Washington Post: Firing Teachers Hasn't Turned Around D.C. Schools

Here's something novel - the Washington Post reporting that school reform is more complicated than getting a broom and sweeping out all the so-called "bad teachers":

D.C. Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson called it a “fresh start” and a “momentum-shifter” for Cardozo Senior High last month when administrators removed nearly half the staff at the school.
Henderson had used her power to “reconstitute” the struggling school, requiring the entire staff to reapply for their positions. It is a dramatic response to chronically low achievement, built on a philosophy that has driven D.C. school restructuring in recent years, first under Michelle Rhee and now under Henderson: Clear out poor educators and handpick a set of new ones to transform a school’s culture and performance.

Federal policymakers also embraced this approach under No Child Left Behind, the sweeping 2002 law that named reconstitution as an option for turning around low-performing schools. But the District’s efforts to remake schools this way have largely failed to produce improved test scores, suggesting that replacing staff is not by itself a reliable route to addressing the challenges of high-poverty inner-city schools.

Rhee and Henderson have reconstituted more than two dozen schools in the past five years — including Cardozo, which was last remade in 2008. Of the 18 D.C. schools reconstituted between 2008 and 2010, 10 have seen their standardized test scores decline further. Two of the schools have closed. Six have improved.

While test scores can be a crude measure of progress, school and city leaders use them as a key metric in judging schools.

Teachers say the District’s mixed record with reconstitution is a sign that urban schools and students face complicated problems — such as rampant truancy — that can’t be solved by trading one set of teachers for another.

“It seems like we’re always being told it’s our fault, like we should be superheroes,” said one Cardozo teacher who was rehired in May and who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity out of concern for their jobs. Reconstitution “doesn’t acknowledge the fact that there are a lot of issues outside the control of the teacher.”

Gee, more complex than just firing the teachers and declaring we're going to accept "No Excuses!" when it comes to achievement.

Who knew?

Mulgrew's Kabuki Dance

From a comment made by I Noticed That:

Mulgrew planned it so well and played it like a fiddle.

He knew that having this APPR negotiation before the union election would have cost him his election.

It is so obvious the Kabuki dance of not meeting the deadline of January, of giving this so called two-year sunset that Bloomberg would reject, and dragging this APPR negotiation with King until after the election.

Mulgrew has won the election for another 3 years.  He has let down the members. He has followed in Randi's footstep. Shame on him. He should have never signed up for the Race to End a Teacher's Career.

Indeed, it's not an accident that all of this comes after the UFT election.

Dunno exactly how it was engineered, but it was engineered.

The powers that be want Mulgrew and the Unity/New Action sell-outs in power.

They do not want to deal with an insurgent leadership.

MORE Budget Analysis On Teacher "Gotcha" Squad

An important post from the MORE caucus on how much more money is spent these days by the state and the city to fire teachers than in the recent past:

There are 120,000 tenured teachers across the rest of New York State, where 208 cases were settled during this time. In New York City, it is generally understood that approximately half of that amount, 60,000, enjoy the same protections. Yet it seems the amount of city teachers who have faced termination charges double. In fact, using these numbers, it becomes clear that city teachers during  were at least 4.6 times more likely to face 3020-a charges than were teachers from across the rest of the state.

We can now see that between the years of 2009 and 2012 New York City spent the lion’s share of $32.8 million in state funds, running the state into a $19.7 million deficit in the process, to dutifully try to fire more than four times the amount of teachers as anywhere else in the state. Only two possible conclusions can be drawn from this realization: Either an astoundingly high amount of teachers here in the city are bad, or our employer, the city’s Department of Education, has zealously pursued a course to fire as many teachers as it can.

We  believe the latter: That, instead of spending badly needed money on children and on schools during the depths of the recession,  the department engaged in a zealous attempt to fire as many teachers as possible and used the state’s money -more than $19 million of which it did not have- to prosecute those attempts. We also believe this policy continues to today.

Former president Weingarten’s  prediction was correct; the DOE has created a climate of fear and intimidation in our schools.  This climate of fear has had an adverse effect on the working conditions of our colleagues and must end.  We must establish an open environment of collaboration if we expect our teachers to excel. In addition, the department must  direct as much money as possible to the actual classroom -to actual students-  instead of using it in an attempt to fire teachers (at a rate at almost five times as frequent as other districts throughout the state) if they expect their schools -our schools- to be successful.

Of course it was Randi Weingarten and the Unity caucus who helped this process along greatly with all the contractual changes they agreed to in the infamous '05 contract.

Tisch Defends Using Error-Riddled Tests For High Stakes Teacher Evaluations

Merryl Tisch continues to stand behind the error-riddled state tests and states they WILL be used for high stakes decisions like holding students back, firing teachers and closing schools:

After revelations nearly 30 flawed questions appeared on state exams, Chancellor Merryl Tisch bashed the mistakes as “really disturbing" and “inexcusable.”

But despite her strongest condemnation to date

, Tisch said the tests’ scores would still be used for high-stakes teacher evaluations because experts maintain the errors had not “contaminated” results.

“I would like everyone to know here that yes, New York State plans to go on and use these tests for the accountability system and for the initial implementation of the teacher evaluation system,” Tisch said at a Crain’s New York breakfast Wednesday.

It is not actually clear who these "experts" Tisch is standing behind are or whether they actually have conducted a rigorous and thorough review of the tests and how the errors have affected the scores since, as the Daily News article notes, it takes five weeks for the scores to be completed.

Would these be the same "experts" who decided administering these error-riddled tests was a good idea in the first place?

Even if they're a different set of "experts," let's see the analysis they have conducted that has helped assure Ms. Tisch that the tests have not been "contaminated" by the numerous errors.

The reality is, the Regents and the NYSED have conducted no such analysis.

Merryl Tisch is winging her excuses, trying to divert attention from the fact that in the first year the new "objective" and "scientific" teacher evaluation system is implemented, they are going to be using tests with more errors than the 1962 Mets.

But Tisch's attempts at diversion won't work anymore.

People already know that the emperors at the Regents and the NYSED have no clothes.

NYSED Commissioner King has already lost his credibility on this issue after he claimed the "Hare and the Pineapple" passage was just fine, then blamed the teacher panel that rubber stamped it for the state rather than taking responsibility for the garbage tests himself.

And Tisch has lost all credibility by admitting these tests are horrendous but insisting they WILL be used to make high stakes decisions to leave students back, close schools and fire teachers.

If these two people were honest, they would admit there are tremendous problems with these tests and the evaluation system they have created around the tests, they would admit they have rushed everything and they would admit that at best they need to slow down before they implement this system across the state.

But neither John King nor Merryl Tisch are honest about this.

Instead they are playing their parts to continue the BLAME TEACHERS FIRST movement even as the system they are using to scapegoat teachers is coming undone right before them (and more importantly, right before the public.)

Now I'm not naive enough to think Governor Cuomo, who respects nothing in this world so much as people with a ton of money, would actually have anyone named "Tisch" fired over this.

But Merryl Tisch should be forced out as chancellor, as John King should be fired as NYSED Commissioner.

They have both proven that they cannot be trusted to lead at the Regents or the Education Department.

They have both proven they care nothing for children, students or schools - they only care about promoting their Endless Testing agenda.