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race to the race to the top

May 11, 2010

What to expect from today’s teacher evaluation agreement

by Maura Walz, at 6:22 pm

A new teacher evaluation system that’s likely to become state law could mean that, for the first time, school districts will fire teachers if they repeatedly fail to boost their students’ test scores.

But to do that, the state and school districts will have to track student work in more detail than they ever have before. And state and city teachers union officials sold the idea as a way to create better professional development for teachers and principals.

The agreement struck between the state education department and the teachers union today means that, in three years, all New York teachers will be evaluated according to a new 100-point scale, with 40 of those points determined by student achievement data. The agreement was ushered out just in time for the June 1 second round deadline for the Obama administration’s Race to the Top grant competition.

So far, the new teacher evaluation system exists only in concept. To flesh it out, school districts will have to create a new battery of customized tests or other ways to measure student learning.

If Albany passes the bill, evaluations would begin in two phases. Teachers in tested grades and subjects would start receiving rankings in the 2011-2012 school year, using next year’s test scores as the baseline for measuring growth, State Deputy Education Commissioner John King said today. All teachers will begin receiving the new form of ratings by the 2012-13 school year.

That means that in two years, the state and local school districts would need to use new methods to judge student growth in all subjects and grades, not just those currently tested. The proposed law leaves open several options for the state and district to measure students’ progress — new tests could be developed, or districts could use portfolios of student work or other performance evaluations.

In all cases, new local assessments would have to meet regulations set by State Education Commissioner David Steiner. An advisory committee that includes teachers, principals and superintendents will help Steiner develop the new rules, the proposal states.

Steiner argued today that the expansion of evaluated subjects would help boost the status of subjects like the arts that have historically been marginalized when schools focus resources on improving test scores.

“We feel very strongly that subjects are created equally,” Steiner said. “The fact that we have not yet had any collective effort to create meaningful and good evaluations [in non-tested subjects] has ironically put those subjects and teachers at a severe disadvantage.”

The heads of the city and state teachers unions, who enthusiastically endorsed the plan today, said that the new evaluations will also give teachers better feedback on how they can improve. United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew said the new four-category scale will allow principals and teachers to target professional development and coaching to areas where they need the most help.

“This now embeds that inside the evaluation process,” Mulgrew said.

Steiner, along with King and the teachers union presidents, urged legislators to pass the new bill by the June 1 deadline for the second round of the federal Race to the Top competition. The Race to the Top scoring rubric sets aside 58 points, the most heavily weighted single category, for how a state judges and improves teacher effectiveness based on their performance.

Both houses received the proposed legislation around 1 p.m. today, and Senate Democratic Conference Leader John Sampson has pledged to move quickly on the bill, union sources said.

Steiner acknowledged that significant work will be needed to launch the new evaluation system, especially as the state education department simultaneously overhauls its testing system, which critics deride as overly simplistic.

“We have an enormous amount of work to do,” Steiner said, “but we cannot be happy with where we are now.”

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  • http://perdidostreetschool.blogspot.com reality-based educator

    This is going to be a mess. Batteries of new tests, lots of yummy yummy no-bid contracts for testing companies and for-profit education management organizations, and as Leonie noted in another thread, the state will wind up spending millions more than they’re going to get from President Obama’s RttT to create all of this.

    Unreliable tests, data from those unreliable tests, and new rules allowing teachers to be fired if their students do not improve on these tests.

    Mulgrew really sold teachers down the river with this one.

    Teacher turnover from this new system ought to make charter school teacher turnover rates look stable.

    And of course that’s exactly what Obama, Duncan, Bloomberg, Klein, Steiner, et al. want.

    Teacher turnover every five years.

    No more expensive pensions to pay or health care for veteran teachers and their families.

    No more pain in the ass tenured teachers who know better than the Jack-Welch trained thirty-something principal from the Principal’s Academy.

    Just a bunch of twenty-something McTeachers who get declared “ineffective” right before their ten year vestment rolls around and are fired.

    That certainly is Change We Can Believe In.

  • http://nessnyc.blogspot.com/ Eliot Ness

    I did not vote for Mulgrew but was hoping that post-election, we would see a stronger union due to his overwhelming victory.

    Unfortunately, I think he’s sold us out. And worse, he has sold out the kids.

    If all this comes to pass, we will see testing in the early grades, test-prep in kindergarten and the loss of fun and creativity in teaching and learning.

