assessments.

It's a nice try by Williams and Daly to blame the unions for the overtesting problem.

They're not wrong to point the finger at the leaderships of the unions and note how these guys helped develop this system (and indeed, still defend it.)

But they are wrong to say that tweaking the number of tests given will fix the problem.

UFT Leadership Defends The ADVANCE Teacher Evaluation System Once Again

Excellent report from James Eterno from yesterday's Delegate's Assembly:

No speakers were permitted to oppose a Unity Caucus resolution reinforced the UFT's support for the evaluation law.  However, the UFT is calling for a moratorium on using the results of high stakes tests for teacher evaluations until alterations to the local portion of the Measures of Student Learning portion of the system can be worked out in contract negotiations.  The Unity sponsored resolution was on the regular agenda.  It was introduced a few minutes after Delegate Megan Moskop from MORE introduced a resolution for next month during the new motion period calling for the UFT to support legislation to scrap the entire teacher evaluation law.

When Megan raised the MORE resolution, Mulgrew had no choice but to allow her to speak on its behalf as it she had obtained the floor.  In Megan's speech, she emphasized how using high stakes tests to evaluate teachers is a huge step back for the teaching profession, our members and the students.  Megan skillfully pointed to some of the points made by Mulgrew in his Presidents' Report about how misuse of standardized testing and education profiteering is bad for kids as well as teachers.

MORE also had excellent literature in support of this resolution which noted that the UFT had a task force report in 2007 that completely opposed  using high stakes tests  in any way shape or form to evaluate teachers. MORE also was highly critical of the Danielson observation system in the resolution saying it "subjects teachers to a cookie-cutter observation system that limits professional autonomy and reduces teaching to a series of numbered scores." Megan received energized applause when she concluded her remarks by saying teachers need a voice and that the entire 3012c law needs to be repealed.

When Megan finished speaking, UFT Vice President Janella Hinds rose to defend the evaluation system law.  Janella said that MORE misunderstood the new system as it rates teachers based on multiple measures which the UFT likes.  This was also emphasized in the Unity Caucus literature that was handed out before the meeting. Janella argued that the new system took the power to rate teachers negatively out of the exclusive hands of principals.  She added that we do not want to go back to the old system where ratings were exclusively the purview of principals.  In addition, Janella objected to the criticism of the Danielson framework which she claimed was not part of the evaluation law. She also disagreed that tenure was weakened under the evaluation law as she pointed out that each teacher rated ineffective would be visited by an independent validator the following year.

Janella also said that the problem was not so much the law as the Department of Education's inept implementation of the law and that is why the UFT filed 17 grievances against the DOE on evaluations.  She closed by saying that how her students do on the Regents is a very important part of what she does and that MORE is trying to organize through fear which is not good. Her remarks were politely, if not enthusiastically, received.

There you have it - the current UFT leadership supports the teacher evaluation law, supports using test scores to evaluate teachers, supports the cookie cutter approach to classroom observations via the Danielson (Teach THIS way or be declared "ineffective"!), believes the evaluation system that they helped devise will be just swell as soon as they conduct some minor tweaks during contract negotiations.

MORE, on the other hand, believes teachers should not be evaluated using test scores (and used the UFT's own rationale from the past on that very issue to support their stance), believes the Danielson rubric does much harm as it allows for only one way of teaching and limits teacher autonomy, believes the new evaluation system destroys tenure and gives more power to the powers-that-be to  harass and fire teachers.

I can say that at my school, an overwhelming number of teachers are much closer to the MORE position on the evaluation system than the UFT leadership's.

If the UFT leadership continues to defend this evaluation system - especially test score-based ratings and Danielson - they are going to find that they have a major rebellion in the ranks on their hands.

There is a lot of FEAR and LOATHING out there over this system, a lot of damage being done to good, effective, professional teachers.

Pity the cronies running the UFT do not care about that.

Teachers will remember this betrayal from the leadership.

Regents Blame Local Districts For Too Much Testing

The state evaluation system requires that teachers be held accountable for their students' test scores.

40% of the evaluation is based on test scores - 20% from state tests, 20% from "local measures."

In order for teachers to be evaluated on the local measures, students in every grade in every subject must be tested at the beginning of the year to get a "baseline" of knowledge so that when they are tested again in every grade in every subject, the state can figure out whether teachers have "added value" to these students over the course of the year.

It's an insane system that requires a ton of "assessments" and "tests" in order to pull it off so that every teacher can be evaluated for their local measures.

Having to give all these "assessments" and "tests" in every grade in every subject so that teachers can be evaluated is not the fault of local school districts - it is the fault of the educrats who put this system together, the legislature that passed it into law, the union leadership that signed off on it despite members like myself warning over-testing was going to be a huge problem, and the governor who signed it into law and forced it onto every school district in the state by tying evaluation system impositions to budget increases.

But of course the Regents and the SED do not take the blame for this mess themselves - oh, no, like Sheriff Andy Cuomo yesterday, they displaced the blame onto others by throwing the responsibility for all the testing onto the local school districts themselves:

Some agreed with King that school districts should take more initiative in reducing the number of tests used locally. The commissioner's aides pointed to what they consider the positive example of districts such as Herricks, which sharply reduced the amount of pre-testing done in the fall to determine students' "baseline" knowledge.

"Sometimes it gets a little tiresome to take all the responsibility for change," said Anthony Bottar of Syracuse, the board's vice chancellor. "Local leaders have to do their job as well."

SED Commissioner King imposed the teacher evaluation system for NYC teachers himself.

It has an insane amount of testing built into it.

And even the test "reduction" options that are open to schools within the system are insane.

For example, in my school we could have given "assessments" in every subject in every grade in September and June and used that to evaluate teachers on the local measure.

