Cuomo Sets Up Another Strong Man Over Teacher Evaluations

From Daily Politics:

Cuomo also defended his Common Core implementation panel’s recommendation that math and English assessment tests not count toward grade promotion or be put on the permanent records of those in third through eight grades while at time not recommending a delay in applying the new standards to teacher evaluations.

He said teacher evaluations are considered an integral part of reforming education by showing which instructors need help and which are succeeding and should be rewarded.

Told an upstate teacher on his panel put out a statement against some of the recommendations, Cuomo said he is not surprised. “The teachers have opposed teacher evaluations in various forms for many many years,” he said.

Teachers aren't opposed to a fair and just evaluation, governor.

They're opposed to the junk science in your APPR system that uses value-added measurements to gauge how much "value" teachers have added to student test scores, a practice so unscientific that it has margins of error as large as your ego.

They're opposed to being evaluated using the same tests you say were so poorly implemented that children shouldn't be evaluated with them.

They're opposed to an evaluation system that values compliance and standardization over professionalism and creativity.

In short, they're opposed to the piece of garbage you shoved down everybody's throats a few years ago.

The first law suits are commencing over that garbage system this week, with Rochester teachers suing over the APPR VAM.

We'll see if the courts think your evaluation system is as integral part of reforming the education system as you think it is.

Andrew Cuomo's Teacher Evaluation Staw Man

Sheriff Andy yesterday:

Cuomo said his decision to tie state funding to the evaluations furthered accountability in schools where it had been resisted.

“The system, while it has been asking for more money, has steadfastly refused any evaluation, which is really an interesting confluence,” he said. “Look at what Albany does: It gives them more money, because their lobbyists are good. Their lobbyists support the political system, so they get funding increases, and they don't have to put in the teacher evaluation system, even though they promised the federal government they would years before.

“We reversed that,” he continued. “We actually have a teacher evaluation system in place. I believe the teacher evaluation system is very important for everyone, primarily the students, frankly. But it's also good for the teachers, because those who need help should get the help they need. So I think the teacher evaluation system is very important. It's still opposed by the teaching establishment, if you will, that doesn't want to be evaluated. But I think it's very important.”

In short, Sheriff Andy is saying anybody who is opposed to his APPR teacher evaluation system is opposed to accountability.

That's a straw man argument.

Cuomo put an unproven, unpiloted teacher evaluation system into place.

It is a mess - it mandates lots of extra testing, costs a lot of money, forces teachers and administrators to spend more time on compliance work than their actual jobs (you know, teaching and administrating) and has already hurt good teachers.

On top of that, the system is connected to Common Core tests that themselves have been problematic, a Common Core curriculum that has yet to be fully completed, and growth measurements that are error-riddled.

Teachers don't have a problem with being evaluated or held accountable, Sheriff Andy.

They simply want a fair, just and competent system to evaluate them - and APPR is none of those.

If you want to have a debate over evaluations, Governor, leave the straw man at home.

David Coleman Sets Up A Straw Man Argument

At an education reform convention run by former NYSED Commissioner David Steiner, we get this:

Coleman was perhaps the night’s most outspoken panelist, at one point suggesting that those who believe that poverty is an insurmountable obstacle to improving student achievement should offer to cut teacher salaries and redistribute those funds to the poor.

“We have to get serious with each other. It is not okay to say that since poverty matters so much we should use that as a reason to evade reform. It’s not responsible,” Coleman said.

Notice the straw man argument Coleman sets up?

To say that the conditions children live in every day and the family circumstances they come from matter in how well they do in school means that you think poverty is insurmountable.

That is not what opponents to the current reform movement say at all.

Rather it is that these things matter very much and the current spate of test-based/Common Core reforms do not address these problems and indeed, make them worse.

Here's an example:

Take a child who comes from a family background where there has been alcoholism and abuse - mostly emotional, but some physical abuse too.

That child carries sadness and fear and anger in her and cannot block those feelings out as she attends her classes.

She has a difficult time paying attention, focusing on her work or working collaboratively with others because of the maelstrom of fear, sadness and hurt boiling within her.

The one emotional outlet in school she once had for these feelings is gone now that even in her art class, where she could use her drawing talent, she is forced to read complex informational texts and write argumentative essays.

She's completely unhappy in school, even in the one class where she used to feel happy because she got to express herself and her truths with her art.

In addition, this student has no outlet for talk either because her counselor is inundated with data work and has no time to counsel and her teachers are inundated with Common Core PD and have no time to talk.

She hates school, she hates all the test prep, she hates all the Common Core projects and has just given up trying to do her work.

This is not a hypothetical - I have seen this happen.

If schools were given the resources to support students emotionally as well as academcially, many of the students currently struggling would thrive.

Schools need more time and money for art and music, physcial education and social and emotional learning.  Schools need more counselors who actually have the time to counsel, not just track academic data.  Schools need more social workers and school psychologists.
But schools are not given the time or money for these supports.

Rather, these supports have been cut - Bloomberg is letting 2,500 guidance counselors and other teachers go through attrition in his latest budget.

So while many students come to school with deep psychological and emotional wounds that they need help healing, schools and teachers have fewer and fewer resources to handle these issues and more and more mandates that makes these issues worse.

I have said this before, but I will say it again.

I have never seen so many instances of depression, suicidal feelings, self-harm, eating disorders and drug and alcohol problems in my 12 years of teaching as I have in this past year.

It is not a mistake that as the pressure mounts on children and teachers and schools from the feds and the state and the city and the media, everybody is feeling more anxiety and fear that is making performances worse, not better.

The solution is to provide more time and resources for social and emotional learning and support.

We need to help these children emotionally and psychologically so that they will be ready to learn emotionally.

George Lucas, an erstwhile education reformer, gets this.
Why can't the rest of the reformers?

The cynic in me says it's because there's another agenda at work here - that the Colemans and Kings are simply doing the privatization work of the corporate forces and don't really care about children or their academic achievement at all.