    So much for a union that looks out for the best interest of the kids.

  • Pogue

    I feel like I’ve been “Backroom-Dealt” right in the Backroom. What a schizophrenic Union leadership…”Call your senators who want to raise the cap”  ”Go Demonstrate in front of Ruben Diaz office”  ”Klein is a numbnuts”…

    On second thought, let’s give them what they want without union members knowing what’s coming. 

    And, I pay dues for these decisions?

  • change the course of direction

    Maybe it’s time to stop getting involved in all union activities, protests, rallies and send a message to the union leadership. The union is supposed to broker on behalf of the members; not to sit by sideline and watch the bus run over the members.

  • Michael Fiorillo

    Well, they didn’t wait for very long after the election to sell us out, did they?

    Fool that I am, I actually thought there might be a remote possibility that the union leadership realized that resistance – even in the diluted, so-called realistic and pragmatic mode that the UFT practices – was necessary for the their own survival, but it was all theater and dissembling.

    The union’s web site is already spinning this as a “limitation” on the use of test scores (that’s a good one), and as a way for teacher’s to be involved in their own evaluation process.

    Yes, we’ll be involved: just as in any imprisoned, concentrated or colonized community, reliable subjects are recruited to help administer the regime being imposed on them and their peers.

    One of the criticisms of the UFT over the years has been that it “co-manages” the system. Quite so: every day they show themselves to be merging with the Human Resources Department of the DOE.

  • Pogue

    Teachers now…Cops, firemen, sanit later.  Good job, UFT!

  • Dr. Neverbetter

    Reality-based educator and Leonie are right, even if enacted, considerable barriers resist implementation. This seems fortunate.

    Still, if enacted, the bill opens the way for predictable negative outcomes.

    Mulgrew should not have agreed to this. It is plainly dishonorable.

  • Joe Schmo

    This was total back room deal for sure. There is no way the rank and file members of the UFT would vote for this type of legislation. This deal must have been in the works for some time as I find it very hard to believe that from concept to agreement this was done way too quickly.

  • Pogue

    Well, you gotta’ love Reality-based educator…
     
    http://perdidostreetschool.blogspot.com/2010/04/why-is-bloomberg-praising-mulgrew.html

    Something obviously was in the works with this.  So sneaky, yes?

  • Jeff S

    Does anybody have the slightest clue as to how illogical this whole thing is when applied to high schools. Many schools offer integrated algebra in 3 terms….will the teacher of the third term be the only one whose performance is judged on a kid’s Regents exam? The vast majority of teachers may not have any Regents classes in math. What are we going to do, design exams for each and every possible math course (first term three term algebra, first term two term algebra, second term three term algebra, first term two term integrated geometry yada yada yada). And it’s not just math….how many English Regents exams are there? One for seniors. Are we now going to design exams for every year of high school English and what if a kid wants to take an elective class like journalism. Do we design an exam for that? Oh portfolios…we’ve heard that garbage before.

    I’m afraid the UFT has thrown you teachers under the bus. Did the word come out from Randi not to embarass Obama any further? And reading the justification on the UFT web site makes one sick.

    But you guys voted for him; now you have to live with him (I don’t know who I mean).

  • Pogue

    I’ll try this again…
    You’ve got to love reality-based educator who might have seen this coming, if you Google
    perdidostreetschool and look up the April 23, 2010 post.
    Something was obviously in the works with this.  Kinda’ sneaky, yes?

  • Vinicius de Mello

    Seems the only ones getting something out of this mess are the testing companies. What is wrong with this picture.

  • Vote NO

    Jeff S.

    I believe they are going to try and develop some sort of assessment for every subject, even electives.

  • http://perdidostreetschool.blogspot.com reality-based educator

    Every class will have an assessment. Acuity works for ELA and Math already. They can hand McGraw Hill another no-bid contract to develop acuity tests for the other subjects.

    The acuity tests are awful, btw. If ELA teachers are going to be judged by those, we’ll all be declared “ineffective” and fired.

    So Mulgrew sold out on the rubber room, now test scores. The hat trick will be the ATR’s – that will come next, perhaps after all the furor over the test scores tied to evaluations dies down.

    I do hope we go without a contract for awhile. I’m scared to see what Mulgrew, Leo Casey and company come up with.