But that would have meant an insane amount of testing (and an insane amount of test creation, since many of these tests are not available from the state and the city, especially for vocational classes), so instead we decided to use the ELA performance assessment to evaluate teachers in every subject in every grade on their local measures.

That means social studies, science, physical education, art and vocational teachers will all be rated on how well their students do on ELA tests.

That's one of the "fixes" for the over-testing problem that the Regents and SED are talking about, and like so much of the reform agenda they have pushed onto schools, it is an insane one - teachers being evaluated by test scores for students they don't teach in subjects that neither teach or are licensed in

This whole reform agenda is falling apart, piece by piece.

Cuomo, Tisch, King, Duncan, the Board of Regents, the NYSED - all are flailing away, trying to hold together the inherent contradictions and problems with the Common Core/testing reforms.

And quite frankly, they're not doing a very good job of it.

Trying to displace the blame for this mess onto others - local school leaders, administrators in schools, teachers, parents and students are not at fault for any of this mess.

This is all on Tisch, King, Cuomo, the Regents and SED.

Cuomo Cannot Run From His Own Education Reform Agenda

@leoniehaimson @NYGovCuomo running scared now trying 2 distance himself from reform agenda. Too late Andy, you own this! #studentlobbyist
— Sashammy (@Sashammy) November 18, 2013

Nice try making believe you have no power or influence over education policy, Sheriff Andy,  but we all remember your State of the State addresses from 2012 (you student lobbyist you!) and 2013 where you bragged about how much you had to do with reform implementation in the state.

You fool no one with your "We're watching this closely..." jive.

You will be held accountable for this mess as much as Tisch and King will.

In fact, given your underwater performance numbers, you already are.

And its only going to get worse from here unless you do something about the Common Core, the tests tied to the Core, the evaluations that mandate all of those tests, and the data collection projection that parents cannot opt out of.

There will be no fixing this reform agenda around the edges, Sheriff Andy, just as there will be no running from your ownership of it.

Cowardly Cuomo Refuses To Own Up To His Own Education Reform Agenda

Here was Governor Cuomo talking about his pro-active education reform agenda this year during his State of the State speech in January:

In terms of education, Governor Seward said the standard of education ought to be elevated. It is the highest; education is the chief of our responsibilities. He said that in 1839; it is true today. When it comes to education, I say two words: more and better. We need more learning time in this country. Not just in this state. Secretary Arne Duncan put his finger on this a long time ago. We are still providing education as if we were an agrarian economy and an agrarian society and we needed the children home to work the fields. That’s why our school day and school months is what it is. The advantages of more education are clear. When you look internationally, countries that are beating us educated their children more – just more days on education. 200 for Korea, 190 for Canada, 179 for the United States. We need more learning time, my friends, if we really are serious about improving education. There are three options for more time. Option A is longer days, extend the school day beyond 3 o’clock or start the school day earlier. Option B is to have a longer year, less summer vacation or fewer vacations during the year. Or you could do a combination of both. Now, these are big decisions, they impact families, they impact neighborhoods. There’ll be different opinions on these options. Our proposal is that we, the state, makes it an option for every school district in the state, if they want to opt in and how they want to opt in - longer day, longer year, combination. It’s up to them. But if they do it, the state would pay 100% of the additional cost to give them the incentive to actually do it.

We need more early education. Every expert will tell you that early education makes a difference and it makes the difference for life. The statistics are overwhelming. Children who receive early education perform 25% better on math by the second grade, 20% better on English, 30% are more likely to graduate from high school, 32% are less likely to be arrested as a juvenile. We should provide real pre-k for all our children. Currently we have universal pre-k but it’s only provided by 67% of the school districts and on average, they only offer two and a half hours per day. We will expand the pre-k program to full-day pre-k, five hours. And we will start with students in the lowest wealth school districts. Let’s do it today.

We need better teachers. Teaching is one of the most important professions in society. We must attract and incentivize the best to become teachers. We need to overhaul the teacher training and certification process, increase admission standards, and we should implement a bar exam type test that every teacher takes and must pass before we put them in a classroom to teach our students. We’ve been working to change the culture in education and create a performance culture. For a performance culture, first you need an evaluation mechanism. You need to know what’s working, what’s not working, what teachers are working, what teachers are not working. Incentivize the teachers that are and help the teachers that aren’t.

We started last year a teacher evaluation system, after years and years and years of dallying and opposition and lack of progress, we said last year we agreed on an evaluation system and then we said to the school districts across the state, we want you to adopt it, we want you to adopt it by the end of the year, and if you don’t, you’re not going to get the increase of 4% that we promised in the budget. Well my friends, the 4% agreement worked; 99% of the school districts have submitted a teacher evaluation test already ahead of the deadline, congratulations. We want to keep it going; more than 90% of the plans that have come in last only for one year. We want to keep in the model that in order to get the additional aid, you have to continue the evaluation process.

We must pay for performance and incentivize high performing teachers. You have to say to a teacher if you work harder and you do better and your students do better, you will do better and you will have a higher award. So we propose a program where high performing, what we call master teachers, will receive $15,000 in supplemental income annually for four years and they will then become mentors and teachers for other teachers. If you want teachers to do better, pay teachers and incentivize teachers to do better. Not every teacher gets paid the same no matter what happens.

In this speech, we hear a can-do governor with a pro-active education reform agenda that he plans to see implemented all over the state, a guy who won't take no for his answer when trying to impose education plans.

Fast forward to today, 10 months later, as anti-Common Core, anti-testing, anti-evaluation and anti-data collection protests grow all across the state:

ALBANY—Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Monday he would consider “legislative changes” to address parents' concerns about the rigorous Common Core standards, on which New York schools started testing some students last April.

