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….and who is going to pay for all these exams? Just recently a suggestion was floated, which was thrown out by the way, to do away with many of the existing Regents exams to save money. Now suddenly we need new exams, not so much to improve education, but so that we can be in a position to evaluate teachers.

What makes anybody think that with properly trained (and these are the key words) Principals and Assistant Principals, we can not have a system to evaluate teachers. And of course, the usual get the teachers is part of this; we have to make it easier to fire incompetent teachers.

It sounds good on paper; but when the Race to the Top applicatoin is once again thrown out, we’ll see how long it lasts.

I suspect the percentage of teachers rated “ineffective” will not be significantly different from the percentage of teachers currently rated “unsatisfactory.” The more important innovation here is the differentiation of the current single status of “satisfactory, which the vast majority of teachers are now considered, into three categories: highly effective, effective, or developing. It will be fascinating to see how those categories are defined, how supervisors are trained to evaluate teachers using those categories, and how teachers will react to being ranked. It’ll be especially interesting to see how those categories are applied to teachers at various points in their career. Most teachers in their first or second year of teaching should be “developing” whereas veteran teachers should be highly effective after 15+ years in the classroom. Will principals have the will to call out more or less effective teachers. Optimistically, this could really redefine teacher development and improve teaching and learning. It also gives local districts the opportunity to create innovative assessments, including performance-based or portfolio assessments.

I predict the development of all these new tests, as well as the cost of scoring them, will cost far more than whatever NY State might receive as a result of RTTT. New state exams in all subjects, new city exams (probably given at the beginning and the end of the year), more testing and less learning. All for a value-added system of teacher evaluation that the National Academy of Sciences says is not ready for prime time, and because of all the inherently volatile and incalculable factors that go into test results at the classroom level, will probably never be. A very bad deal for our kids.

I guess we’ll see more “active proctoring” during the test, like teachers who put their fingers on math problems that the students have calculated incorrectly and, with a meaningful glance, say, “Check your work.”

If I am going to be evaluated on the outcome of my students’ test scores, then I demand only Level 3′s and 4′s in my math classes.

Incredible how years of a union’s hard work to help get teacher’s decent salary, benefits, and workers’ protections can all be undone so swiftly.  Wonder how the 91%ers feel? 

I think some people have this deal all wrong. This deal gives teachers the multiple measures that they have been clamoring for and minimizes the value of test scores.

NYC ED, only time will tell. Nevertheless, when you see the type of admin that Tweet has placed in schools, even the most moral ones will have to put the teachers to the floorboard in order to make them “produce” ever increasing grades on a battery of yearly tests. There will be nothing left in the meaning of “teaching” except tests results used to evaluate one’s worth in front of a group of people that have a herd mentality.

I would rather take my chances of a just evaluation in a random jury court, not a kangaroo court that represents Tweed and their despicable educational philosophy.

Where can we sign up for the class action lawsuit against the UFT for not representing union member interests? I’d like all the $ back that they’ve stolen from my pay.

This UFT leadership’s “hoodwink-of-a-decision” has let parents down, NYC teachers down, public school teachers all over the U.S. down, the middle class down, and hell, even Charlie Crist down.

It would be interesting to follow the money trail of the testing industry. I find it interesting to hear that tests are impartial. Standards on Regents exams and the like have dropped drastically to permit higher graduation statistics for which politicians and chancellors can take credit. The new evaluation policies create an enormous conflict of interest. We know that tests are flawed, that students who do poorly in elementary and middle schools have a low graduation rate, that early intervention helps, and that class size matters. Therefore, let’s give more tests, measure “value added” (however little that may be) and punish the teachers. Great!!!

Janet – it will presumably look at year-over-year growth, with the target being that schools should be helping students to make one year’s worth of progress from the previous year’s baseline. So if a student was performing at level four in third grade and is again level four in fourth grade, that would be a year’s progress. It’s true that as you increase in proficiency the potential for relative gains from one year to the next diminishes, and especially with NYS tests, which have a very small “band” for Level 4, it’s easier for there to be some natural variance from one year to the next at the higher end of the performance spectrum than the lower. This undoubtedly contributed to some of the variability in the progress reports (particularly at the elementary/middle school level). I believe that’s why the DOE is switching over to a growth-percentile model, which has been used for this purpose in other places and is generally more stable and more balanced in terms of measuring progress across schools in different “segments” of the achievement spectrum. I hope the state and city will use that same approach here.

It’s funny because people constantly complain that the progress report system unfairly penalizes schools with the highest-need kids. It’s true that the lowest-performing schools usually have very challenging populations, but it’s equally true that the highest-performing schools in the city (if you look at actual grade numbers) also have extremely high-need populations. For all the system’s imperfections (and I think moving toward a grade percentile model is at least a step in the right direction), I do think it’s valuable that they put a spotlight on schools that are doing tremendous work in helping high-need students to “beat the odds.”

What about

There is very little regulation, or oversight of charters. Now many of the pro-charter supporters will post after me, and attack me for saying that. But you heard the principal for yourself. Do you think the principal would make such a public statement if there was any real oversight?

Now the charter movement wants the state to authorize another 260 charter schools without allowing the state comptroller any legal right to audit them.

These are the people financing the vicious TV ads attacking teachers for attempts to block the fiasco known as “Race to the Top,” a 700 million dollar one shot payment the Obama administration will give NY state if it adopts many costly “reforms” which will easily surpass 700 million dollars to implement.

Who are these charter financiers? The same Wall Street financiers, and hedge fund managers who financed the sub-prime mortgage crisis. They nearly caused the collapse of the financial system in 2008, and were largely responsible for this national economic mess.