Note To Preet Bharara: Discrimination And Retaliation Is The Official Policy Of The NYCDOE

From the NY Times:

The federal government accused the New York City Department of Education in a lawsuit on Thursday of engaging in a pattern and practice of discrimination against the three black teachers who worked at the Pan American International High School in Queens.

The lawsuit, filed by the office of Preet Bharara, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, made it clear that the government believed that the school’s principal, Minerva Zanca, had targeted the three teachers with the goal of having them removed from their jobs.

Ms. Zanca once told the school’s assistant principal, Anthony Riccardo, that one of the black teachers “looked like a gorilla in a sweater,” and that she could never have “nappy hair” like another of the teachers, the lawsuit said.

The lawsuit also claims that Ms. Zanca retaliated against Mr. Riccardo for his complaints about her treatment of the black teachers. Once, when he refused to give an unsatisfactory rating to a lesson by one of the teachers, Ms. Zanca yelled at Mr. Riccardo, accusing him of “sabotaging her plan,” and calling school security to have him removed from the building, the lawsuit says.

The Pan American school, on 94th Street in Elmhurst, says on its website that it serves “374 recently immigrated English language learners from Latin America.” The lawsuit says that during the 2012-13 school year, when it says the discrimination occurred, the school had a total of 27 teachers. Three of the teachers were black, the suit notes.

Mr. Bharara, in a statement, said, “It is nearly unthinkable that, in this day and age, one of the largest and most diverse school districts in the United States would allow racial discrimination and retaliation to flourish.”

At schools all over the city, principals and assistant principals are going into observations with pre-conceived notions of who will be given negative ratings and who will be given positive ratings.

This is the official policy of the Bill de Blasio/Carmen Farina DOE (though the discrimination detailed above took place under the Bloomberg/Walcott DOE.)

The NYCDOE is telling school administrators that there are a certain number of "ineffective" and "developing" ratings that each school must have and that it will be held against a principal if a school does not comply with that directive.

Any principal or assistant principal not on board with the increased "ineffective/developing ratings" plan is retaliated against - either by the DOE (if the person not on board with the policy is a principal) or by a higher school administrator (if the person not on board with the policy is an assistant principal but the principal at the school is on board.)

What happened at the Pan American International High School is particularly egregious because of the vile racism attached to the pre-decided negative ratings.

But the truth is, this same kind of thing is happening across the city to other teachers, based perhaps not on blatant racism, but on other criteria that have nothing to do with teaching effectiveness.

Sometimes it's based on more subtle racism, sometimes it's based on ageism, sometimes it's based on cronyism, sometimes it's based on "Well, we have to throw somebody under the bus because that's what the DOE wants - who should that be this time?"

The UFT has done nothing to protect its members against the egregious assaults being waged by the de Blasio/Farina DOE because they've been brought in by the mayor to co-manage the system.

Despite the silence of the UFT in these matters, a terrible war against teachers goes on in schools, with the Danielson drive-bys as the weapon of choice for knocking people off.

I once hoped that things would get better in NYC schools once Bloomberg was gone, tried to take Carmen Farina at her word when she said she wanted to bring joy back to school.

But quite frankly, things are worse now than under Bloomberg because the UFT leadership is completely complicit in the insanity being waged out of Tweed, turning their eyes from the increased "developing" and "ineffective" ratings and ignoring the stories from rank and file about how bad it has gotten in individual schools.

The New York City school system is rife with FEAR these days, and while the Pan American International High School case occurred during the Bloomberg Years, much the same is happening now in the de Blasio Years, perhaps not as blatantly racist, but no less as discriminatory or retaliatory.

Any system that runs with a quota for how many negative ratings must be given is discriminatory and retaliatory - and that's exactly what we have under de Blasio and Farina.

Preet Bharara should dig deeper into the way the NYCDOE operates and he'll find patterns of discrimination and retaliation throughout the school system.

Here's An Emblem For What's Wrong With Education In The Reform Era

It's also an emblem for how so little has changed from Bloomberg to de Blasio at the NYCDOE:

Tom Porton is used to drama: Since arriving at James Monroe High School as an English teacher 45 years ago, he has taught and staged plays. Outside, in the Bronx River neighborhood where the school is, there was plenty of drama in the 1980s, when AIDS and crack ravaged the area. His response then was to establish a group of peer educators who worked with Montefiore Medical Center to teach teenagers about H.I.V. prevention. His efforts earned him awards, including recognition from the City Council and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and led to his induction into the National Teachers Hall of Fame.

Now he is at the center of drama: Last month he clashed with Brendan Lyons, the school’s principal, who disapproved of his distributing H.I.V./AIDS education fliers that listed nonsexual ways of “Making Love Without Doin’ It” (including advice to “read a book together”). This month, he said the principal eliminated his early-morning civic leadership class, which engaged students in activities such as feeding the homeless, saying it was not part of the Common Core curriculum. Mr. Porton was already skeptical of that curriculum, saying it shortchanged students by focusing on chapters of novels and nonfiction essays rather than entire works of literature.

So, next month Mr. Porton — a 67-year-old educator whom students praised as a lifesaver and life-changer — is walking away from teaching. He handed in his retirement papers on Friday.

Education in the Reform Era, in the Danielson Era, in the Endless Testing Era has no place for a teacher like this.

What, a curriculum that engages students in activities like helping to feed homeless people?

No, by God, that's not education!

Writing argumentative essays about this, that's education!

The principal who has successively pushed Tom Porton out sounds like a doozy:

Mr. Lyons — who repeatedly replied “no comment” to questions during a telephone conversation — arrived at the school at the start of the academic year. A previous tenure at a Manhattan high school was marked by his replacing paper hall passes with toilet plungers, which students used to wreak havoc on property and one another.

In December, on World AIDS Day, Mr. Porton handed out his flier, as he had for almost 25 years. Mr. Lyons sent him an email saying the flier was “inappropriate,” and asked that he collect those already distributed. Though Mr. Lyons said he would discuss the matter later with him, Mr. Porton said that conversation never took place.

H.I.V. and AIDS may have faded from the public mind, but they remain a danger in places like the South Bronx, especially among young blacks and Latinos. Mr. Porton said the school has failed to meet Department of Education mandates to educate students about the diseases, making his work all the more necessary.

Mr. Lyons, who would not say if the school met the mandates, never explained his objections to Mr. Porton. At the start of this semester, Mr. Porton said, the principal eliminated the 40-student leadership class because he said it was not part of the standard curriculum, even though the class met before the formal start of the school day. Because of that, combined with Mr. Porton’s disappointment over the standardized test frenzy that rules in many schools, he chose to leave.