“I've heard quite a bit from the parents who are very concerned about Common Core,” Cuomo told reporters after an event on Staten Island. “It's part of a national curriculum that the national experts say is actually going to be beneficial.

“But there's no doubt that there are significant elements, at least in the transition, that are problematic,” he continued.

Cuomo stressed that he doesn't have authority over the state Education Department. The state Board of Regents directs the department and elects its commissioner, currently John King. But the state does determine funding for schools, and the governor has pushed a series of competitive grants and a new system of teacher evaluations.

The Common Core curriculum standards have been voluntarily adopted by 45 states and aim to boost students' readiness for college and careers. Parents and teachers, often at public forums, have said the curriculum is developmentally inappropriate for students and that the state has botched the implementation.

“It's actually a decision that the state Education Department is going to make, which ironically, although the state Education Department does not report to the governor … it's something we're watching very closely,” he said. “And it's something that might be the subject of legislative changes next year.But it's not anything that I control, so we are watching."

Gee, what a difference 10 months and a whole host anti-SED/Regents reform agenda protests make.

Last January, (and the January before, for that matter, when Cuomo proclaimed himself the "lobbyist for students"), Cuomo was the guy who had an education reform agenda that he was going to implement no matter what anybody else thought or did about it.

In fact, he imposed a teacher evaluation system on NYC via the budget process even though budgeting is a legislative process.

The point being, Cuomo had his hands all over the Common Core reforms, the testing, the teacher evaluations that mandated so many tests, etc.

Now all of a sudden, Cuomo plays like he's powerless:

“It's actually a decision that the state Education Department is going to make, which ironically, although the state Education Department does not report to the governor … it's something we're watching very closely,” he said. “And it's something that might be the subject of legislative changes next year.But it's not anything that I control, so we are watching."

I would like to remind Sheriff Andy that even though he didn't control the SED or the legislature, he still stuck the NYC teacher evaluation imposition into the budget.

If Sheriff Andy wants changes to the laws mandating the Common Core, the tests, the teacher evaluation law that imposes so many of these tests or the data collection the state is going to force on all the districts whether parents want it or not, he has the power of the purse and the influence of the bully pulpit as governor to do it.

He said exactly that in his 2013 State of the State speech when he talked about teacher evaluations.

So my message to Sheriff Andy tonight is, don't be so modest about your power to influence the Regents or the SED over their education reforms.

We have the documentation of just how much influence you have on these issues.

Mulgrew's Recess From The Tests Petition Went Into My Junkmail

Found this between the junk mail selling Viagra for 70 cents a pill and a plea from a Hong Kong banker telling me he has $300,000 of my own money he found in a bank account at HSBC:

New York's youngest students need teaching and learning, not standardized testing.

Sign the Recess from Tests petition »

Bloomberg-style "drill-and-kill" standardized test prep has sadly become the norm for our students. Now he's taking his testing mania to a whole new level, insisting that our youngest students in grades pre-K to 2 complete bubble tests that are wholly inappropriate for their developmental levels.
Prekindergarten through second grade are vital years for developing students' cognitive thinking, building their educational foundation and instilling a love of learning in them. Filling in bubble tests will not accomplish any of these goals.

That's why we have joined with our state affiliate NYSUT and education advocacy groups across the state to urge the governor, the state Legislature and the State Education Department of New York to ban standardized testing in pre-K through second grade.

Sign our petition now »

Sincerely,

Michael Mulgrew

Michael Mulgrew and the UFT leadership signed onto the Race to the Top application which required that teacher evaluations be tied to test scores, Michael Mulgrew and the UFT leadership helped to develop the APPR evaluation system that linked teacher evaluations to test scores and Michael Mulgrew and the UFT leadership concurred when Dick Iannuzzi and the NYSUT dropped a successful lawsuit against the Regents for expanding the testing component of the teacher evaluation law to 40%.

In short, few people in this state are more responsible for the testing problem than Michael Mulgrew and the UFT leadership.

In addition to a recess from the tests, we need a recess from such destructive and hypocritical union leadership.

Mulgrew's Recess from the Tests petition went to my junkmail where it belongs.

We don't need a recess from the tests.

We need to change the teacher evaluation law that requires all these tests in the first place.

Kill the law and there will be no reason to have the tests - they're only in place to grade the teachers.

NYSED Commissioner John King Hears It From The Crowd Once Again

It's old hat now - parents and teachers tell NYSED Commissioner John King his education reform agenda sucks and King says "Oh, we're listening..." and then goes back to implementing that agenda anyway.

It happened again last night:

Syracuse, NY -- New York Education Commissioner faced 20 questioners during a 90-minute forum at WCNY-TV headquarters during a live broadcast and webcast tonight.

One spoke up in support of the Common Core academic standards.

Almost all of the others expressed deep concerns about the way the standards, in conjunction with other policies, have been rolled out across the state. Those concerns ranged from high costs to excessive testing to the security of student data being managed by private companies.

One of the most poignant questions of the night came from Santina Scrimale, a senior at Westhill High School, who talked about the anxiety that children are feeling over the high-stakes tests, especially given the low passing rates on last year's new Common Core-aligned tests.

She said she sees her "very intelligent" third-grade sister already stressing out about this year's tests, fearing that she will fail them because she won't have time to finish them.

King responded that testing is part of the education process and helps inform instruction. But he also said he agrees that there has been an increase in local testing in some districts and in "rote test prep." He said the state is looking to help districts to cut the number of tests they give.

There were few audible reactions to the questions or answers from the orderly audience of about 200. A rare round of applause came when Greg McCrea, president of the Westhill District Teachers Association, which has called for King's resignation, asked why schools like Montessori are good and what the state has done to bring some of their ideas to public schools.

