The United Federation of Teachers has filed a lawsuit to prevent the Department of Education from releasing internal report cards on more than 12,000 city teachers.
For three years, the DOE has confidentially assigned ratings to teachers, and today the city planned to release that information.
The release of this data would be explosive. These are the supposedly confidential reports that assign each teacher a performance grade and percentile ranking, supposedly based on how much students improve while in their classroom. Almost all elementary and middle school math and English teachers get these scores.
NY1 was one of a few new agencies that asked for the scores through a Freedom of Information Law request, and city lawyers decided to give it to the station.
To be clear, NY1 would get the names of individual teachers, their school, and their score.
But the teacher's union is now requesting an injunction at the New York State Supreme Court. The union says its lawsuit will argue these reports are,
“Unreliable, often incorrect, subjective analysis dressed up as scientific facts,” and “…a complex and largely subjective guessing game on the part of the DOE.”
A DOE spokesperson says the agency still plans to release the information, saying, “While we respect UFT’s right to sue, we believe that the public has a right to this information under the law. Therefore, unless we are enjoined by the court, it is our intention to release the data on Friday afternoon to those news outlets who filed FOIL requests.”
The stakes are certainly very high, as 12,000 teachers will learn today that by Friday, anyone may be able to go online and see their rating. And for hundreds of thousands of parents, for the first time ever, may be able to look up their child’s teacher and see how they are scored by the DOE.
For more than a thousand principals, it means they may have to answer to parents who want to know why their children are in a poorly-rated teacher’s class.
These scores are based primarily on students’ scores on state tests. The formula tries to account for other factors that may affect the students’ scores, like poverty, race, and gender.
Twenty percent of the teachers got high scores, 60 percent average scores and 20 percent received poor marks.
The LA Times used seven years of data and the MOE was 20% or higher.
Kleinberg have used 3 years of data.
These scores will be worthless for telling how good a teacher is.
But you can bet Bloomberg and Klein will be using the data to call for the firing of the lowest 20% of those teachers.
And a complicit "news" media - like the corporate-owned whores at NY1 or NBC - will go along for the ride.
It is no accident that these scores are being released AFTER Waiting for Superman, the Oprah "education" shows and NBC's Education Nation Summit.
Kleinberg will be using all that p.r. to back up their claims that the bottom 20% of the teachers on this list are "bad" and must improve in two years or be fired.
And under the new state law that passed thanks to President Hopey/Changey and his Race to the Top lottery game, they just might be able to do it.
Nice going, UFT - you didn't fight these guys when you had the chance.
You could have sent Bloomberg back to Bermuda or wherever he lives on weekends had you fought him in the 2009 mayoral election.
Instead we have three more years of these corporate bastards and given the way things are going, they will have half the UFT assigned to ATR status by the end of that.
And then, after the "fact-finders" in the current contract negotiation side with the mayor on the ATR's, you can bet Bloomberg will fire ALL of them.
Heckuva job, Randi!
Heckuva job, Leo!
Heckuva job, Mike!
We've got our own LA Times problem right here in NYC.
And YOU guys created it by not fighting this nonsense tooth and nail at every stage.
H/T: Queens Teacher.
POSTSCRIPT: Gotham Schools points out the release of these scores will break a deal the UFT forged with the DOE back in '08.
Gee, you mean Bloomberg and Klein are lying weasels and their words on honor are worthless?
You're kidding!
The UFT is to blame for this in the first place.
Had they fought this crap from the beginning, we wouldn't be here now.
My memory is a little foggy--maybe somebody else can remember the details. I have a recollection of a demand for the names of those banksters and Wall St. types who received huge bonuses following the government bailout after the 2008 crash. Public anger was running high at the time. I believe Andrew Cuomo as AG said that releasing those names would put those people in danger and he refused to allow the names to be made public. Am I remembering correctly? If so, it would make publicizing the names of teachers even more ironic--and awful.
ReplyDeleteWhich teachers will be on this list, since it's obviously not the entire city staff? Will it be the 12,000 most senior teachers?
ReplyDeleteI seem to remember the same thing, Anon. I'll do some googling and see what I can come up with.
ReplyDeleteI do remember that some hedge fundies and AIG management in Greenwich were getting threatened on Saturdays in the town - some even hired guards. Again, I'll have to look for that story.
Unfortunately the Masters of the Universe have decided only teachers should be held accountable for scores.
Not Wall Street CEO's or banksters or shitty presidents with terrible economic records.
Ms. Tsouris, that's a good question. It sounds like it is math and reading teachers in elementary and middle schools, since they have to administer state exams every year. I know in high school, other than the ELA and math Regents exams, we don't give state exams. Not yet, at any rate. Now that Obama got NY to change the law with the RttT jive, we will have to start giving exams every year in every subject, allegedly by 2011. I assume the DOE will use some jive ass Acuity tests created by McGraw Hill to "evaluate" high school teachers. That will be just great - give children even MORE tests every year so that they really don't give a shit anymore, then fire the bottom 20% of teachers after publicly shaming them in the papers. And of course since the MOE is so large, we'll ALL end up on the bottom sooner or later.