And what kind of teacher was Tom Porton?

This kind:

Reaction among students and former students, many of whom learned of Mr. Porton’s retirement on Facebook, was immediate and full of outrage.

“How can anyone think what he does is inappropriate?” said Janelle Roundtree, a former peer educator who graduated from Monroe in 1995 and went on to Howard University. “He changed Monroe. He was in the forefront of so many things. The school is losing out on this one.”

David Gonzalez (no relation to this writer), a musician, poet and performer who graduated in 1973, was so grateful to Mr. Porton that he nominated him for the Kennedy Center’s Stephen Sondheim Inspirational Teacher Award, which he received in 2011.

“Tom has been the consistent heart of that building since I was at Monroe in the ’70s,” said Mr. Gonzalez, who still wonders how the teacher managed to get tickets to Broadway shows. “He was always looking for the heart and soul of the individual. I would never have had the confidence to do what I do without him. He changed my life forever.”

The truth is, there is no place in public education these days for a teacher like Tom Porton.

Teachers who teach to the test, who teach by the Danielson rubric, who teach the crap they want her/him to teach and nothing but that - those are the kinds of teachers wanted these days.

As Porton says in the Times article, the powers that be pay lip service to the social and emotional needs of children, but all that really matters these days is the test scores.

This is just another outrage in a long line of NYCDOE outrages.

The principal, Lyons, ought to be the one leaving (see here for the mess he made at Graphics.)

Alas, life in the de Blasio NYCDOE is pretty much the same as life in the Bloomberg NYCDOE - incompetent administrators get moved around to destroy more and more schools while excellent teachers, inspirational teachers, are pushed out.

Public Education Is All About Compliance: Obey Or Else!

From the Daily News:

A teacher at an Upper West Side high school was fired for creating a curriculum with lessons about the Central Park Five that administrators feared would “rile up” black students, according to a new federal lawsuit.

English teacher Jeena Lee-Walker said her bosses at the High School for Arts, Imagination and Inquiry urged her in November 2013 to be more “balanced” in her approach to the racially charged Central Park jogger case that ended with five black and Latino teens being exonerated after spending several years in prison for the attack.

They told her the lessons could create little “riots,” according to court papers.

Although Lee-Walker, 37, agreed to soften her approach, she argued “that students in general, and black students in particular, should be riled up.”

“I kind of wanted to hook them in, engage them, win them over,” she said. “I thought that this material was not only engaging but important.”

...

After several tense exchanges with supervisors, Lee-Walker received a series of bad performance reviews over the next 18 months that ultimately led to her dismissal, the suit said.

Lee-Walker said she was accused of insubordination and given poor evaluations not just because of the material, but because she pushed back.

She was fired in May, roughly two years after joining the High School for the Arts and six years after she began teaching in city public schools.

“I felt abandoned and mistreated,” Lee-Walker said of the ordeal. “I think a lot of teachers in the system feel the same way.”

There's still all this talk in the media and from politicians about the need to fire "bad" teachers and close "failing" schools.

The environment for education is toxic and poisoned these days by all the compliance mandates we have that are supposed to handle the firing of "bad" teachers and the closing of "failing" schools.

Danielson drive-bys, where administrators come into your room with the Danielson rubric and ensure that you're jumping through every hoop on the rubric, are meant to control and contain teachers.

They're also meant to give dismissal tools to administrators who want to get rid of teachers they don't want - regardless of whether they're "bad" or not.

There's nothing "objective" about the Danielson rubric - administrators can ignore all the great stuff a teacher does, focus on one or two supposed "flaws" in a lesson and give enough developings and ineffectives in an evaluation to get the teacher either put on a PIP or sent packing.

You can see how this worked with Lee-Walker - they wanted her to tone down her lessons, she agreed, but the "softening" wasn't enough for administrators at the school and she was targeted for dismissal and successfully canned after a period of so-called "objective documentation."

The message for teachers in the DOE - obey or else! - is also the message for students when they see what happens to their teachers who try and step out of the uniform and give something of themselves in the classroom.

That message is underscored by the EngageNY curriculum and Regents exams, which punish any thoughts that do not come "from the text" and so teach students that they are not to think for themselves, only learn what their betters think and figure out how to parrot that back in the endless "text-based argumentative essays" they have to write across classes.

Lee-Walker's lawyer puts this all into perspective for us:

“Ms. Lee-Walker is the type of teacher we want in a classroom,” her lawyer, Ambrose Wotorson, told The News.

“We’re not looking to turn our students into automatons. We’re looking to turn out independent thinkers — and she got fired for that, and that's just wrong,” Wotorson said.

Actually it's quite the opposite.

What education reformers want are compliant teachers who obey the rules, teach only what is supposed to be taught in the way the system wants it taught and students who learn to be automatons who are just smart enough to be able to figure out what their betters want but not smart enough to know how badly they're getting screwed by the system.

21st Century public education is all about compliance - from the system as a whole right down to the individual classrooms and the teachers and students in each one.

Teacher Accountability Systems Need Accountability Too

Some drivel in the Wall Street Journal this morning that Cuomo is caving on "accountability"  for teachers - they're very sad about the proposed "moratorium" on using state test scores in APPR.

Somehow the lawsuit Sheri Lederman brought against NYSED for APPR never makes it to their accountability argument.

You may remember Sheri Lederman, the teacher who received a 14 out of 20 on her state test score VAM one year, which fell to 1 out of 20 the next despite her students getting very similar scores to the year before.

The next year, btw, Lederman's test score VAM rose to 11 - so for those scoring at home, it went from 14 to 1 to 11 in three years.

How is it that "teacher accountability" exactly?

There are these jive assumptions in the deform narrative that test score VAM's and the Danielson rubric are "objective" measures of teacher performance.

They're not.

NYSED's test score VAM is so unreliable that when Lederman sued, they twice tried to get the lawsuit dismissed rather than expose how they devised the score.

As for Danielson, the so-called "objective" rubric used for teacher evaluations, ask teachers about the scores they're getting in their Danielson evaluations and many will tell you there is nothing "objective" about the process.

Administrators can use the Danielson to focus on whatever they want to focus on and claim a teacher is deficient in something while ignoring other areas that might raise the overall Danielson score.

To claim there is anything "objective" in a classroom evaluation is to make believe that the so-called judgment of the evaluator comes down from the Mount, along with Moses and the Ten Commandments.

If an administrator wants to give a good evaluation rating to a teacher via the Danielson, he/she will, and if he/she wants to nail somebody with it, they can do that too.

The truth is, the Danielson was devised to give districts the tool to "document" when they want to get rid of teachers, but that doesn't mean the documentation itself is based in reality.