The applause was polite, but knowing. King sends his own children to a Montessori school, which is a sore point with his critics. He acknowledged that, and said he likes the way Montessori schools use the Common Core standards, including a heavy focus on writing supported by textual evidence.

More applause came when Keith Newvine, vice president of the West Genesee Teachers Association, told King that the quick implementation of the Common Core and the teacher evaluation process is like "building an airplane in the air."

Newvine got more applause as he continued: "Would you get on that plane? And if so, why would you get on an airplane being built in the air?"

King said the Board of Regents and the Education Department have taken great care in rolling out the standards thoughtfully, using a seven-year timeline ending in 2017. He said some people think the standards are being rolled out too slowly because students need higher standards now if they are going to be prepared for college and the workplace.

King acknowledged after the forum that he had heard most of the concerns before, but said he would bring them back to the department and the Regents and try to address them.

But to McCrea -- who said he still wants the commissioner's resignation -- the answers coming from King and Regent Anthony Bottar, with whom he shared the stage, were a little too pat.

"They were coming up with canned answers," he said. "They were things that we've heard before."
Before the forum started, about a dozen protesters stood outside the studio, holding signs that read "We don't need a King, we need a democracy," and "More than a Score."

20 speakers - 19 were critical of the SED agenda and implementation.

King says he's heard these complaints before.

Translation: He plans to do nothing about them.

The SED agenda will continue on as if Poughkeepsie and these other town hall meetings never happened.

That King thinks he can get away with blaming local districts for overtesting shows you how clueless and arrogant he is.

The people are not fooled by your lies, Commissioner King.

Local districts have had to put all this extra testing in place as part of the state teacher evaluation system, the one you and Regents Chancellor Tisch and Governor Cuomo pushed that links so-called student performance to teacher ratings.

The only way things change is pressure must be put on Governor Cuomo in his re-election year that he must change the teacher evaluation system that forces all of this testing.

Same goes for putting pressure on the legislature.

King and Tisch have no plans to change anything.

The impetus for change will have to come from the politicians above them and that impetus will only come if the public puts that pressure on these politicians.

Start with Cuomo.

He's nervous about his re-election and wants to run up the score next year to set up a 2016 White House run.

Let him know, the education agenda stays the same, no running up the score in 2014.

Michael Mulgrew And Leo Casey Just Like The Fonz

.@PSulliv yup, wonder if @LeoECasey will apologize to @carolburris now & admit she was right
— leonie haimson (@leoniehaimson) November 7, 2013

Mikey and Leo now criticizing the teacher evaluation system they helped develop and defend against criticism from Carol Burris and Diane Ravitch.

Mikey and Leo are criticizing the system for some of the very reasons Burris and Ravitch criticized it in the past.

But Mikey and Leo never admit they were wrong to help develop this system or defend it, of course.

That would be going to far.

They cannot admit they were wr- wr- wr- wro-wrong...

NYSED: Teacher Evaluations Not Confusing

Nope - they're complex!

SCHOOLBOOK: Why are we hearing complaints about children in kindergarten through second grade being given extra assessments that are taking time away from class?

SCHWARTZ: That would depend upon the strategy that was locally collectively bargained. There may be some districts in which they decided that they were going to give a pretest. But that was something that they decided, and we have offered other alternatives for districts that want to take a different direction.

SCHOOLBOOK: What would those alternatives be? You're saying children don't have to take an extra assessment?

SCHWARTZ: No, what I was saying is that in some cases you can use information that is already in hand as the pre-test. In some cases you can use a group measure for the students. In that case, the teachers essentially are using one assessment that may be covering a variety of other teachers in other subjects. So in that case, there are no additional assessments that would need to be used because there's an agreement by that collective bargaining unit that all of the teachers will collectively be assessed based upon a particular assessment.

SCHOOLBOOK: It sounds very confusing.

SCHWARTZ: It is not confusing, it is complex. And it is new. And so when things are new they are unfamiliar and as we all continue to learn about this system, it will become something that will become much clearer to everyone. The confusion will hopefully disappear.

When tests connected to teacher evaluations cannot be explained in a very few simple steps, there is a problem.

The geniuses at SED have very simple problem, which is, the system they created is so "complex" that people find it "confusing" and if the geniuses at SED cannot make the "complex" issue a little less "confusing," that complex system is going to go the way of the Edsel.

Also, as a commenter notes on the NYC story:

Schoolbook, this may be true for the state. But what about for NYC? The local measures for teacher evaluations require tests. Period. Please add it to your story. 

So the solution to make the "complex" problems around testing and evaluations that people are finding "confusing" cannot be solved by the genius solution stated by the genius SED employee because the genius SED Commissioner imposed a system that requires tests - and lots of 'em.

The UFT Evaluation Team Sends An Email To UFT Members

Dunno if you got this in your email box from Mikey Mulgrew and the "UFT Evaluation Team," but it arrived in my in-box this morning:

Teachers across the city are facing significant challenges caused by the Department of Education's poor implementation of the new evaluation and development system. To resolve these problems, the UFT introduced an online inquiry form for members to inform us of their concerns. The information you gave on these forms has been used in resolving many issues at the school level and as the basis for filing 17 union-initiated grievances over the DOE's implementation.

Now, the UFT is moving to the next phase.

A new online form went live on Monday, Oct. 28, to provide a formal way to address issues you may be facing with implementation of the evaluation system. We're calling it the Annual Professional Performance Review (APPR) complaint form. You need to be logged into the UFT website to access the form.

