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experimental education
November 3, 2009
Nearly 100 schools sign up for Gates-funded teacher quality study
A two-year project to study what makes a teacher good or bad is taking root in some of the city’s schools after struggling to bring teachers on board.
The United Federation of Teachers and the city’s Department of Education announced in September that they had joined forces to promote a study of teacher effectiveness paid for by the Gates Foundation. The $2.6 million project, called Measures of Effective Teaching, will look at ways of measuring teacher quality beyond using test scores.
A UFT special representative, Joseph Colletti, said 96 schools, most of them high schools, have signed onto the project. The goal is to have 100.
“They run the gamut from very high performing schools to schools that are challenged, from senior staff, to new staff,” Colletti said.
Though UFT president Michael Mulgrew enthusiastically supported the project, his eagerness took some time to trickle down to the union’s membership. The DOE changed its mid-October deadline for applications to a rolling deadline after too-few teachers applied.
A spokeswoman for the DOE, Ann Forte, said the city was looking for between 500 and 1,000 applicants and was still recruiting.
“It was tough to get word out in September,” Colletti said. “It wasn’t lack of interest, it was just poor timing. People were concerned with setting up their classrooms, there were so many other things they had to worry about.”
James Eterno, a teacher at Jamaica High School in Queens, said the veteran teachers at his school have been wary of the project because of the Gates Foundation’s involvement.
“Teachers are so shell shocked by what’s gone on with data in the last few years that everyone is skeptical,” said Eterno, who is running for president of the UFT.
Over the course of the next two years, researchers will use video observations, teacher and student surveys, as well as students’ test scores, to analyze teacher quality.
Teachers receive a $1,500 stipend for participating in the study.
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November 3rd, 2009 7:56 pm
My prediction: the so-called “findings” of this million dollar study will confirm the ideological biases of the Gates foundation: that teacher “quality” varies tremendously, that classroom evaluations are highly correlated with student test scores, and thus it is acceptable to use test scores alone to judge teachers. There will be little examination of what classroom conditions lead to or enhance good teaching. The UFT will regret its involvement. You read it here first.
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November 3rd, 2009 8:15 pm
Anonymous seer,
You are absolutely right: the entire purpose of this is to draw the union into signing on to the pseudo-science and ideological biases that drive the corporate/philanthropic/academic complex that is engineering the hostile takeover of the public schools.
That the UFT should be participating in this is a disgrace, and that the membership is skeptical demonstrates its common sense and intelligence.
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November 4th, 2009 8:49 am
….because the union and the status quo are SO GREAT at improving teacher quality. Give me a break. At least the “corporate/philanthropic/academic complex” is trying to innovate something that might actually work.
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November 4th, 2009 12:58 pm
Why don’t we learn a bit more about the research methodology before we get so judgmental? Once, I was the Chief Negotiator for a union in a large school district. It bothered me greatly that our “successful” contract resulted in significant salary increases, making the absolutely worst teacher in my building the highest paid teacher in the district. At the same time it didn’t give us more shared decision-making. That’s the way the system worked then. Pay us more and we’ll shut up about the real issues, such as general funding, poor leadership, etc. We never got as exercised about equity issues for our students as we did for ourselves. If teachers can have a meaningful and influential voice in defining teacher quality and developing the means by which we minimize mediocrity in the profession, and acquire some power, I am all for it. Teachers must become more intellectual, political, and confrontational. You can’t do that merely by bitching in the teacher’s lounge.
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November 4th, 2009 1:51 pm
I am not in NY, but I would love to be a part of this study. I am a big believer in project-based learning, and my students do well on standardized tests. There is a correlation. Students learn well when the teacher is high energy, highly motivated, and provides lots of learning experiences.
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November 4th, 2009 2:03 pm
Teacher quality is the work of all - teachers, parents, school administrators, local boards, citizens, unions, business, etc. Those who equate teacher’s success/quality with students scores have not been in the classroom. This is not to say that there are no poor quality teachers. They are in abundance. But where did those teachers come from? Someone taught them, someone hired them, which makes teacher quality a collective responsibility. Kudos to The BGF for taking a deeper look at the issue of teacher quality in relation to their context of practice. I eagerly await the result of the study.
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November 5th, 2009 6:07 pm
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