If we're going to talk about teacher accountability, we ought to talk about accountability for the teacher accountability system as well - the assumptions that it is based upon must stand up to scrutiny.

Clearly NYSED wasn't too confident they're test score VAM would stand up to that scrutiny, since they tried as hard as they could to avoid explaining it (or the bell curve they use for APPR) in court.

As for Danielson, I'm now starting to think that every observation should be taped so that teachers have the video to use if they need to counter claims made by administrators in their Danielson evaluations.

There is an awful lot of talk about so-called teacher accountability from politicians, from the media, from ed deformers - but the system that measures so-called teacher accountability almost always skirts its own accountability and lives in this fantasy world where it stands as some objective measure of performance.

Today's drivel in the WSJ is just one more example of that.

MaryEllen Elia Says You'll Be Able To "Touch" All The Wonderful Changes Coming In Education

MaryEllen Elia, on the propaganda trail:

ALBANY — Substantive changes will be made to testing, teacher evaluations and the Common Core learning standards in New York State, state education commissioner MaryEllen Elia said in a television interview set to air Monday night.

“We’ve already started it,” Elia told WCNY’s Susan Arbetter on "Connect:NY," which airs on PBS.

...

 She said she understands the concerns of test refusal groups, which have said they will keep urging parents to opt their children out of the state and local exams linked to the teacher evaluations until they see change.

“I understand people saying, ‘Let me see it. I want to see it. I want to touch it. I want to make sure it’s there.’ Well, they’re going to be able to see it and touch it. That’s what we’re doing,” she said.

Uh, huh.

Sure you are.

So far, here's a rundown of the wonderful changes we've gotten in education policy.

Changing the Common Core but keeping the "instructional focus" the same.

De-linking state tests from teacher evaluations for four years, but elevating "local" tests to take their place.

Dunno how delusional Elia is, but if she thinks rhetoric and tweaks are going to fool anybody, she's kidding herself.

Fred LeBrun: Cuomo May Cave On Common Core/Testing Because His Poll Numbers Suck

Governor Cuomo's poll numbers are not only underwater, they're deep underwater.

In the last Siena poll, Cuomo stands with 40% job approval, 58% disapproval.

 On individual issues, the numbers are even worse.

On public education, 68% disapprove of the job he is doing, 27% approve.

On corruption, 69% disapprove of the job he is doing, 23% approve.

On the economy, 63% disapprove of the job he is doing, 35% approve.

On improving the state's infrastructure, 65% disapprove of the job he is doing, 29% approve.

These are not good poll numbers.

And the numbers have been this way for a while - last December, Cuomo was at 42% job approval in the Siena poll and the numbers have languished all year.

So what's a governor to do but try and juice those numbers, starting with education

Cue Fred LeBrun: 

Things are at long last looking up for beleaguered public education in this state, probably.

I'd like to say the likelihood of significant corrections coming to Common Core, excessive and inappropriate standardized testing, and a hard-wired connection between those tests and teachers' jobs, is because the politician most responsible for the total mess we're in, Gov. Andrew Cuomo, has finally seen the light.

His infatuation with data driven education ''reform,'' fueled by millionaire political donors, has been a disaster, for him and for our children. It's his law that's codified the problem. It's his law that needs amending.

But I have a hunch closer to the truth would be the sobering recognition by the governor that what desperately needs fixing and quick are persistently in-the-toilet poll numbers over his intrusive handling of education issues.

Voters get it.

Especially with Judgment Day a mere five months away, when the next round of standardized tests are mandated in English and math for grades 4 to 8. That's also about the time we are apt to see a parental opt-out uprising across the state of a scary magnitude if big changes aren't already made or in the works.

So Cuomo needs to distance himself from his own mess pronto and be part of the solution rather than the problem for a change.

LeBrun sees cause for optimism that Cuomo's Common Core task force - completely controlled by the governor (as all things are in this state) - has allowed dissenting voices this time around while previous Cuomo-controlled education commissions did not (see here.)

LeBrun is also encouraged by the appointment of a critic of the state's education policies, Jere Hochman, to work as Cuomo's top education adviser and by the news that more than 3/4s of school districts in the state are going to get waivers from Cuomo's latest iteration of APPR.

And LeBrun sees Testing Doyenne Merryl Tisch's departure as cause for smiling, since so much of the damage done to the system was wrought by Tisch herself.

But like all savvy Cuomo-watchers, LeBrun remains skeptical:

Now, the devil remains in the details, and forgive the state's teachers, educators — and parents — for being skeptical. The last five years has been a horror show. At the very least sole reliance on the flawed ''growth score'' from standardized tests in evaluating teacher performance has to change. It's written in the law. Student performance, and an appropriate level of teacher accountability, can be measured in a number of different ways, and alternatives need to be part of the dialogue. Common Core standards need new flexibilities, and a total rethink down in the lower grades where serious issues of developmentally inappropriate testing, questions, and frequency are recurring criticisms.

It won't be all that hard to torque the law back to reasonable. Now let's see it happen before we break out the confetti.

To be frank, I'm not ready to buy the confetti, let alone get it out and begin celebrating just yet.

NYSED Commissioner Elia told us she wants to repaint the Common Core standards so that people will like them better.

I'm not so sure all of what we're seeing out of Cuomo and NYSED is anything other than a repainting job meant to fool parents and educators into thinking state pols and educrats are listening to their concerns while really not listening to their concerns.

Tisch herself said one of her biggest regrets as Regents Chancellor was not communicating with parents the wonders of Common Core and testing well enough so that there wouldn't have been the rebellion the state has seen over both.

Call me cynical, call me jaded, but I haven't yet seen any tangible policy change that says to me the Endless Testing regime and the damaging Common Core State (sic) Standards are going anywhere.

What I see so far is a change in messaging, not a change in policy or agenda.

Calls for limiting testing from either President Obama or Governor Cuomo are jive when teachers and schools are rated (and fired or closed) based upon test scores.

So long as the tests carry so much weight, the system will be rife with test prep and test anxiety.

As for the Common Core, until these standards are revisited and the insane focus on "rigor" all the time is changed, schools will continue to be misery factories for both children and teachers.

In many schools, students do the same thing in every class, day after day - close reading informational texts that are several grade levels above in difficulty, responding to text-based questions and writing evidence-based argumentative essays on these texts.

This is happening not just in English class but in social studies, science, health - even art, music and vocational classes.

Teachers who deviate from what is considered "rigorous" are punished -  administrators enforce total compliance through the APPR teacher evaluation system and the Danielson rubric.