Go to the form » 

Here is how it works: When you become aware of an issue that you believe violates your rights under the new evaluation system, you have up to five school days to fill out this complaint form online and give copies to your principal and your chapter leader. A copy of your completed form will be automatically forwarded by the computer system to your district representative. That will trigger a formal resolution and review process in which UFT staff will work with you, your school and DOE central to address the issue.

Remember that you have only up to five school days after you become aware of any issue to fill out the complaint form online and give a copy to your principal.

You can find the link to the complaint form in the teacher evaluation section of the UFT website.

This formal enforcement process is in place because the UFT insisted on it during arbitration. And, we were successful in having the commissioner include this in his order. The complaints filed through this process will serve as a guide to the changes we want while we negotiate our contract.

As always, please do not hesitate to contact your borough office with any questions.

In solidarity,

The UFT Evaluation Team

Wow - what a joke.

 You have five days to file a complaint if you become aware of an issue that violates your rights under the new evaluation system.

To be frank, you have very few rights under the new evaluation system to begin with, but if you find that one of those few rights is being violated, don't delay in getting that complaint over to the crack squad over at the UFT Evaluation Team.

There, don't you feel better about the new evaluation system already?

I'm sure the crack squad at the UFT Evaluation Team will make all the problems going away.

Except for the problems with VAM, and the insanity of using 22 competencies from the Danielson rubric for classroom observations and evaluations, the tons of extra documentation you have to do in order to prove you're not incompetent under the new system, the extra work associated with the performance assessments, the fact that you might be graded in your evaluation on test scores of students you don't teach in a subject you're not licensed in.

You see, those problems are built into the system and you have no right to do anything about those.

The crack squad at the UFT agreed to all of that garbage as part of the APPR agreement and the Race to the Top sign off.

So the UFT Evaluation Team complaint form is just another bunch of UFT jive mant to fool you into thinking the leadership is doing something to protect you when they are one of the main reasons you, your job and your professional reputation are in jeopardy.

They helped develop this system, they signed off on it and they have defended it from critics like Diane Ravitch and Carol Burris.

This is their baby as much as it is Cuomo's, Tisch's and King's.

MORE, on the other hand, has this saying: There is no right way to evaluate teachers by test scores.

See the difference?

Extra Evaluation Paperwork And Documentation Do Not Make For Better Teachers!

Sheriff Andy said last week that his vaunted new teacher evaluation system is "exactly right".

Teachers around the state beg to differ:

And although 91.5 percent of teachers statewide were ranked effective or highly effective on the 2012-13 annual teacher review plan, Victor third grade teacher Ted Isham said the measuring system leaves a lot to be desired. He said he’s not alone.

“In my district, a lot of teachers are really upset about their scores because of the way they’re calculated,” said Isham. “It’s frustrating, because 20 percent of my score depends on how an 8-year-old does on one 7.5-hour New York State Grade 3 math test. And I lose a lot of instructional time proctoring these tests.”

He hopes parents will understand that a teacher’s or principal’s score is just part of the picture.

“That score doesn’t give you all you need to know about a teacher,” Isham said. “Your particular child might have particular needs that might best be met by a teacher who didn’t get the highest score.  

And after adhering to what Isham calls “an unwieldy set of rules” and a mountain of paperwork, the outcome for Isham isn’t making him a better teacher, he said. 

“I don’t feel like I’ve adjusted my teaching. I just have to provide a lot more evidence,” he said.

Cuomo and company put this in place to drive people out of teaching, to make the profession so laden with paperwork and drudgery that nobody will want to do it for more than a couple of years.

They don't care about children in the school system - not one bit.

Why should they care?

Their kids go to private schools - they don't have to worry about their kids getting the "reforms" the kids in public school are getting.

This is simply about cutting labor costs and pension costs while increasing the payouts to the edu-entrpreneurs and testing companies that provide the campaign donations for the politicians and the future jobs for the NYSED functionaries.

I'm Getting Old

Friday morning after Thursday night parent conferences kicks my ass more and more every year.

But of course I'd better not tell anybody.

Someone told me "Bouncing back quickly after parent conference night" is competency 5c on the Danielson rubric.

Wouldn't want to get dinged "ineffective" on that, would I?

Let The UFT Leadership Know How You Feel About ADVANCE, Danielson And The Common Core

Here was my response to Peter Goodman, Unity hack extraordinaire, who left some spin at Gotham Schools on the new evaluation system that went like this:

First Goodman:

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.

My response:

It must be swell to write this spin from the comfort of your living room, not having to step into a classroom and deal with the 22 Danielson competencies, worry about VAM, grade thousands of ELA "performance assessments" that will be used to evaluate PE, art, and vocational teachers, and deal with all the extra paper work and drudge work that has been added to our work lives without one extra dollar in compensation.

Speak to teachers who aren't members of the Unity/New Action chorus line and you will find out your spin won't go over so well with the rank and file working under this disaster. Morale is super low in my school, teachers who used to be apolitical about this stuff are angry as hell (and want to take it on the union leadership that agreed to this garbage as part of RttT), and even the few younger teachers who wanted a new evaluation system and once liked the Common Core reforms now think both ADVANCE and the Common Core suck.

The UFT leadership has been able to b.s. its way through previous sell-outs like the infamous '05 contract surrender. But your insularity, along with the insularity of the rest of the leadership, will not serve you well this time around. You can not b.s. people with spin and propaganda over ADVANCE and Danielson because everyone is living through this nightmare evaluation system and no one I know likes it - except for Mike Mulgrew and John King, of course. The more you defend it, the more out of touch you seem.

Leave your own responses in the comment section.

How do you feel about ADVANCE, Danielson, and Common Core?

Are you ready to take a deep breath and relax, as Goodman advises from the comfort of his retirement naugahyde recliner?

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.

Daily News, Post: Fire More Teachers!