    I suspect it will be some cave on seniority and layoffs, diminished sick bank days (from 10 to 5), only 1/3 of sick days upon retirement, and some “health care containment cost initiatives” like they stipulated for back in the ’07 extension. Perhaps even more time. All for 1% or 2%. And Leo will tell us it “scrapes the skies” as he did with the odious ’05 contract.

    I voted straight ICE so my conscience is clean on Mulgrew and company, but I regret voting for Obama with all my heart. It is President Accountability who has driven all this “deform” with his top-down policy-making.

    Next time I vote straight Marxist – Groucho, Chico, Harpo, Gummo, Zeppo and Minnie.

    Dems, Repubs, they’re all the same – corporate-owned entities promoting government by the corporation, for the corporation, of the corporation.

  • G.D.

    I have a completely different take on this agreement. This requires multiple measures and moves away from using test scores the way Klein wants to. I think this is a big blow to the board of education.

  • Educator

    I don’t know about the rest of you, but I want teachers to have a voice and be judged on the bigger picture. This agreement does that by minimizing test scores to just 20%.

  • Invictus

    In clear conscience I can say I did not vote for these sell out representatives of our interests. I am really disturbed by the discretionary nature of the people involved in making these tests/assessments used to evaluate the effectiveness of teachers.

    Tests, particularly in the NYC public schools are at the whim of so many variables involved that I wonder, how they will determine which groups of children records will be used for the evaluation, and these State Ed elements BETTER account for the extensive absences and chronic truancy issues that will certainly determine the outcomes of these tests(or perhaps we should dream about this one.)

    It is a power grab where the only input the teachers will have is towards the end, when it is all said and done, after which these so called ‘impartial’ panels will determine one’s fate after having done all they could to produce its ‘desired’ effects.

    I can clearly see massive abuses that unconscionable and amoral administration will practice to drive their “undesirables” out of the profession, by giving them questionable classes, with obvious outcomes.

    To claim that PD will “address” these shortcoming is risible at best. How many workshops are really effective in imparting real, practical knowledge in the classroom?

    I am feeling quite dizzy now.

  • Silvio

    I’m happy the union is finally doing this. The current process is a joke. And if we let Klein and others have their way, you can forget about anything other than using test scores. Sounds like the union got out ahead on this one.

  • Pogue

    Why do we keep letting them have their way?  I don’t understand.  Why are we always playing patsy?  I refuse to thank union leadership for always giving in at members’ expense.  This is a sad time. Our profession has been ground into the abyss with the help of the people supposed to support, represent, and fight for us.

  • Vote NO

    There is NO defense of this agreement if you’re a teacher in NYC! The suburbs will be OK. But in NYC, programming is ultimately controlled by the principals. Now a principal just has to program teachers with the lowest performing students who will do horribly on any standardized assessment, do a few “chop-job” observations, and 2 years later..That teacher is on the unemployment line. This makes it a lot easier to abuse city teachers, and fire them.

  • An effective teacher says

    Sorry, does anyone know where to sign up for the class-action lawsuit against the UFT misrepresenting the interests of its union members?

  • gossipgirl

    Where will the ineffective teachers go now that they don’t have the union to hid behind. I have been an adminstrator long enough to see the damage ineffective teachers do to innocent children because the uft did not want to see reality. Watching teachers deliver horrible lessons filled with incorrect information and or inproper grammer will hopefully be a thing of the past. Oh, don’t let me forget the union’s chapter leader that does nothing all day but talk on her cell phone or wander the building, what will she do now?

  • Jeff S

    gossipgirl…I’m sorry…if you’re an administrator and have an ineffective teacher, then it is your responsibility to do what has to be done. I am sick and tired of hearing how difficult it is to terminate an ineffective (unsatisfactory) teacher…I spent many years as an Assistant Principal and in those instances where it was necessary, it was done. No it wasn’t fun, yes I had to put up with some name calling by the union reps but in the end, I knew it wasn’t personal, smiled and told them I stood on the record. I didn’t need results on Regents exams to know who my mkost effective teachers were. As a matter of fact, due to pressure by Superintendents, often I placed my most effective teachers with the most at risk kids and their regents results were nothing to write home about but then again I am sure they were better than they would have been with a less accomplished (but still satisfactory) teacher. The problem seems to be that the current crop of Principals are not properly trained how to evaluate a teacher and how to provide the assitance required in a 3020A hearing. I could tell stories about what has been happening in some of the smaller schools with Principals knowing nothing about various subject areas observing teachers and the inane things they said in observation reports. But that’s for another place and time.

