GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

• The city and union agreed to postpone releasing teachers’ names and ratings. (NYT, GS)
• Reporters throughout the U.S. requested value-added data after the LA Times series. (LA Times)
• Before she left, Rhee said she would consider releasing teachers’ ratings. (Washington Post)
• Evaluations of principals’ effectiveness are often as cursory as ones of teachers. (Time Magazine)
• By planning to make teachers’ ratings public the city is stabbing teachers in the back. (NYC Educator)
• Teachers keep their classrooms nice if they feel as though they own them. (Pissed Off Teacher)
• Back from a sick day, Ruben Brosbe wonders how to keep kids from going wild. (GS Community)
• Rahm Emanuel is calling for Chicago to have longer school days. (Chicago News Cooperative)
• A New Jersey schools superintendent was charged with fraud and bribery today. (AP)
• The “elites” vs. teachers union split is to the Dems what the Tea Party is to Republicans. (US News)
• Michigan prosecutor wants parents to face jail time if they miss parent-teacher conferences. (CNN)
• Charter school supporters are rushing to save a school that overspent. (Quick & the Ed)

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is throwing his support behind Chancellor Joel Klein’s decision to release individual teacher’s effectiveness ratings to the press.

Just before the city and union agreed to postpone any release of teachers’ ratings that included their names, Duncan sent a statement to reporters in which he seemed to take the city’s side.

“I give New York credit for sharing this information with teachers so they can improve and get better,” he said.

Duncan was more elliptical in suggesting whether other school districts should follow New York’s lead and release teacher effectiveness data. (more…)

City and union lawyers agreed in court today to postpone releasing individual teacher’s effectiveness scores until legal hearings are held next month.

In a meeting held with Judge Cynthia S. Kern in a Manhattan court this afternoon, city and union lawyers agreed to schedule a hearing on November 24 on whether the city should release the ratings with teachers’ names included. The teachers union sued the city to stop the release of the performance scores, arguing that releasing teachers’ names would violate their privacy and that the ratings are not yet complete and thus exempt from freedom of information laws.

In the meantime, the city has agreed not to release teachers’ names, but may give reporters more limited information, including possibly the data with the names redacted.

“Names you will not see until the 24th, that I can promise you,” said Charles Moerdler, a lawyer for the United Federation of Teachers.

The lawyer representing the city, Assistant Corporation Counsel Jesse Levine, said that the two parties would meet tomorrow to negotiate what, if any, information could be released before the November hearing.

“We’ll know tomorrow whether something will be released imminently or if there will be further discussion,” Levine said. (more…)

United Federation of Teachers president Michael Mulgrew held up a sign at a press conference today showing the formula used to calculated teachers' ratings.

The city’s teachers union filed suit this morning, asking the State Supreme Court to bar the city from releasing 12,000 teachers’ effectiveness scores with their names included.

Department of Education officials said yesterday that they planned to send the teacher ratings to reporters as soon as this Friday, unless the union’s suit stops them. Several news organizations filed Freedom of Information Law requests for the data, and city officials said they were responding to these requests.

Union officials are currently in court and expect a judge to rule on their suit later today.

Underpinning the United Federation of Teachers’ lawsuit is the claim that releasing teachers’ ratings with their names included is an unlawful invasion of privacy.

“Teachers will be exposed to harassment on a personal and professional level from parents unhappy with the contents of the TDRs,” the suit states. “Such harassment could include demands for termination, discipline, and transfer of children out of teachers’ classrooms, as well as threats to the persons of individual teachers.” (more…)

The Panel for Educational Policy has a new Bronx borough representative, and she’ll be a familiar face for many city officials.

Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz, Jr. has appointed Monica Major to the board, Diaz’s office announced today. Major is the current vice president — and former president — of Community Education Council 11, one of the Bronx’s parent committees. She was also a member of the Parent Commission on Mayoral Control, a group that advocated last year for reducing the mayor’s power over the PEP, which acts as the citywide school board.

Major replaces Anna Santos, who has served as the Bronx representative since February 2009. Last year, Santos emerged as one of the city’s most outspoken critics on the board, alongside Manhattan representative Patrick Sullivan. It’s not clear why Santos is leaving.

Major is likely to continue the trend of opposition to many city policies that come up for approval. As part of the Parent Commission on Mayoral Control, Major proposed to reduce the number of mayoral appointees on the panel to three, and add six parent representatives to the board. Instead, the school governance legislation that Albany passed provided for eight mayoral appointees and one from each borough president, effectively guaranteeing that the board will approve city initiatives. (more…)

On Tuesday, I took a much needed sick day. It’s funny how my concept of health during the school year varies so much from the summer. My body’s immune system operates on overdrive starting from the beginning of September all the way through June, and for the most part handles the stress pretty well. But this week, I knew I wasn’t going in to work.