Both the Daily News and the Post were very, very sad that the teacher evaluation ratings results showed 92% of teachers around the state were effective or highly effective while 7% were rated developing and 1% ineffective.

The Newsies and Posties wanted the evaluation ratings to reflect the proficiency ratings students had on the state test results released earlier this year.

In other words, they wanted about 70% of teachers to be rated ineffective or developing, since only "objective" test score results can truly show the value a teacher adds to her/his students, and if only 30% of students were rated proficient statewide on the tests, then only 30% of teachers can reasonably be deemed effective or highly effective in their jobs.

While SED Commissioner King and Regents Chancellor Tisch both tried to spin the results yesterday to say they show how this new APPR teacher evaluation system is not a "gotcha" system out to destroy teachers, you can bet that next year's results will look differently than this year's if the newspaper editorial writers have their way.

This is a warning to those teachers who look at the results released yesterday and think "Oh, that wasn't so bad...maybe I'll be okay..."

The education reformers want teachers fired and while the results from yesterday do not give them the leverage to do that for most teachers (unless you're a teacher in Buffalo, Rochester or a school with high numbers of ELL's or support service students, where the low rating numbers for teachers were much higher), the reformers will do their damnedest to get this evaluation system rigged right so that it does give them the opportunity to do mass firings.

The Daily News says this "must" happen:

In a state where two-thirds of students flunked new reading and math tests, the super-duper ratings are proof that district superintendents and teachers unions conspired to subvert accountability in favor of a gold-star stamping system.

Confirming that conclusion: When the state Education Department rated teachers whose students took the reading and math tests, 7% (not 50%) were deemed highly effective and 6% (not 1%) were deemed ineffective.

The new ratings cover teachers statewide — except for New York City, where battling between Mayor Bloomberg and United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew delayed evaluations in the five boroughs.

They stand as a warning sign of a catastrophe in the making here. Should the city’s Department of Education turn out similar findings next year, the evaluation program will become a guarantee of long-term employment and certification of high competence for all but 1% of the workforce.

This must not happen.

... 

What’s happening points to a fundamental flaw in the program enacted by Gov. Cuomo and the Legislature. Rather than allow the city and districts around the state to impose evaluation standards on teachers, they required union ratification. 

That made it all too easy to game things.Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch and Education Commissioner John King confess to being surprised by these results and blame the structure of the “compromise” law. They have a lot of work to do to recover from this fiasco. 

They must find a way to force districts to abide by real standards — ones that begin to grade teachers with an integrity at least remotely similar to those we use to assess the achievement of New York’s students.

So teachers beware, the reformers are still coming for you - the newspaper editorial writers are pointing the way!

Bloomberg, Media Hypocrisy Over Charter Schools

Charter schools do not have to use the state's teacher evaluation system to evaluate teachers.

Most charter schools in the city have chosen not to use it.

Considering how badly designed and harmful it is, that's a good idea on their part.

The UFT runs a charter school that opted not to use the evaluation system.

Mayor Bloomberg and the Post hammered the UFT charter school for opting out of the evaluation system.

Somehow they weren't so upset that the rest of the charter industry in the city isn't using the evaluation system either.

Nope - they're upset at just the UFT charter school for not using the system.

Let's call this faux outrage on the part of Bloomberg and his elite media buddies at the Post what it is - out and out hypocrisy.

The Burgeoning Counterattacks Against The NYSED/Regents Reform Agenda - When Will The Teachers Unions Get On The Right Side Of The Fight?

In the middle of this Capital NY article about the teachers unions in Rochester and Syracuse appealing the many "developing" and "ineffective" ratings handed out to teachers in those two cities is this:

“The results of this process are a clear indictment of this process,” said Adam Urbanski, president of the Rochester Teachers Association. “If the commissioner and the Regents continue to turn a deaf ear to this unfair and ridiculous approach to teacher evaluation, I think that teachers will refuse to participate in contributing to their own demise. You may have mass insubordination on your hands.”

Urbanski said most of the 900 teachers in Rochester that were rated "developing" or "ineffective" received high scores in the category determined by observations, but few or no points for the state-exam portion.

As has been noted again and again on this blog and elsewhere in the blogosphere, these so-called "objective" and "scientific" teacher evaluation systems based upon test scores are anything but "objective" and scientific".

Bruce Baker at Rutgers has shown again and again how these systems are flawed and damaging, and he has taken particular aim at New York State's evaluation system.

He did so again this week:

Then there are the New York State conditional Growth Percentile Scores.  First, here’s what the state’s own technical report found:

 Despite the model conditioning on prior year test scores, schools and teachers with students who had higher prior year test scores, on average, had higher MGPs. Teachers of classes with higher percentages of economically disadvantaged students had lower MGPs. (p. 1) http://schoolfinance101.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/growth-model-11-12-air-technical-report.pdf

And in an astounding ethical lapse, only a few paragraphs later, the authors concluded:

The model selected to estimate growth scores for New York State provides a fair and accurate method for estimating individual teacher and principal effectiveness based on specific regulatory requirements for a “growth model” in the 2011-2012 school year. p. 40 http://engageny.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/growth-model-11-12-air-technical-report.pdf

Concerned about what they were seeing, Lower Hudson Valley superintendents commissioned an outside analysis of data on their teachers and schools provided by the state.  Here is a recent Lower Hudson Valley news summary of the findings of that report:

But the study found that New York did not adequately weigh factors like poverty when measuring students’ progress.

“We find it more common for teachers of higher-achieving students to be classified as ‘Effective’ than other teachers,” the study said. “Similarly, teachers with a greater number of students in poverty tend to be classified as ‘Ineffective’ or ‘Developing’ more frequently than other teachers.”