Until some teacher autonomy is returned, some creativity and allowance to deviate from the "One Way To Teach Them All" approach that we have now, many children are going to continue to hate school and learning.

And if you doubt this, ask some who go to schools where it's "All Rigor All The Time" - ask them how they like close reading day after day, writing argumentative essays day after day, spending three weeks on one short story and close reading it over and over until they don't care anything about it.

Cuomo said change is coming to the system - but given this is the same guy who said he wants to "break" the public school monopoly, I'm not ready to declare whatever "change" he plans to bring good change.

So far, all I see is a change to the messaging.

NY Times Covers National Teacher Shortage, But Misses Point Of Why It's Happening

And so we've gone from "How do we fire teachers!" to "Gee, we can't find teachers!" in a pretty short period of time - even the education reporter at the NY Times noticed:

ROHNERT PARK, Calif. — In a stark about-face from just a few years ago, school districts have gone from handing out pink slips to scrambling to hire teachers.

Across the country, districts are struggling with shortages of teachers, particularly in math, science and special education — a result of the layoffs of the recession years combined with an improving economy in which fewer people are training to be teachers.

...

Louisville, Ky.; Nashville; Oklahoma City; and Providence, R.I., are among the large urban school districts having trouble finding teachers, according to the Council of the Great City Schools, which represents large urban districts. Just one month before the opening of classes, Charlotte, N.C., was desperately trying to fill 200 vacancies. 

But as is usual with the Times ed coverage, they screw up the story and miss why the shortage is happening:

Educators say that during the recession and its aftermath prospective teachers became wary of accumulating debt or training for jobs that might not exist. As the economy has recovered, college graduates have more employment options with better pay and a more glamorous image, like in a rebounding technology sector.

In California, the number of people entering teacher preparation programs dropped by more than 55 percent between 2008 and 2012, according to the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing. Nationally, the drop was 30 percent between 2010 and 2014, according to federal data. Alternative programs like Teach for America, which will place about 4,000 teachers in schools across the country this fall, have also experienced recruitment problems.

Yes, it's true that a rebounding economy leads fewer people to go into teaching - there are more opportunities available for other kinds of work with "better pay and a more glamorous image."

But unexplored in the Motiko Rich Times piece is one big reason why teaching isn't a job with a glamorous image. - the consequences of 10+ years of corporate education reforms.

Every day you open the newspaper or turn on the TV, you see or hear some teacher-bashing crap, some politician like Christie saying he wants to punch teachers in the face, some rag like the Post blaming teachers for destroying the lives of children by using the Three Little Pigs as a DO NOW exercise to teach POV and bias.

Then there are the new "accountability rules" - the constant observations, the evaluation ratings tied to test scores (as high as 50%), the increased work load and stress for the same (or less) money, the decreased benefits, gutted pensions, and diminished work protections like tenure (Kansas is an emblem of this, but it's happening nationwide too.)

I'd say if kids are looking around at the job landscape and saying "Hell, I can do better than be a teacher!", they're right - and smart for saying it.

I teach seniors and I tell the ones who say they want to be teachers to think twice about the major - that teacher bashing and odious accountability measures (most of which simply add more work to a teacher's load without making them better teachers) make the job miserable these days.

I also tell them that teaching isn't really a career anymore, that the politicians and educrats and oligarchs who fund education reform see it as a McJob that can be filled by untrained temps who do it for a couple of years and move on (or get moved on by accountability measures) to something else.

To that end, the Times again:

Ms. Cavins, 31, who once worked as a paralegal and a nanny, began a credentialing program at Sonoma State University here in Rohnert Park less than a year ago. She still has a semester to finish before she graduates. But later this month she will begin teaching third grade — in both English and Spanish — at Flowery Elementary School in Sonoma. Ms. Cavins said she would lean on mentors at her new school as well as her professors. “You are not on that island all alone,” she said.

Esmeralda Sanchez Moseley, the principal at Flowery, said she could not find a fully credentialed — let alone experienced — teacher to fill the opening. “The applicant pool was next to nothing,” she said. “It’s crazy. Six years ago, this would not have happened, but now that is the landscape we are in.”

Before taking over a classroom solo in California, a candidate typically must complete a post-baccalaureate credentialing program, including stints as a supervised student teacher. But in 2013-14, the last year for which figures are available, nearly a quarter of all new teaching credentials issued in California were for internships that allow candidates to work full time as teachers while simultaneously enrolling in training courses at night or on weekends.

In addition, the number of emergency temporary permits issued to allow non-credentialed staff members to fill teaching posts jumped by more than 36 percent between 2012 and 2013.

At California State University, Fresno, 100 of the 700 candidates enrolled in the teacher credentialing program this year will teach full time while completing their degree.

“We don’t like it,” said Paul Beare, dean of the Fresno State school of education. “But we do it.”

Mission accomplished for education reformers - a cheap untrained temp workforce is soon going to be commonplace in schools, this will lead to an even bigger "teaching quality crisis" and allow reformers to promote privatization as the answer to the "education crisis."

Shame Motiko Rich missed the part of the story about how education reform has helped bring about the national teacher shortage.

But alas, this is another example of a Times ed article that only gets half the story: the "national teaching shortage" is reformer-generated and will serve the ultimate goal of may education reformers - to destroy the public school "monopoly" and privatize the public school system.

Why Is The Independent Observer Still In The Regents Teacher Evaluation Plan?

Board of Regents pulled a Friday evening document dump and released their proposed teacher evaluation plan.

Skimming through it, it remains a muddled mess, though the independent observation is now down to as little as 10% of the overall rating:

The statewide minimum standard would be two observations (one principal/supervisor; one independent) with the frequency and duration determined locally.

In addition to the above, short walkthrough observations are permissible.

Observations may exceed these minimum standards and any additional observations may be included in the overall observation score, as determined locally.

At least one observation must be unannounced .

The percentage for the principal/supervisor observation shall be established locally, but must be at least 80%;

The percentage for the independent observation shall be established locally, but must be at least 10%;

The percentage for the optional peer observation shall be established locally within these constraints.

What's the point of having to expend all the time, energy and resources on independent observers if the independent observation is only 10%?

I'll tell you what the point is.

Cuomo decided there will be independent observations and by golly, there are going to be independent observations!

We will have none of this in-house observation inflation that has obviously occurred over the past couple of years with APPR - except that, given that the outside observer can be worth as little as 10%, little will actually change from previous years.

In fact, if I'm reading this correctly, there can be two observations under this new system with the in-house one worth 90% and the outside one worth 10%.

Sure, there can be more observations, but the minimum is two, with one in-house (worth up to 90%) and one outside observer (worth as little as 10%).

