Monday, December 10, 2012

I Wish The Criminals At The NY Post Were Right About This

The same editors who decided to run a photo of a man about to be killed by a subway train are wringing their hands over the new teacher evaluation system fight between the Mayor of Money and the United Federation of Teachers.

They say that no matter what agreement the two parties come to, the evaluation system will be meaningless because the union will never agree to anything that "has teeth" and is "meaningful".

What the criminals at the NY Post fail to say is that the new evaluation system will be made up of the following components:

Tests in every subject in every grade, both city and state, simply to grade teachers.

A value-added measurement using those scores that is error-riddled and unstable, just like the one the city used for the infamous Teacher Data Reports.

A classroom observation rubric with a checklist the size of War and Peace that will be impossible to score well on.

An evaluation system that puts the test makers and data crunchers first, the children last.

Money and resources stripped from the classroom and given over to testing.

A Student Learning Objective process so convoluted that it will mean nothing when the city analyzes the data and decides which teachers have "added value" to their students' learning.

What the criminals at the NY Post fail to tell their readers is that this system is rigged against teachers, that teachers can come up "effective" on all three components of the system - the state test part, the local "assessment" part and the subjective part - and still be declared "ineffective."

The criminals at the NY Post are right about one thing, though: this system will not improve education for students.

But not because it is without teeth, as they say in their editorial.

Rather because it is half-baked and unpiloted, uses unproven or disproven evaluation methods and puts teachers in competition with each other on the GREAT APPR BELL CURVE so that it now becomes increasingly difficult to help colleagues and students of colleagues when that help will be held against you come evaluation time.

Just see how well this same evaluation system - Rank and Yank - worked at Microsoft.

That's what we have coming to schools all over the state in the form of APPR.

So the criminals at the NY Post are wrong about the union agreeing to a "toothless" evaluation system.

Quite simply by agreeing to the system they did, first during the initial Race to the Top legislation process, then by dropping the lawsuit they won against the Regents and the NYSED over making 40% of a teacher's evaluation tied to tests, they have allowed a system that is unjust, unfair, and harmful for both students AND teachers to be put into place.

4 comments:

  1. The Post (and you) do have it right. But NYC teachers don't give a sh*t. Have you seen any protests outside local UFT offices?? NO!! Have you or anyone in your school talked about such a protest??

    How come teachers in Hawaii can organize a protest and it goes state-wide in a few weeks?? They did this, not their union. Where are the so-called MORE activists? Why aren't they protesting outside of the main UFT office?? So many schools are in walking distance of many borough offices. This is not hard to do, yet no one is doing it. It only takes a few teachers from one school to light a fire.

    The Post isn't doing this to teachers. Teaches are doing this to teachers.

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  2. Amen Anon. Sorry to say but the 2 years I spent pouring concrete in the laborer's union when college wasn't working for me are where I learned about labor and unions and not taking shit from employers. Teachers are such easy targets and the egomaniacs of banking and finance and law etc. are convinced teachers are losers and chumps who can be fleeced and rolled as easily as they snapped weaker kids with their rolled up towels in the showers after gym class.
    And isn't it amazing the way these arrogant pricks bring their failing best practices to education when none of it worked in the business world and we had to bail their sorry, thieving lame asses out. I am still waiting to hear from the teacher who says I told my Principal I am not doing SLO's this year, they are a waste of time and they are bullshit. So far I haven't heard it but I have heard a lot of bitching about the SLOs.

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  3. Finland' reputation is "exaggerated" and the charter schools are not? Really!

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  4. Above comment belongs on thread above, sorry!

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