Andrew Rice, a researcher who worked on the study, said New York was dealing with common challenges that arise when trying to measure teacher impact amid political pressures.

“We have seen other states do lower-quality work,” he said.

http://www.lohud.com/article/20131015/NEWS/310150042/Study-faults-NY-s-teacher-evaluations

That’s one heck of an endorsement, eh? We’ve seen others do worse?

Perhaps most offensive is that New York State a) requires that if the teacher receives a bad growth measure rating, the teacher cannot be given a good overall rating and b) the New York State Commissioner has warned local school officials that the state will intervene “if there are unacceptably low correlation results between the student growth sub-component and any other measure of teacher and principal effectiveness.”  

In other words, districts must ensure that all other measures are sufficiently correlated with the state’s own junk measure.

Governor Cuomo, NYSED Commissioner King, Regents Chancellor Tisch and the legislature ensured that if a teacher is rated "ineffective" on the 40% test component of the evaluation, that teacher must be rated "ineffective" overall.

That puts an awful lot of pressure on the districts and the state to get that test component right, but as we can see from the preliminary evaluation results already, the state and the district have made a mess of the test component and thousands of teachers are getting rated "ineffective" or "developing" overall even though the observational components of the evaluation system have rated them "effective" or "highly effective."

Before the state's Common Core test mess, before the Pineapple and the Hare, before John King's Poughkeepsie meltdown, it's possible the public might have gone along with the state and said, "Well, geez, Martha, if that test component done by the state shows those teachers are 'ineffective,' then by golly, they must be!"

But post-Common Core test mess, post-Pineapple and the Hare, post-King's Poughkeepsie meltdown and "special interest" crack, the state education department is not getting that kind of suspension of disbelief from the public.

If parents are not willing to believe John King's cut scores on the Common Core tests for their children, there's a pretty good chance they're not going to believe John King's APPR test component results for teachers either.

Now here's where teachers and the union leadership come in.

Teachers must start to rise up en masse and call for the abolishing of this APPR evaluation system.

The Rochester union head, Urbanski, is pointing the right way forward in this fight - mass insubordination by teachers against an unfair, unjust evaluation system.

But the Syracuse union head says he's trying to work with the district to fix the problems with the system and hope things get better next time around.

And the UFT and NYSUT are calling for a delay to the high stakes attached to the tests, not the complete abolishing of this unfair, unjust system.

But there is no fixing a fatally flawed system that has been rigged to find thousands of "ineffective" teachers every year, just as there is no fixing the Common Core testing regime that was rigged to find a 30% drop in scores.

The point is, the SED and Regents reform agenda was always to have both of these happen simultaneously to try and Shock Doctrine the rest of their reforms through.

Look, Tisch and King say, the scores fell 30%, our new "objective" and "scientific" evaluation system finds 40% of teachers in some cities "ineffective " or "developing".  We need radical change to this public education system and WE NEED IT NOW!

That was the plan. 

They have executed the plan according to the blueprint.

They got the cut scores for the tests to fall 30%-40%, they rigged the evaluation systems to find lots of "ineffective" or "bad" teachers around the state.

This should be their moment of triumph.

Instead they are under a fierce counterattack from parents and teachers, even from politicians and editorial news boards, over their reform agenda.

That they felt the need to announce a dozen parent forums over the Common Core after Boy Wonder John King canceled the PTA-sponsored forums last week shows you just how serious the education reform establishment is taking these counterattacks in NY State.

They know if they cannot counter the opposition and criticism over the Common Core standards, the Common Core curricula, the Common Core tests, the teacher evaluation tied to those tests and the inBloom data base right NOW, their agenda is in serious, serious trouble.

The UFT and NYSUT have not gone far enough in battling the SED and Regents reform agenda.

Calling for a three year moratorium on the high stakes attached to the tests does not begin to alleviate the problems with the state's teacher evaluation system or the SED Common Core reform agenda.

Now is the time to call for the end to all of these radical, damaging reforms - from the Common Core standards to the curricula to the tests to the teacher evaluation system based upon those tests to the inBloom data project collecting all the data.

In the end, the system is collapsing in on itself anyway because it was half-baked to begin with.

You can see that in how students are reacting to the lessons, how parents are talking about the Common Core curricula, how teachers are talking about the evaluation system.

The UFT and NYSUT leadership need to get on the right side of this fight and stop trying to play to the middle.

It is time for the union leadership to drop their support of the Common Core, to join with parents and teachers and put an end to this awful, awful education reform movement.

Superintendent Study Shows State Teacher Evaluation System Is A Mess

As Commissioner King tries to defend his increasingly indefensible education reform agenda from parents, a new superintendents study says the evaluation system has been a disaster:

New York’s first attempt to grade teachers on their students’ progress was flawed in several key ways, a new study commissioned by the region’s superintendents says.

The state’s formula gave less credit to teachers serving disadvantaged students, judged some teachers on the performance of too few students, failed to measure key variables such as student mobility and did not clearly signal how schools can assist teachers or students, the study found.

“Our fears were realized,” said Harrison Superintendent Louis Wool, who was president of the Lower Hudson Council of School Superintendents when the study was started in the spring. “The first round of assessments did not accurately measure the value of teachers whose students are in poverty, in special education or speak limited English. We are concerned that we have spent countless hours and millions and millions of dollars to produce results that are not comparable across the state and do not inform teacher practice or student learning.”

...

Thirty-five school districts from the Lower Hudson Valley and Long Island contributed anonymous data on 1,700 teachers and 46,800 students for the study.

The superintendents group chose the Value-Added Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison to study New York’s first round of teacher scores, released in 2012 for a limited number of school districts. The center researches how to measure the impact of teachers on student growth, a calculation known as the “value added,” and also markets its own models.


