via @NYDailyNews, Thomas Kane: Teachers must look in the mirror http://t.co/go3YGxO9D5
— Rich Azzopardi (@RichAzzopardi) April 7, 2015
"I’ve carefully studied the best systems for rating teachers — & I can tell you the governor picked the right fight." http://t.co/go3YGxO9D5
— Rich Azzopardi (@RichAzzopardi) April 7, 2015
"The deal in Albany last week will finally give schools the tools they need to manage and improve teaching." http://t.co/go3YGxO9D5
— Rich Azzopardi (@RichAzzopardi) April 7, 2015
The article Azzopardi, Cuomo's spokesman, is linking to is a Daily News piece written by Thomas Kane, the former director of the Gates Foundation's Measures of Effective Teaching project.
Kane writes this:
Although the use of test scores has received all the attention, the most consequential change in the law has been overlooked: One of a teacher’s observers must now be drawn from outside his or her school — someone whose only role is to comment on teaching.
The fact that 96% of teachers were given the two highest ratings last year — being deemed either “effective” or “highly effective” — is a sure sign that principals have not been honest to date. An external perspective will make it easier for longtime colleagues to have a frank conversation about each other’s instruction.
Yet as valuable as they might be, external observations also present significant logistical challenges. A lot of time could be wasted as observers travel from school to school. One alternative would be to allow teachers to submit videos to external observers (and, possibly, to their principals as well).
Doing so would have a number of advantages. For instance, teachers usually struggle because of the clues they are not noticing while they teach. It is difficult for such teachers to recognize their mistakes after the fact by reading an observer’s written notes after class.
Giving teachers control of a camera, the opportunity to watch themselves teach, and allowing them to discuss their work with external observers, peers and supervisors will provide a more effective mirror than any observer’s written notes.
With the benefit of video, harried principals could do their observations during quieter times of the day or week. And when principals do not have sufficient content expertise, they could solicit the views of content experts.
Finally, video evidence would level the playing field if a teacher ever has to defend her teaching at a dismissal hearing.
Video is now widely used to coach improvements in athletics and dance and public speaking. Why not use it to improve teaching?
We used to hear from one of the Gates Foundation-funded astroturf groups like the Edcuators4Excellence how teachers needed to be observed frequently by their principals or assistant principals so that they could receive frequent feedback about their teaching practice.
We don't hear that anymore now that Governor Cuomo has decided that principals and assistant principals are as incompetent as the teachers they observe and outside evaluators must be brought in instead to observe teachers.
But as critics have pointed out, finding all of these outside observers and sending them all over the state to do their outside observations is going to cost an awful lot of money.
No worries, though - the ed deformers have the solution!
Ipads that video tape lessons - so much cheaper than having to send outside observers around the state and hey, everybody loves a selfie.
Plus teachers can learn so much about themselves by studying the video tape.
Back in the day, I had to submit a videotape of a lesson before I got my permanent certification.
I remember agonizing over it, worrying about what lesson to prepare, how to approach the lesson, whether to do group work or not.
A veteran colleague of mine told me I shouldn't worry, that nobody at NYSED watched the videos anyway.
He related a story to me about another teacher who agonized over a certification videotape, who tried so hard to get a great lesson on tape, then accidentally sent the wrong tape into NYSED.
This was discovered months later when the teacher went to watch a copy of Good Fellas he had made, then discovered it was his classroom certification tape!
Apparently NYSED had gotten a copy of Good Fellas instead of a videotaped lesson, but it didn't matter at all to the teacher's certification - the license was approved.
Now that story may be apocryphal (I think the veteran teacher was just trying to assuage my concerns over the certification tape), but I was reminded of that story as I read the insufferably self-serving jive from Thomas Kane, Harvard ed professor and Gates Foundation shill.
That the Cuomo flying attack monkey tweeted the Kane/DN story three times indicates this may be where they're going to go with the outside observations.
This way, they can say these are outside evaluations that are so much more accurate and impartial than observations done by administrators who work with teachers every day, but do it on the cheap - no travel expenses, no time spent traveling, no replacement needed for traveling administrators out on the observation trail.
And just in case you have any reservations about the new system, well, Gates Foundation shill Kane has some words of warning for you:
In the coming months, teachers and their representatives have a choice. Will they fight reforms or will they embrace higher standards as a means of restoring legitimacy to the tenure protections they cherish? Will they fight to keep paper-based observer notes, or will they embrace video as a more valid source of feedback as well as a means of empowering and protecting teachers? Will they fight the use of external observers, or will they open their classroom doors?
Yes, teachers, open up your classroom doors and welcome the all-seeing video camera that will be "a more valid source of feedback" than those old stodgy administrators the Educators4Excellence and other Gates Foundation shills used to crow about.
It's fun tracking how ed deform memes and talking points change over the years.
Sometimes they do a complete 180 without blinking.
Gee, I hope the video camera can catch that.