So essentially, the in-house observation is the whole ballgame when it comes to observations.

Again I ask, what's the point of outside observers if they're only worth 10%?

Not that I want the outside observations at all, but I do like to point out the horse hockey in the system and here is a prime example of it.

More on the evaluation plan later.

Three Takes On The Danielson Rubric

I wrote something disparaging about the Danielson rubric in another post and got two interesting takes on it.

The first:

I think that given the current state of affairs in NYS, Danielson's evaluation rubric is the LEAST of the pressing issues confronting educators. I can fully understand the pushback from the teaching field regarding Danielson's model because, in most cases the implementation of Danielson was a "rush job" at best and in the end, it was never properly introduced and teachers (and, administrators) were never properly trained to use the model. Even Danielson acknowledged the improper use of her rubric a few years back during a conference address before teachers in New Jersey.

I DO NOT WORK FOR CHARLOTTE DANIELSON (although, I wish I did ... her model is perhaps the most commonly used today in public schools and facilitators make BIG $$$, I'm sure).

RBE, you talk about the loss of teaching "creativity" because of Danielson. That's unfortunate because in my 5 years of working with the Danielson model our faculty was able to "tweak" and adapt her rubrics in a manner that actually worked MUCH BETTER than our previous evaluation model. No teacher likes to feel boxed in nor do they want to feel that they must constantly teach to a syllabus ... teachers want freedom to teach in the classroom. I totally get that however, I also think that public schools should work locally to develop a meaningful evaluation model: one that is collaboratively-based (not a "gotcha") and one that encourages BEST teaching practice. Obviously, the manner in which many schools "adopted" Danielson did not fully bring those primary stakeholders (teachers/administrators) up to speed so that they could comfortably use the model and feel at ease that Danielson was not going to be used as a "punitive" tool to get rid of teachers and administrators.

I have never met Charlotte Danielson however, I have been trained in the model by her minions and find that when applied correctly, there is a great deal of value in the model. As they say in the automobile industry, "Your mileage may vary."

There is no ONE SIZE FITS ALL in public school education, we know that ALL too well in NYS. However, I think that teachers (and administrators) do need structure and an evaluation system that they understand and feel comfortable with. Unfortunately, Danielson and some of the other evaluation models have been trashed because they were not properly rolled out. It's too bad that this happened simultaneously with the God-awful attempt to force Common Core down our throats.

Perhaps one day (let's hope it comes sooner than later) teachers and administrators will be free to collaborate in a positive learning environment for the sake of kids. Perhaps one day that "creativity" you allude to will return in classrooms across NYS.

The second:

It is easier to achieve canonization than Highly Effective on the Danielson rubric because only two miracles are required.

I tend toward the second take, not the first, but I think the first commenter makes some salient points, especially about the speed with which Danielson and the evaluation system was hoisted upon us.

I still think the best take on Danieslon remains the seminal research done by W.D. Haverstock in his post "The Charlotte Danielson Rubric For The Highly Effective Husband."

If you haven't read that post, do yourself a favor and read it.

The Real Teacher's Choice

UFT President Michael Mulgrew sent the following email this morning:

As an educator, you know best what supplies you need for your classroom and your students. That's why the UFT initiated the Teacher's Choice program, funded by the City Council, to give educators the freedom to purchase their own materials for use in schools.

Teacher's Choice was eliminated during the 2011–12 school year because of the recession. Although we were able to restore funding the following school year, the amount since then has remained a fraction of what it used to be even as our city's economy has recovered.

That's why we're launching a new campaign to restore Teacher's Choice — and we need you to tell us your stories.

According to our first annual teacher survey last year, we know that teachers like you spend an average of $500 above the Teacher's Choice allotment on classroom supplies.

By sharing your stories about what Teacher's Choice means for classroom learning, you can help persuade lawmakers to restore Teacher's Choice funding.

What projects have your students been able to accomplish with the supplies you've bought in the past? What would you be able to provide for your students with more Teacher's Choice funding?

Our city now has the most state education aid it's received in eight years. Let's show our elected officials why we need a substantial increase in Teacher's Choice funding.

Do you know what I would like for Teacher's Choice?

To not be evaluated via the Danielson rubric that enforces a "One Ring To Teach Them All" way of teaching.

They can keep the money - let me have some freedom in my classroom again.

Let me be creative again.

Open Thread: Does Any State Have A Quota For How Many Teachers Must Be Rated "Ineffective" Every Year?

The last 24 hours we've gotten an indication that Governor Andrew Cuomo and Regents Chancellor Tisch will look to impose some kind of "quota" on the percentage of teachers that a district must rate "ineffective" every year (see here and here)

This news comes after education reformers have complained that there weren't enough teachers rated "ineffective" either statewide or in New York City.

So here's a question I have for you out there:

Are there any states that have a quota for how many teachers have to be rated "ineffective" every year and, if so, how does that system work? 

Cuomo And Tisch Are Accelerating The Attacks On Teachers And Schools

Michael Fiorillo notes in this comment that the attacks against teachers and schools are being synchronized with the Common Core tests that were rigged to have 70% of students statewide fail to hit "proficiency":

It's also being timed to accompany the skyrocketing failure rates on the new Common Core exams.

Teachers should realize that we're are in a temporary lull right now, but that the attacks will begin to intensify next year, with teachers and schools targeted as "failing" in accelerating numbers.

What will it be, NYC teachers? Self-respect and professional autonomy based on resistance to these vicious policies and the people who push them (including our union misleaders), or passive, willing acceptance of an ever-tightening noose?

As I posted earlier, they're going to set an arbitrary benchmark for "ineffective" ratings in every district (looks like 5%) and punish districts that don't hit the benchmark.

Cuomo said he wants a "competitive" evaluation system and that's certainly what you're going to get with a benchmark of 5% or higher.

It's Survivor for Teachers, Cuomo and Tisch Edition.

Can you survive this round of Danielson drive-by's?

Can you not get voted off the island this school year?