The study is a solid analysis that repeats concerns raised last year by the state’s own consultants, said Bruce Baker, a Rutgers University professor and expert on school finance.

“I give these superintendents credit for following through on this, raising significant concerns about potential biases in these measures,” he said. “For the state to continue to enforce these measures in the face of contradictory evidence is over-the-top ridiculous.”

 Under New York’s evaluation system, 20 percent of teachers’ overall ratings is based on their impact on student progress. Sixty percent is based on classroom observations and the remaining 20 percent on locally chosen assessments.

Valhalla Superintendent Brenda Myers said the study confirmed that New York’s formula was flawed and did not provide information that would help districts improve teacher or student performance.


“After all the time and energy we put into this, we get a score on a teacher that doesn’t tell us anything,” she said. “Are we improving student learning? This is the question that keeps us up nights.”

...

But the study found that New York did not adequately weigh factors like poverty when measuring students’ progress.

“We find it more common for teachers of higher-achieving students to be classified as ‘Effective’ than other teachers,” the study said. “Similarly, teachers with a greater number of students in poverty tend to be classified as ‘Ineffective’ or ‘Developing’ more frequently than other teachers.”


Andrew Rice, a researcher who worked on the study, said New York was dealing with common challenges that arise when trying to measure teacher impact amid political pressures.

In other words, the evaluation system is rigged to ratchet up the number of "ineffective" teachers, especially in schools with large numbers of ELL or support service students and districts with large numbers of students coming from low income backgrounds.

The superintendents should challenge the state evaluation system in court and send this thing to the ignominious grave it so richly deserves.

And the NYSUT and UFT ought to be jumping in on this as well.

Make John King, Merryl Tisch and Andrew Cuomo defend the indefensible.

Alas, the unions seem to be on the side of King, Tisch, and Cuomo rather than the side of their members or the side of students and parents.

Will Shilling For The ADVANCE Evaluation System Be Mulgrew's Downfall?

Norm Scott at Ed Notes:

In all my years of activism one of the happiest moments I had was seeing James Eterno's face as he emerged from the Delegate Assembly yesterday. I was in the midst of trying to get people to take the MORE newsletter, MORE Stuff in Your Mail Bx" and get them to sign up to distribute in their school. I didn't have to work too hard as there were a batch of MOREistas over half my age - one may have been young enough to be my grandchild doing the same thing. I left it to them and went over to James: "It's happening. It's finally happening," he said.

Michael Fiorillo in a comment here at Perdido Street School:

The UFT long ago stopped being a bona fide trade union, independent of management, but instead is something closer to a company ombudsman, at best representing workers from within the hostile confines of the DOE, and making a deal with the Devil to maintain the leadership's perks at the expense of the membership.

They've been able thus far to successfully count on the rank and file's distraction, intimidation by management, apathy and/ or complacency, but their ability to do so is fast disappearing. Faux tough guy Mulgrew's agreeing to RttT, VAM and Danielson, and then disgracefully shilling for them, may eventually lead to Unity's long overdue downfall.

An anonymous comment left on another post here at Perdido Street School:

The AFT/NYSUT/UFT support for the common core and evaluation systems connected to Danielson will be the undoing of their vice grip on teacher unions. The first shots were heard yesterday from those who attended the DA at 52 Broadway. The CTU Local ! has shown that all things are possible!

I think one thing is clear. 

The leadership is hearing that the rank and file is not happy and feels that they have been thrown under the bus.

The leadership is feeling enough of the heat to respond to the complaints very early in the ADVANCE implementation.

But as Michael notes above, when the UFT leadership has signed onto to the Common Core, test-based accountability, data-driven education and the like, when they have sponsored the evaluation system that contains so much of what teachers are upset about, it's not like they can turn their backs on this without angering the neo-liberal powers they've done their dirty deals with.

So they're stuck in the middle, trying to defend a system that is indefensible while making it look like they are hearing the concerns and complaints of the rank and file and doing something about those.

This moratorium resolution is nothing more than an act of face-saving.

It has no chance to happen because the state bureaucrats are not going to let it happen, not unless the evaluation law gets changed first.

And since the union leadership helped develop this evaluation law in the first place, the chances of the Assembly and Senate changing the law and Cuomo signing that change are nil.

In the end, where this could very well be a turning point for the UFT leadership is that rank and file teachers aren't being fooled by these kinds of face-saving acts anymore.

As I have written again and again since APPR went into place, the UFT leadership is used to dazzling (or drum-beating)the leadership with lies and bull#$%^ and just wearing most people down into saying, "Oh, all right - have it your way."

But lies and bull#$%^ will not save the leadership this time.

Teachers see for themselves what a horrific mess ADVANCE is, how awful the MOSL process is, how unfair it is to rate teachers using test scores of students they don't teach in subjects they're not licensed in, how stupid it is to give the state and the city the power to create "value-added" and "growth" algorithms and roll them out mid-year totally unpiloted with high stakes attached to them.

The UFT resolution calls for a brief moratorium to the high stakes so that the kinks in the system can be worked out.

But the kinks cannot be worked out in a "gotcha" system that at its core is rigged to give the district the power teachers almost indiscriminately.

This system must be destroyed and another system, a fairer system that actually supports teachers, put into its place.

The longer the UFT leadership defends this system , the better for the opposition.

They own this piece of crap and almost all of the rank and file teachers know that.

There are a few who may be dazzled or drum-beaten by the UFT propaganda around ADVANCE.

But at my school, I see people who used to give the UFT the benefit of the doubt who do not do so any longer.

They know Mulgrew and his merry double pensioners down at 52 Broadway are full of crap over this system and they're not happy about either that or the crap system being used as a bludgeon on them.