NYCDOE Teacher Survey

One interesting question to me in the current edition of the NYCDOE survey that is given to teachers every year (and I'm paraphrasing it): 

Have you thought about leaving the profession this year?

The responses (again paraphrasing from memory):

• Very seriously
  
  Seriously
  
  A little bit
  
  Not much at all
• 
  Not at all.

I don't recall seeing this question on Bloomberg's jive survey before.

Now here's my question about their question:

Do they want more "Very Seriously" responses or more "Not Much At All" responses?

I suspect it's the former.

Because every move made by the people running the NYCDOE and the NYSED has been to make our jobs more difficult, to give us less support and fewer resources, to add many new responsibilities to our job descriptions while using a punitive evaluation system to see if those are being handled well.

So I bet if they don't get enough "Very Seriously" responses, the evil geniuses at the NYCDOE will think "Hey, we're not @#$%ing with them enough!  Not enough of them want (or are) leaving.  Let's make things even more difficult for them, the support even harder to come by and let's take more resources away from them!  Yeah, let's do that!"

Don't you see them thinking that way at Tweed, then sharing those very thoughts with the evil geniuses at the NYSED?

I just say through a meeting about next year's evaluation system and the changes that are coming to the English and math exams for high school.

Yeah, I see them very much thinking that way.

Teacher Surveys

Chancellor Klein says teachers never bow to administration pressure when filling out the DOE surveys about school quality.

I can't speak to pressure from the administration on how we fill out the survey, but they do keep reminding us to fill it out.

Apparently that was a weakness of ours last year - only 75% of staff filled it out.

Nonetheless I did not approach the survey in any way that could be described as "honestly."

I simply thought: What is the response to each question that makes the school look best so that I do not give Klein and Eva the excuse to close us down and use our 10 floor art deco building for a couple of charter schools and a condo?

That, I think, was the rationale for most teachers in my building.

That's because we understand that while the school and the administration where we work is not perfect, it is a pretty good place run by some pretty skilled people, but if you say ANYTHING even mildly critical of either the school or the administration in some official DOE survey, it will be almost certainly used against the school in the future.

And then Eva will write Klein and email saying we're hurting the kids and we need to be shut down and reopened as Chelsea Promise Charter Academy I and II.

So I would have to say, no, I did not fill out the survey honestly.

I bet with Klein trying to close 19 schools and the state trying to close another 16 related to President Accountability's RttT competition, a lot of other people didn't answer the survey honestly either.

There can be no honestly and no trust in an era of fear.

And Klein and Bloomberg rule by fear.