  • Patrick

    No matter how the UFT tries to paint it they COMPLETELY sold out tenured teachers. Senior teachers (at the top of the pay scale) are now most vulnerable. Mulgrew conveniently waited until after the UFT election to show his true colors. Disgusting. I urge all teachers to stop paying dues. You’re not get any protections anyway.

  • An Effective Teacher Says…

    You must be an ineffective principal, gossipgirl. The UFT allowed U rated teachers to be removed by due process. You as a principal have the ability to interview and hire your staff. Didn’t you ask prospective new teachers to prepare a lesson first? Perhaps you had other things to do like wander around your building with your cell phone.

    Your union chapter leader does nothing all day? How can that be? At our school our union chapter leader teaches all day except for one relieved period. Why is your teacher walking around? Didn’t you assign that teacher to teach like in every other school?

    As a principal, you can send your “ineffective” teachers for professional development. Teachers also have a professional development period every day – how are you using that??? It seems to me you are the one responsible for your teachers and you’re failing them.

  • Fair Deal

    I applaud Mulgrew for having the guts to do what’s right and for standing up to outside forces on this one. Better to control our own destiny than have it handed to us. I’m frankly surprised by all the negativity on this blog. Seems like this legislation completely minimizes test scores in the grand scheme of things rather than make them the be-all, end-all. Sounds good to me!

  • Invictus

    Fair Deal, I do agree with the principle “Better control our own destiny than have it hand it to us…” but, “this legislation completely minimizes test scores in the grand scheme…” that might only be true if you get the pick of the liter for the students in the classes you are to be judged for. While all changes might be noble in principle, when it falls in the hands of people, who have been antagonistic towards veteran teachers or anyone else who were not in goose step with their “philosophy” you can bet that they will use whatever means necessary to “engineer” the fall of respectable staff and hide it in the veil of “accountability” and “efficiency.”

    Maybe you have a more optimistic view of the system, but I have witnessed things that were ‘done’ to people all in the name of “improvement.”

    Many instances in history you have had people use the logic of a necessary “change” in order to save their society, at their time, but the results were more catastrophic than the so called ‘problems’ they intended to cure.

  • Pogue

    What principal uses the moniker “gossipgirl”?  What next, Superintendent SpongeBob?

  • Joe Schmo

    I must say that I agree with Patrick 100% on this. Why we we will need the UFT in two years if there is nothing left to “protect” anymore. I also must now admit that I voted the ICE ticket but kept my mouth shut when asked who I was voting for. Now I wish I had spoke up. I really hope things get better for us before they get worse. These are crazy times for sure.

  • http://www.sinksalive.blogspot.com KitchenSink

    It’s an interesting comment, Pogue, and I was going to say something like, “Irony is in the middle school standards,” but then I noticed the reference to “improper grammer” [sic]. Wince.

    By the way, Invictus, someone stole your name…or, congrats on being granted a charter!

  • http://nyceducator.com NYC Educator

    KS,

    I too am wary of improper “grammer.” Thank goodness we have vigilant principals like gossipgirl to guard against it and judge teacher effectiveness.

  • miss teacher

    Gossipgirl, you also needed a question marked at the end of your first sentence. But I must thank you for letting me know that it’s the UFT that allows ineffective teachers remain in the classroom. I was under the mistaken inpression that administrators were the ones who evaluated teachers and followed the procedures for removing ineffective ones. So, as an administrator for many years, if you don’t evaluate teachers, what exactly DO you do all day? P.S. Nice name! It tells us a lot!

  • Dr. Neverbetter

    Principal Gossipgirl submitted her semi-literate post at 9:46 a.m. Tuesday.

    She should perfect her own literacy skills, and find something productive to do, before pontificating against illiterate teachers and lazy union reps.

    What a hypocrite!

  • Dr. Neverbetter

    OK – I messed that up. She submitted the post in the evening. My bad :(

  • Sean Doyle

    How the union can spin this as a victory is beyond me. I am proud to say I voted ICE, and in my school many who voted Unity are beginning to see the light. We need to do what Chicago did, (CTU) and get rid of these collaborators while we still have a union.

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