Tuesday, January 26, 2016

Regents Exam Season Begins, But NYSUT Says The Scores Are Not In APPR (Even Though They Are!)

You can see here the fun I had on twitter with an NYSUT hack over the APPR test score moratorium that isn't actually a moratorium since high school teachers are not effected by it in the least.

Today starts Regents season - the ELA Regents, along with a math and history test are all today.

More Regents exams continue the rest of the week, including Common Core math exams.

The ELA test today is the Common Core variation and it will indeed be part of my APPR rating, thus making the claim that Common Core state tests are not part of APPR ratings an erroneous one:

Teachers with SLOs that are based on Regents assessments will not be impacted and must continue to use SLOs with such assessments.


This is footnote 3 from the Q & A from SED:

Please note that teachers and principals whose APPRs do not include the grades 3-8 ELA and math State assessments or State-provided growth scores on Regents examinations are not impacted by the transition regulations and their evaluations shall be calculated pursuant to their district’s/BOCES’ approved APPR Plan without any changes. For example, a building principal of a CTE program whose APPR utilizes CTE assessments as part of the student performance component of their APPR will not be impacted by the transition regulations.

 The politicians keep saying there's a moratorium on state test scores in APPR.

The unions are running ads saying the same thing.

The education reporters are writing about the moratorium in their education stories.

Except the "moratorium" doesn't actually exist.

It's been learned long ago that if you repeat lies often enough, they become truth.

This is what has happened with APPR.

The lie just keeps getting repeated over and over and over.

Here is the truth:

  • The Education Transformation Act of 2015 requires that 50% of  a teacher’s evaluation be based on a student performance measure. This will not change unless the law is amended.  
  • Although teachers will still receive a growth score based on state tests, a 4 year moratorium has been passed on the use of state-provided growth scores for NYS Grades 3-8 Common Core ELA and Math tests in teacher evaluations. 
  • ALL teachers will still be subject to a 50% test-based evaluation as per the law. Schools must administer an additional, locally determined assessment  (approved by the state department of education), and scores from that test will supplant the state test derived growth score in a teacher’s evaluation. 
  • Teachers will receive a “transitional score” during the moratorium. 50% of this score will be based on observation, and 50% will be based on the locally-determined assessment. This transitional score will be used for making tenure decisions, and as per the law can be used to fire a teacher.
  • While growth scores derived from the state tests may not be used for purposes of evaluation during the moratorium, they will still be recorded, and upon request be made available to parents. Teachers evaluated by Regents exams and by the 4th and 8th grade science tests will still be evaluated using those scores.
  • Once the moratorium is over, NYS will move to a three year average growth score. In other words, teachers will receive a growth score based on student performance from the previous 3 years. It is unclear whether or not state test growth scores captured during the moratorium will be used in the average growth score for the 2019-20 school year.
  • Based on flawed growth scores, schools will continue to be placed into receivership and subject to autocratic control. This will happen disproportionately in schools located in economically disadvantaged Black and Brown communities, as laid out in the Economic Policy Institute’s report, “The Racial Achievement Gap, Segregated Schools, and Segregated Neighborhoods – A Constitutional Insult.”

12 comments:

  1. NYSUT has also conveniently omitted the 8th grade NYS science test. Originally developed for middle school program evaluation, this 3 to 4 year (Grades 5 to 8) cummulative exam is now used to evaluate only 8th grade science teachers. We are now rated on test scores of content that we mostly do not teach. Come on NYSUT get your facts straight. Those commercials make me want to testify for the plaintiffs in the Freidrichs suit.

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  2. RBE, read today's Newsday story about how the evaluation system is admitted to have a "glitch" that could adversely effect several hundred teachers.

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  3. Is it true that 4th grade science scores are averaged out across the city? So science teachers are not rated on their own students, but on the average of the whole city? That would mean they all get the same score.

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    1. This idea is preposterous. Send lawyers guns and money! The tests have it the fan. WZ

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  4. Soooo. What are non-tested elemenaty school teachers evalulated on? (Music, art, PE, etc) We they still be evaluated based on the math and ELA scores of the students in their building?

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    1. Subject specific local exams. Actual tests to be approved by NYSED.

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    2. I'm a phys ed tchr in a Queens HS. My boutique mini school is very good with the data. I have no idea how I can be rated off kids I don't even know but for me it actually worked out. I received 2 scores of 19 which gave me 38 out of 40 on my total MOSL. I have no idea what it means, why it's done this way or whatever. I do know that because I'm in a great school the numbers work. Less fortunate teachers are getting screwed.

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  5. What an elaborate operation it has become to cover up Andy Cuomo's bungling. Who would hire a consulting firm for one year to create a flawed black box that spits out lies in perpetuity? Only a genius who failed the bar 4 times, that's who.

    I am guessing that the Union has switched to covering up this stuff in hopes of preventing a Republican from capitalizing on Cuomo's idiocy. Better approach would be to start backing a better candidate to run against him. Cuomo is going to lose, no need to burn our union's goodwill trying to prop him up.

    Also, this test-based rating has *no* support. Not from parents, not from teachers, not from Admin's, not from statisticians. Why is the union negotiating deals to put it on life support? We should be done with this.

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  6. The Common Core English (ELA) Regents was given to high school students and one of the essays had to do with GMO's and all of their "Gates-given" wonders.

    So now, the ELA Regents becomes an advertisement for Bill Gates experiments on genetically modified organisms.

    This entire Common Core charade needs to be shut down at once, and it's architects and executors need to be brought to justice now!

    Two hundred and forty years of American democracy, under attack, by enemies of the United States, writing our laws, buying politicians and judges...what will become of humanity if we lose that which our founding fathers risked their lives to provide our nation with...taken by so few, from so many?

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  7. I remember the Gates passage. I thought, "where's the outrage?" But, I don't recall that it had anything to do with GMOs. It was a Makcokn Gladwell excerpt, wasn't it?

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