The Farewell Speech NYSED Commissioner John King Should Have Given

Here is the "emotional" farewell speech NYSED Commissioner John King gave yesterday according the Capital NY morning education email:

“Last night … I was thinking about those moments in fourth, fifth and sixth grade, when my father was so sick and my mom had passed, and I didn’t have hope,” he said. “But hope came in school. Hope came in Shakespeare. Hope came in The New York Times. Hope came in the capitals that we memorized in every country in the world. Hope came in knowing that tomorrow I would go to class, and I would learn something, and it would be engaging and challenging and interesting. You bring your students hope. This community brings me hope. It has been a tremendous honor to work alongside our team at [the State Education Department] and … the Board of Regents and every person in this room. I’m very grateful. I look forward to our work together, and I look forward to closing that gap between what is and what ought to be together.” [PRO] http://bit.ly/1wFi6uc

Given how destructive King has been to the public school system and the children and the teachers in that system, how arrogant he has treated parents and teachers, how much creativity and joy he has sucked out of education, this is the speech he should have given:

I was thinking about all the hope and joy I was given in school when I was a child, all the hope and joy that my children are given in the Montessori school I send them to, and all the hope and joy I took out of the public schools in New York by pushing the rote learning of Common Core, the test-based teacher evaluations of APPR, the soul-sapping redundancy in the EngageNY learning modules.  To be frank, my job as NYSED Commissioner was to prove that public schools are failures so that charter schools could flourish.  I was hired for that job, that was the job I worked very hard to carry out.  I wasn't quite successful at destroying the public schools or the children and teachers in those schools, but I came close.  It is my hope that my successor can finish that job so that New York State will be a land of innovation and choice, just like they have in the New Orleans school system.

I went into education because a teacher helped me greatly when I was at one of the lowest points in my life.  I had some very grave family issues and, like many children, I was bringing the emotions I had around those issues to school.  A teacher at my school noticed this and talked to me about the problems I was facing. He gave me hope, he showed me some one cared.

In the school system I have helped to create here in New York State, I wanted to make sure that no teacher can have that opportunity to help a student in emotional need because there is no time for that kind of help.  There is only time for test-based learning, endless professional development, useless focus groups, and all the other mind-numbing, soul-killing corporate drivel we at NYSED have pushed on schools and school staff.

If I were a child today and needed the help that I needed from my teacher, I might not get that help because the teacher would say "I'm sorry, John, I'd like to talk but I have to run off to my daily focus group to talk about my target students. Then I have to keep going on the EngageNY curriculum because every teacher in this school needs to be on the same lesson every day or they risk getting an 'ineffective' on their next Danielson drive-by observation.  Good luck, John..."

So much of what King talked about getting from his own teachers - hope, optimism, honor - is the opposite of what King himself brought to the New York State public school system.

Like many reformers, King is a hypocrite, of course.

He makes sure his own kids are given the nurturing they need by sending them to a Montessori school - this way, they don't have to experience the Reign of Error King and his merry men and women in reform have thrust on public school children.

I wasn't expecting him to acknowledge any of this publicly in his "farewell" remarks.

That's why I did it for him.

A Friendly Reminder On Lesson Planning In The Age Of Common Core, Danielson And EngageNY

Dear Staff,

The administration has come to understand that many teachers are feeling the need to address current events in their lessons these days.

It is understandable that children want to talk about some of the stories that are in the news, like the Michael Brown case in Ferguson, Missouri, or the Eric Garner case in New York City.

Please understand that no matter how much children need to talk about these stories, all lessons must be Common Core-aligned and fully compliant with the "effective" or "highly effective" lines on the Danielson rubric.

Current events lessons must be built around a piece of complex text that is the centerpiece of the lesson.  While we want students to grapple with the complex events that are occurring around us in the world today, we must ensure that they are also grappling with complex words and language they don't understand - otherwise we are not doing our jobs as educators.

Current events lessons may not be open-ended discussions that go where the intellectual or emotional needs of the children lead - they must be fully-planned out ahead of time, with teachers having a rigorous set of close reading questions developed for the complex current events reading text and the responses students are expected to give to those close reading questions.  As always, close reading questions should focus mostly on the language choices and tone of the author, be repetitive in nature, and allow for no thought about the actual event itself.  When in doubt, always remember that in the Age of Common Core and EngageNY, we are teaching skills, not content.

In addition, current events lessons must end with an assessment so that teachers can see what students have learned and what they still need to learn - we cannot lose sight of the importance of endlessly assessing students no matter what is happening outside our school. Please ensure that your Common Core-aligned, Danielson-approved current events lesson contains formative and summative assessments along with the appropriate rubrics so students will know what the instructional expectations are and how they can best achieve them.

The complex current events text, the close reading questions, the expected student responses to those close reading questions, and the formative and summative assessments must be fully developed and documented in the (suggested) lesson plan format you received at the beginning of the Fall 2014 term and aligned to both a specific, measurable instructional objective and the Common Core English Language Arts standards.

Lesson plans should be available for the perusal of classroom observers.

These are interesting times we live in and, as was said before, we understand why children might want to break from their EngageNY lessons to talk about some of the things that have been happening in the world.

But as always, in order to be professional educators in the Age of EngageNY and the Danielson rubric, we must make sure that every lesson that is taught is Common Core-aligned, rigorous in language, complex in text, rife with assessment and 100% planned out beforehand as evident in the (suggested) lesson plan format.

Thank you and have a rigorous day.

NOTE: Informal, unannounced Danielson observations will be ongoing this week

NYCDOE Should Expand Composting Program To Include Common Core/EngageNY Modules

From the Times:

New York City’s school composting program, kicked off just two years ago by parents on the Upper West Side, is now in 230 school buildings in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Staten Island, and is expected to more than double in size and reach all five boroughs in the fall, with an ultimate goal of encompassing all 1,300-plus school buildings.

 Depending on where the school is, the uneaten and half-eaten leftovers are sent to a compost heap at a former Staten Island landfill or to upstate New York or Delaware, where the slop is churned into nutrient-enriched dirt that farmers or landscape architects can buy. Eventually, the city will send some scraps to a wastewater treatment plant in Brooklyn, where “digesters” turn garbage into usable gas.

“There’s a lot of carbon in that banana that’s going to end up growing something else in your garden at home,” John T. Shea, the chief of the Education Department’s school facilities, said. “It’s the circle of life, baby.”

The hope is that by building up composting in school, the city will help the environment, instill a sense of conservation in schoolchildren and, critically, save some money. The city paid $93 per ton in 2013 to dump in landfills, up from $68 in 2004. Composting saves the city $10 to $50 per ton, because the cost is offset by the sale of the end product, according to the Sanitation Department.

I think this program is great and I would like to see the DOE expand the program beyond food to other scraps and waste that nobody wants - like the Danielson rubric, the Common Core Core State (sic) Standards and the EngageNY modules.

Throw them all onto the compost pile with the rotting tomatoes and bananas where they belong.

As the year goes by and more and more parents turn against these kinds of corporate education reforms, we're getting closer to seeing them end up on the compost pile.

