GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

How do we reconcile using test scores to evaluate teachers when for many teachers those test scores are all over the map. I’ve seen Teacher Data percentile rankings go up and down as much as  75 percentile points for individual teachers from one year to the next. Sure if a teacher falls in the bottom say 10% in 3 consecutive years, maybe we can begin to draw conclusions but that accounts for perhaps 1% of the teachers in the system with current tests and evaluation techniques.

And how do we reconcile the narrowing of the curriculum that occurs when standardized test scores become so important?

And how do we reconcile the fact that it may take years to develop even bad standardized tests in all subject areas?

I could go on and on. But the bottom line is we’re putting the cart before the horse. We not only don’t know if we can reasonably use student test data to evaluate teachers, common sense and most evidence indicates we can’t. But we’ll just plunge along business-ifying K12 education with little evidence that we can let alone should.

Hell we can’t even point to this as being successful in those countries that do noticeably better than us on test results. They don’t do this. But we’ll just do it anyway and let the next generation undo the damage.

Why aren’t parents ever evaluated on student achievement in school??? Some parents send there children to school hungry, dirty and without pencils or paper…………and do not even care if they learn. It is free babysitting!

 I am a
history teacher in a high needs area in NYC. This idea of evaluating my
teaching based on how well my students perform on the regents is ludicrous and not
to mention unfair. No other profession evaluates an employee based on the
performance of another person because that would not make sense.

 My students
do not study; do not take opportunities to attend study sessions, and tutoring
sessions that I have offered all year long to help them be successful on the
regent exams and in school. They tell me they don’t care about the regents and don’t
study, last year on the Global Regents these students walked out early and
refuse to write the essays because as they said ” I don’t feel like
it”. It is not as if a majority of the students cannot pass the test,
they, like many of their peers do not feel like putting in the leg work to
pass, they would rather go party with their friends.  NYC is a different
animal, we have students who are far below the poverty level, involved in gang
activity, using drugs, parents who are on drugs, parents working 2 jobs to feed
them, or they simply cannot read.

 I am in HS and I have kids in 10th and
11th grade on a 4th grade reading level, how is this my fault? The exams also
are extremely racially bias in the way the questions are structured. The
questions are written purposely to trick these students in NYC. The questions
are on such a higher level then their reading levels that they can’t even
decipher what the questions are asking. However, if they would attend
afterschool tutoring they may have a better shot at attacking those questions.
Also, these students are not exposed to the same English as their peers in
suburbs; they speak almost a different dialect of English. I will not even
begin to talk about how unfair these tests are to students with special needs
or are English Language Learners.

When I talk and teach I have to change how I
speak to more simple sentences and vocabulary in order for them to understand
what I have said and this is so sad. I often ask what happened in the lower
grades and how did they get this far?  We have heard from students that teachers help them cheat on
their state exams in elementary school, which would explain how they were about
to get to Jr. High and High School. (THE MAYOR LIES ABOUT SOCIAL PROMOTION, IT
IS ALIVE AND WELL IN SCHOOLS). Though it is not entirely the lower grade teacher’s
fault, parents need to read to students when they are young, buy books instead
of sneakers, cell phones, ipods, etc. and get them off FACEBOOK AND TWITTER!

I have tried a million different ways to
motivate these students all year and stress the importance of studying
throughout the year. However, when PARENTS are not monitoring their child and not
stressing the importance of school and studying, what I say will never stick. History
is the type a class that a child needs to study at least 30 mins a night all
year to make information stick in the long-term section of their memory, and this
is just not happening. I have also yet to hear any politician step up and
defend the majority of teachers and begin a conversation about parent
involvement and parent responsibility. The reason suburban schools do better on
these exams is because parents for the most part are involved. They are
enforcing good study and work habits at home or at least when they child is
failing have consequences to get them back on track. I called a parent let her
know her child had a 20 in my class she said “I’ll talk to her” and what
happened..nothing.  

The students who have parents who care enforce
a strict home with consequences for failing and doing well in school are
generally my students that do well in school and on Regents exams.  Teachers also need mentoring and professional
development. I have had NO professional development this year and I am someone’s
mentor yet I have only been teaching 2.5 years more then this teacher ( THAT DOES
NOT MAKE SENSE). This is also my first year in a high school, I had taught middle
school history prior to this. I have been teaching a little over 3 years, and I
would have loved to have an experienced teacher who taught history in high school
for many years helping me be a great teacher. It is said that you do not become
a master teacher until you have taught the same subject for 5 years in a row.
Also, many teachers are teaching 5 different classes and have to plan for 5 different
classes a day, which is extremely difficult, and you become less effective. Also,
when you split up high schools into 5 schools, and hire newer teachers you lose
the guidance and wisdom of experienced teachers.

 Administrators have to 
be looked at with a closer lens, teachers cannot do anything unless an
administrator tells them to do it, this makes it hard for us to make decisions
in our class. The bottom line is that Governor Cuomo and Mayor Bloomberg need
to understand that there are so many other factors that affect the success of students
and the teachers is not the one person to blame. We need support. We need trust.
We need supplies and materials to help us to do our best. We need parents to
become our allies not a non- existent factor in a child educational life. 

All teachers pay the same union dues regardless of their seniority.  Our dues fund our drug plan, dental and eyeglass benefit..

Why do you bash our pension when other muncipal workers (police, fire and sanitation) have even better pensions.  20 and out for police and fire,  25 for sanitaton.  These are historically male domianated institutions while teachers tend to be female.  

Please contact me at unfairlyblamingtheteachers@gmail.com.

We’re going through the same thing (similar demographic of students), and its even now (before there’s the opportunity for reform of the teacher rating system) likely to do-in my husband’s career (G-d forbid!), to boot!

(I wrote the message below, but for some reason, the whole message did not “take”.)

Thank you.  You are not alone in what you are going through!

Our pensions are 75% self-funded as well.  At one point, they were 100% self-funded through contributions and return on investment.