I used the day to sleep in, and catch up on paperwork (and my DVR). The extra day of rest was helpful, and I’m glad I treated myself to it. I felt much better yesterday, but I knew that the day of rest would also yield some anxiety.

When you enter the classroom the day after missing work it’s like looking at a real life version of those spot the differences puzzles from Highlights for Children. You know the room is slightly out of sorts. Slowly you find the clues to the disruptions from the day before. Crumpled papers in the closet, missing stickers, misplaced magnets … Anything a kid could find valuable that’s not secured, can (and often does) go missing. It’s not unexpected, and it’s nobody’s fault but my own, but it’s still frustrating.

I wonder if it’s a function of poor classroom management on my part, or if it’s simply inevitable. Experts often say that the ideal classroom is one where students are practically 100 percent independent, to the point where they can run the classroom without a teacher. I wonder if I’ve done enough to put the right rules, routines and procedures in place to guarantee that sort of organized productivity, even in my absence. If it’s possible, I want to make it happen. Even if it doesn’t erase the headaches from my rare sick days, it can certainly still help with the days I am in the classroom.

As you might know, this week the city said it would release 12,000 teachers’ names alongside their students’ test scores on state reading and math tests in grades 3-8. I teach high school, so I am not directly affected, but here are my students’ Regents test scores from my four years teaching in NYC, anyway. I put them out there in solidarity with my brothers and sisters in teaching who are about the be put under the microscope.

You can have the scores, just please remember they are almost meaningless. They tell you about 5 percent of what I do. Here’s what they don’t tell you:

• They don’t tell you that last year I taught 100 percent of our juniors who are special education students and/or English Language Learners, even though I only taught 50 percent of our juniors. They also don’t tell you I requested these most challenging students.
• They don’t tell you that last year I taught our 15 seniors most in danger of not graduating for two periods. In that time, I prepped them for Regents exams in English, global studies, and U.S. history, and I also helped them earn credits in a wide variety of areas.
• They don’t tell you that that I spent six weeks in the middle of the year teaching my students how to do college-level research. I estimate this costs my students an average of 5-10 points on the Regents exam.
• They don’t tell you that when you ask my students who are now in college why they are succeeding when most of their urban public school peers are dropping out, they name that research project as one of their top three reasons nearly every time. (more…)

• The teachers union is trying to block the city from releasing teachers’ ratings. (GS, NYT, WNYC, DN, NY1)
• City lawyers think it’s likely that a non-disclosure agreement can be legally broken. (NY Post)
• Proponents of value-added measurements are nervous about attaching teachers’ names. (WSJ)
• Many parents want to see teachers’ ratings, but others have concerns. (Daily News)
• A Queens CEC member wants to use the ratings to pick a new school for his daughter. (NY Post)
• The Daily News thinks there’s no doubt the value-added scores should come out.
• The New York Post thinks the union is fighting the release to protect bad teachers.
• A Harlem Success employee was arrested for trying to videotape a public meeting. (Daily News)
• Councilwoman Gail Brewer said she’d strangle parents who switch to a charter school. (NY Post)
• Post readers suggest various jobs Michelle Rhee could take up in NYC. (NY Post)
• Regis Philbin visited his Bronx Catholic high school, where he’s a big donor. (Daily News)
• It’s looking unlikely that Michelle Rhee wants New Jersey’s top education job. (WSJ)

• Bronx students wore purple ribbons and nail polish to support their LGBTQ peers. (NYT)
• A Virginia history textbook includes a controversial claim about the Civil War. (WashPost)
• Urban Assembly principal: We know what works, but it’s not “Superman.” (Insideschools)
• Linda Darling-Hammond praises some states’ teacher evaluation systems. (CAP)
• “There is no war on teachers”; only a war on teachers unions, says Eric Hanushek. (WSJ)
• Every teacher has “passion and commitment,” NEA president says. (WashPost)
• Pay-for-performance reforms of teaching have historical antecedents. (Larry Cuban)
• Classrooms in countries with the highest-performing students are not tech-heavy. (Slate)
• In comparing the Baltimore and DC teacher contracts, context is key. (Justin Cohen)
• Rhee successor Henderson will keep IMPACT, which came out of her “shop.” (The Root)
• How important is “cognitive science” to learning to become a good teacher? (Goldstein)

If the city releases individual teachers’ effectiveness ratings this week, some teachers could see their own scores for the first time in the media.

Nearly 45 percent of the teachers who received teacher data reports this year have not yet downloaded them, a Department of Education spokesman said today. But some teachers told GothamSchools today that there has been confusion about how they could access their reports.

The city originally told teachers that the reports would be kept confidential between themselves and their principals. But city officials said today they planned to publicly release teachers’ ratings in response to Freedom of Information Law requests from several news outlets. The city teachers union is suing to try to stop the release.

Teachers can see their ratings either by downloading their report online or by getting a copy from their principals. The city e-mailed teachers log-in information to download their reports, but several teachers reported that they never received that information. (more…)