Sandra Stotsky: Don't Let Yourself Be Bullied By State Education Officials

Jessica Bakeman at Capital NY:

ALBANY—A former Massachusetts state education official who has emerged as a national critic of the Common Core standards told parent-lobbyists at the Capitol on Tuesday that they should fight for their rights and empower their older children as activists.

Sandra Stotsky, who helped developed Massachusetts' academic standards when she served as association commissioner of education in that state, traveled to Albany as part of a national tour to state capitols to denounce the Common Core. She spoke at a lobby day for parents who are pushing lawmakers to abandon the standards.

“Parents have the right to do what they feel is best for their children, and they have been bullied by state officials,” Stotsky said to the parents, who wore T-shirts declaring themselves as “Common Core warriors.”

“Parents have the right to keep their kids home when they're sick,” continued Stotsky, who is a professor at the University of Arkansas. “And they can simply keep them home on days when there are state-sponsored tests.”

Stotsky also attacked the Common Core:


She also encouraged the parents to engage their children in the fight against the Common Core.

“You need to start now recruiting your own secondary-level kids, so they understand how the Common Core standards are going to cheat them out of the education they should be having, which they may be having already in their communities, but which will gradually disappear in the next few years,” Stotsky said. “Unless there are changes made in the high school curriculum in both English and math, your children … are going to be the victims of Common Core. That's the experimentation that needs to stop.”

The harm that is being done to children by the educrats and the wealthy funders that back them must be stopped.

The Endless Testing regime that forces children to engage in two forms of schooling - test prep and test-taking - must stop.

The Common Core agenda that strips children of the joy of learning and turn school into soul-sapping drudgery must stop.

The Danielson rubric that forces teachers to teach one way or be declared "ineffective" must be discarded as an evaluation tool.

And we must stop being afraid of both the politicians and the state educrat bullies who push these reforms on children, parents, teachers and schools.

They are deliberately harming your children while keeping their own children away from the CCSS/APPR mess by sending them to private schools or Montessori schools.

The education revolution - both parent-driven and teacher-driven - is gaining momentum and growing all across this nation.

Let it grow far and wide and take the Common Core experiment, along with the ancillary testing, data tracking and evaluation reforms that have gone with it, and dump it into the trash bin of history where it belongs

The "Unintended Consequences" Of The Common Core And The Education Reform Movement

An editorial from the New Hampshire Union Leader:

Kids and cursive Common Core fallout

Unintended consequences are beginning to sprout in the wake of U.S. education decisions.

For one thing, there is the move to do away with any concentration on handwriting other than in kindergarten and first grade. For another, there is the federal overreach on common standards.

A lengthy New York Times report last week on research done elsewhere says that a lot more than the ability to write in cursive is at stake regarding the scrapping of handwriting. Several studies have shown that handwriting engages portions of the brain that a keyboard does not.

"When we write, a unique neural circuit is automatically activated," said a French psychologist. "There is a core recognition of the gesture in the written word, a sort of recognition by mental stimulation in your brain. And it seems that this circuit is contributing in unique ways we didn't realize."

"Learning," said Stanislas Dehaene, "is made easier."

"When learning to write by hand," the Times noted, "children better generate ideas and retain information."

Who would have thunk it?

Don't think the fuss over "Common Core" standards is any big deal? It happens that those standards include ending the teaching of handwriting after the first grade.
Incidentally, Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin signed legislation last week that ends that state's adherence to Common Core.

"It has become very apparent to me that the word Common Core has become a word that is tainted, that is divisive, that has caused widespread concern throughout our state," Fallin said.

According to the Oklahoman newspaper, the standards "were developed in a state-led effort launched in 2009 through the National Governors Association, a group Fallin now heads. Meant to be rigorous and advance critical thinking, they were adopted voluntarily by 45 states and the District of Columbia. Oklahoma joins Indiana in repealing them."

Fallin faulted the Obama administration for using federal funds as either cudgel or reward on the issue, noting that Washington offers financial "incentives'' for those states that, like New Hampshire, go along with the standards.

Perhaps our own state board, which claims no local district need adopt the standards but is making it impossible to avoid them, can try this assignment: Write 100 times, in longhand, New Hampshire can do better than Common Core.

My 11th graders told me this year that they can't seem to write without a rubric and an outline anymore, two items that the Common Core and the Danielson teacher evaluation rubric as practiced in my school specialize in festishizing.

When I asked students to write a personal piece about a struggle they have had and what they have learned from that struggle (a piece that could take the form of either a personal essay, a narrative or poetry), many students said they had difficulty starting because they hadn't written anything creative all year and weren't really reading much in the way of literature or poetry anymore (this is much worse for 9th graders, where they are getting the education malfeasance that is the EngageNY curriculum, but it's still bad at all levels in high school.)

We have been told by the self-described geniuses who brought us the Common Core, the Danielson framework and the other ancillary reforms that go with these that the proof will be there after a decade of reform, that students will be going to college and showing up in their careers ready to do the "rigorous" work the 21st Century workplace will require.

But the consequences from these reforms are showing up already - especially the damage the Common Core and the Endless Testing that goes with it is doing to the emotional health of children.

The Union Leader says these consequences are unintended, but I'm not so sure.

In a country where the economic and social elite seem to want to own 100% of the country, you can see the value in an education revolution that dumbs down most of the populace and does severe emotional and psychological harm to them.

In any case, whether the consequences are unintended, as the Union Leader says they are, or they're intended, as I tend to think they are, the consequences to the reform agenda are showing up already.

The Common Core Generation is going to be a Lost Generation.

Chancellor Farina: Policy Changes Coming Soon

Lindsey Crist interview Chancellor Farina on NY1 and asked the following:

Christ: So obviously, so much of the first two-and-a-half months, the conversation in the city has been about pre-K and after school, and there's many years after pre-K and many hours before after school in the day. When are we going to start hearing more about these concrete proposals and policy changes related to the rest of the system?

Fariña: I think most of the policy changes, you're going to be hearing probably within the next month to six weeks. We have made a very strong statement that in order to become principal or an assistant principal in the city of New York, you need at least seven years of pedagogical experience, and that's a big shift from the last few years. Leaders need to have experience in the classroom. They need to know what the job is before we tell other people how to do their job.

Most of the interview was spent on charter schools and the pushback from the charter lobby.

Just as charter schools only educate a small percentage of students in the city, charter school policy is only a small percentage of the overall education policy that Farina is setting.

But the charter school agenda has hijacked the education narrative these past few weeks and seems to be crowding out almost every other story.

I, like many of my colleagues, await to hear the policy changes Farina and de Blasio plan to bring.

Will they re-negotiate the insanity that is the Commissioner King-imposed teacher evaluation system? Will they reduce the performance assessments and other test-centric policies we are educating students with now? Will there be any change to the messages that come from Tweed to administrators on how to work with teachers?