ReplyDeleteKlein and Bloomberg are scum. So are the reporters who can't wait to use this info on us.
Perhaps the little dictator and the Reichchancellor hope that some of us will follow the example set by that poor fellow in L.A.
ReplyDeleteThen we would really be off the payroll.
Mcteacher here we come.
Angry Nog
ANON'S MEMORY IS CORRECT. I REMEMBER THE SAME THING. PEOPLE WANTED TO KNOW WHO WAS INVOLVED IN THE COLLAPSE OF THE ECONOMY.
ReplyDeleteTHIS SHOULD BE BROUGHT OUT IN THE NEXT DELEGATE ASSEMBLY. IT'S AN EXCELLENT POINT.
This IS sick, and speaks to the pathology of "scorched earth"-the life philosophy of liliputian punks like Mayor Scumberg and Chancellor Slime. These two repulsive individuals, obviously have over compensated throughout life, for obvious reasons. They have reached a pinacle where they simply refuse to lose at any level-they feel that they are entitled. So, if they're not getting the results their propgandized bullshit reports, they will simply counterfeit entire high school records and lives of teachers,students, and parents. Why, and how? Because they can and WILL. They have destroyed both the democratic process of the nation's greatest city by forcing a third term of this regime. AND they have destroyed another vital arm of a free society, which is the FREE press. AND, there is WAY TOO MUCH MONEY AT STAKE. They have come this far, and their scumbag privileged friends who want to sink their filthy fangs into public education to make billions will be dissapointed if they don't deliver all of our collective careers on a silver platter.
ReplyDeleteThese people are disgusting , disgusting excuses for "leaders."
I'd like to see Scumberg's "accountability" covered some in The Press. Things like his vast off shore accounts that got barely a tweet in the press months ago. NO COVERAGE.
ReplyDeleteHow bout "Lord" Blankfein's "accounntability, the Goldman Sachs PIG. You can substitute a multitude of other Wall Street honchos in that sentence.
The hundreds of millions wasted on the bogus computer system. NO COVERAGE
This Ratner punk, one of Scumberg's right hand men who just got busted for a major felony LITTLE COVERAGE
There are so many things that get one small mention in "The Press" then forgotten.
Of course, that liliputian punk rarely gets caught doing anything, since he OWNS "The Press" in this town.
Imagine a punk like that, worth 20 BILLION DOLLARS, A MEDIA MOGUL . . . how do you get a free friggin press with him as Boss? ESPECIALLY in New York, THE media center.
He's disgraceful on all counts . . . and I'm not even mentioning that repulsive hyena-henchman , Heir Chancellor, Dr. Filth.
The attacks on Klein and Bloomberg are off base. They are following the path of their ideology backed by Broad and Gates. The real culprit is the UFT/AFT- the only organized force that had toe ability to fight the imposition of this ideology on all fronts. Ed Notes has been publishing at Delegate Assemblies for 15 years with accounts of the impact of ed deformers, especially after I found out about the Chicago story in 2001. I warned about mayoral control in the first Ed Notes tabloid edition in Sept. 2002. But it was clear that it wasn't just about the UFT being weak or stupid or shortsighted. It was about ideology- Randi - and Shanker too if you do the research - had a lot of agreement with that ideology. They wanted a union that was seen to be on the side of education reform not opposed no matter how distorted that reform was.
ReplyDeleteThus, they gave up battling for real reform by going along with the mantra that so-called "successful" school could be replicated with no more money - in other words, they sold that teacher quality was the most important issue, thus opening us up to these current attacks. I remember Bill Clinton at the 2003 spring conference saying just that about teacher quality with randi beaming and thousands of attendees led by Unity standing up and cheering - cheering for the coming trash heap teachers were about to be thrown into. Their own demise - sort of like Unity booing the people who walked out on Gates in Seattle.
I agree the UFT brought this, Norm. I wrote that both last night when I first heard this news, and this morning when I had had some time to think about it.
ReplyDeleteAs I wrote this morning (and I'm paraphrasing), the UFT has allowed the Bloombergs and Kleins and Gates to frame these issues, to win the p.r. war so that people think these test scores are accurate measures of accountability. They are NOT. But when the UFT and Randi agree to partner with the DOE (or the Gates people) to create these kinds of "assessments," you've got to expect that Kleinberg will break their word and use these to buldgeon the UFT and fire teachers, close schools, etc.
This was brought to us by Randi, Mikey, Leo, Ed in the Apple and the rest of the "collaborators" down at 52 Broadway.
Of COURSE the UFT is greatly to blame here. No shit Sherlocke. And of course it's about ideology. isn't EVERY conflict? Party A wants plan A, and Party B wants a different thing.
ReplyDeleteWe're long past that realization that the UFT is weak and compliant in this issue.
That said, Scumberg's overall "ideology" was to force his way to a third term, using his vast wealth and power to do it. He happenned to use lies about his education prowess to get there, ANOTHER reason to call him a major scumbag as a "leader." So we don't disagree at all Ed.