So far, I see little-to-no change in my day-to-day work.

The policies we labor under remain FEAR-based, we continue to be told there is one way to teach, one way to lesson plan, one way to assess and anybody who isn't doing it this way during a drive-by Danielson observation will be punished with an "ineffective" or "developing" ding. 

Chancellor Farina said she wanted to restore joy to the school system, to make learning fun again.

As I give yet another monthly performance assessment in preparation for the second Measures Of Student Learning (MOSL) assessment in May that will be used to grade all the teachers in the building as part of the APPR teacher evaluation system, as I continue to spend hours a day on compliance paperwork in order to play CYA in case there is a drive-by Danielson observation, as I walk the building and see the demoralization of my fellow teachers and hear of yet another one who has quit mid-year because he/she is sick and tired of being sick and tired, I do hope that whatever policy changes Farina announces in the next six months, they will alleviate some of the FEAR that inflicts students and adults in the NYC school system.

It would be nice to see joy back in the school system again.

Michael Mulgrew: More Than 32,000 NYC Teachers Have Quit In Last 11 Years

From State of Politics:

At 1 p.m., UFT President Mike Mulgrew releases a report showing that more than 32,000 teachers walked away from NYC classrooms in the last 11 years, with many going to suburban districts, 52 Broadway, Manhattan.

Yes, Bloomberg, along with his chancellor henchmen, were largely responsible for that.

So were Obama and Duncan.

But so too was the UFT leadership, which made deals with the devil over seniority, agreed to create the ATR pool, agreed to use test scores to evaluate teachers in the infamous Randi Weingarten/Chris Cerf Teacher Data Reports deal that eventually saw teachers' names in the papers tied to ratings with high margins of error.

The latest fiasco that has morale at its lowest level in my 13+ years teaching is the Danielson observation framework. The UFT signed off on Race to the Top, which first brought us the re-do in evaluations, then agreed to drop the lawsuit against the state when they changed the rules of the APPR teacher evaluation system on testing, then said it was swell when Cuomo gave Commissioner King the power to impose whatever the hell he wanted to impose on us.

Now everybody is so busy running around trying to come up with all the compliance paperwork, the seven pages lesson plans per class and all the other junk Danielson calls for that there is little time or energy to actually teach students or grade paperwork.

I can imagine Mulgrew will complain about Bloomberg today and will mention contract stuff and money and respect.

But what he won't mention is how he and Randi Weingarten are as culpable in those 32,000 walking off the job (with more going every day - we have lost at least 7 teachers in my school since the year started.)

And he probably won't mention how the evaluation system that was put into place by Cuomo is meant to do exactly this - burn and churn the labor force, move them in, burn them out, churn them out.

Note To Mulgrew: You Are Responsible For The Excessive Paperwork Problem Too

A teacher called into a WNYC interview with UFT President Michael Mulgrew yesterday to complain about all the excessive paperwork teachers are dealing with.

James Eterno posted about these excessive mandates last week:

The list below was sent to me from a NYC public school teacher.

Do you want to be a teacher today? Then understand that in many schools you will spend most of the day meeting multiple mandates like those enumerated here.

Dear Staff,

Please note that I will be looking at the following in a walk through tomorrow.

Please have these items labeled in a central location where I do not have to interrupt instruction.

Student folder
Display of work inside and outside of room
Comments on work
Date on work

Conference notes
Lesson plans
Student desks
General environment
Outside bulletin board
Leadership binders
Scaffolding of learning - charts
Rubrics
All assessments posted on line and analyzed
Inquiry binder for each grade - grade leaders
Inquiry notes for your struggling students
Discipline chart
Writing process chart

James goes on to note how Bloomberg won in the battle between the city and the union because all of these mandates have been pushed through without any changes to the contract (or, I would note, any extra compensation.)

Yesterday on WNYC Mulgrew blamed Bloomberg for the excessive paperwork too:

 Mulgrew also criticized the Bloomberg administration for creating unnecessary paperwork for teachers through what he called a burdensome "obsession" with accountability. Fariña has pledged changes to that effect, although she has yet to introduced change to the current paperwork system, and Mulgrew didn't specify what changes he'd like to see.

But what Mulgrew fails to say is that he agreed to much of this when he abdicated the evaluation system negotiation fight and hailed Governor Cuomo's proposal to have NYSED Commissioner John King impose an evaluation system on NYC teachers if Mulgrew and Bloomberg couldn't come to an agreement.

Much of the excessive paperwork has been instituted as part of the evaluation system, particularly the Danielson evaluation framework.

The union wanted to make sure that all 22 competencies of the Danielson framework were part of the evaluation system, allegedly to give teachers a better chance to receive positive evaluations, but with this came a ton of extra paperwork and compliance work like the mandates James Eterno listed in his post.

Gotham Schools covered that last year when SED Commissioner King announced the new evaluation system he was imposing on NYC teachers:

One of the only issues, it seemed, that the city and the union could agree on when it came to observations was which rubric to base them on. It turns out they lacked consensus even there.

The union proposed using the version of Charlotte Danielson’s rubric, called the Framework for Teaching, that teachers have used since the city’s Teacher Effectiveness Pilot started three years ago. The city advocated for the updated version, which came out this year and accounts for instructional practices required of teachers as the state transitions to the Common Core learning standards.

King, who has driven the state’s adoption and rollout of the Common Core, imposed the updated version.

Danielson components

The Danielson Framework contains 22 “components” broken down into four “domains.” Arguing that the framework’s elements are interrelated, the UFT wanted principals to have to consider all 22 components when rating teachers. But the city asked for only a subset of seven components to count. Both the city and UFT agreed that the domains that have to do with in-class instruction should get more weight than the domains that deal with teacher’s planning and after-class reflection.

In his ruling, King sided with the UFT. Since all of the components work together, he said, they should all factor into teachers’ ratings. He awarded 75 percent weight to the domains that the UFT and city agreed were more important.

So Mulgrew can blame Bloomberg all he wants for all the excessive paperwork and mandates teachers are drowning in these days.

The truth is, he is as much to blame as Bloomberg is - he pushed for the use of the Danielson framework to be used on teachers, he hailed the King evaluation system which imposes so much of this extra paperwork, he was defending this system as late as last September from detractors and critics (i.e., teachers who had to live under it), and he was the one who pushed the 22 competencies in the Damielson in the first place - according to reports, the DOE thought it was too much to do, but the UFT pushed it and King agreed.

In short, Mulgrew is as responsible for the excessive paperwork these days as Bloomberg is.