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January 20, 2012

State-level conflict over teacher evals said to be near resolution

by Geoff Decker, at 6:12 pm

A week that was packed with conflict over teacher evaluations is drawing to close with news that detente is nearing — at least at the state level.

Here’s a statement we just received from the State Education Department, confirming rumors that have been swirling since shortly after Gov. Cuomo issued an ultimatum Monday on teacher evaluations:

New York State Education Commissioner John B. King, Jr., along with New York State United Teachers President Richard C. Iannuzzi, today announced that negotiations going on since October are now making significant progress and continue in earnest towards settlement.

We’ve been hearing for over a week that a settlement is basically a done deal, but that the two sides have to first play politics to their respective constituents. “They can’t cut a deal until they posture for their public,” as a source put it. In recent weeks, NYSUT has held press conferences and issued several statements denouncing what they say is SED’s unwillingness to settle.

A settlement between the state and NYSUT would stop Cuomo from trying to use the budget process to impose new evaluations without union consent. But it would do little to soothe tensions in New York City, where the relationship between the Department of Education and the United Federation of Teachers seemed only to worsen this week.

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  • Nycdoenuts

    One of the rumors I read on (I think) Twitter was that NYSUT agreed that a teacher who scores a zero (or minimal) on the state exams portion would not be rated “effective”, no matter how high the score from the other areas of the evaluations were (something that King had wanted).
    In his Edwize piece last week, Leo Casey mentioned that the UFT and DOE had agreed (relatively quickly) on how the ‘local’ measures would look for New York City. So whatever the agreement is, my guess is that it is going to be 60% class observations, 20% state exams and 20% local measures (whatever they wind up being) -ust like the law said before Cuomo told SED to go ahead and change the rules.
    But what do know? I’m just a teacher -part of the ‘public’ (who has waited for two years before knowing exactly how this evaluation system will look and effect me) that my union is posturing for.

    Thanks, union!

  • Vote NO!

    The  important  aspect  will  be  the  50  point,  or  65  point  threshold  for  an  “ineffective”  rating.  The  court  upheld  that  65,  which  the  SED  wants  was  illegal.  If  it  is  65  points,  there  will  be  “wholesale  firings”  of  teachers  in  the  urban  districts  starting in  two  years.

  • Nycdoenuts

    I’m no lawyer, but my understanding of the lawsuit is that the threshold for ineffective was never challenged (I’m pretty sure the law states pretty clearly that it’s 65). My recollection is that NYSUT sued over several things, but not that.

    Here’s a pretty good source for more on the suit
    http://nymuniblog.com/?p=1409

  • Vote NO!

    Number  6  in  the  link  you  provided  was  the  subject  of  raising  the  threshold  to  65.  It  is  the  most  important.  It  would  effectively  take  a  lot  of  control  away  from  principals.  Even  if  they  rated  you  “perfect”  60  out of  60  points.  You  could  still be  rated  “ineffective”  due to the  test  score  component  of  the  evaluation.  The court  struck  this  down.   NYSUT  must  insist  on  the  50  point  recommended   threshold,  or  there  will  be  massive  numbers  of  teachers  fired  for  being  “ineffective.”

  • Nycdoenuts

    I have to admit to being confused here. When I read this, I don’t see any reference to a threshold of 50. I see disproportionate weighting between different measures, but nothing about final scores or thresholds. Would you be able to explain?
    I’ve posted #6 from the list below.
    Help!

    6. Scoring ranges and the balance between the objective measures and the subjective measures –NYSUT claims that Section 3012-c of the Education Law does not provide the Regents with the authority to place a disproportionate weight upon certain subcomponents of the evaluation over the other subcomponents.

  • An Effective Teacher says…

    Using test scores is wrong. In math for example, the “curve” on the
    Algebra Regents is so pathetic a student basically needs to be lucky
    twice more and can pass by guessing. Meanwhile, that curve changes
    drastically on Geometry and is practically null on the Trigonometry
    Regents.

    Furthermore, due entirely to this curving system and social promotion
    those same students who guessed on their algebra Regents are now in
    Trigonometry and can’t even solve a single-step equation.

    Thus, the higher level math teachers receive horrendous scores on their
    Regents as opposed to the incompetent Algebra teachers. Yet they’ll be
    considered Effective by test scores.

    Who would want to be a trigonometry teacher under this system?

  • Flerp

    You’re right that it’s not discussed in that article. It’s clearer in the briefing and the court’s decision, though still not as clear as one would like. I don’t think it’s so much an issue of 50 versus 65 in the court’s decision. It’s more that the first 64 points in the scoring system were based entirely on the 40% “student achievement” categories. So if your students were deemed to perform poorly enough, it would be impossible to cross the 65 point threshold needed to get a rating higher than “ineffective.” If the threshold were 50, rather than 65, student achievement would still be overweighted compared to the remaining 60% categories, but it would at least make it possible to avoid an ineffective rating based solely on poor student performance.

  • Dina

    Question: If this goes through, what will be the purpose of tenure? What will be the purpose of being a UFT member? Having tenure or being in a teacher union will do nothing if this evaluation program goes through. What are your thoughts?

  • Chuck

    Hawaii teacher unions overwhelmingly voted down Race to the Top funding based on changing evaluations this week. New York should do the same.

  • Vote NO!

    “doenuts  and  Flerp”

    There  was  a  Task  Force  recommendation  for implementation  that  established  the  50  point  threshold.  The  lawsuit  was  over  a  change  in  the  standards  imposed   on  the  Regents  by  the  governor,  after  the  task  force  recommendations  were  to  be  used.  Read  the  judge’s  decision.  He  stated  that  the  65  point  threshold  violated  the  “multiple  measures”  requirement  that  all  3  components…  State  exams,  “value  added,”   and  locally  negotiated  observations  be  weighted  so  as  to  not  allow  any  single  measure  result  in  an  “ineffective”  rating.

  • Nycdoenuts

    Flerp
    That is interesting. I was asking whether the threshold was 50% or 60%.
    But you’re saying that 64% of a teacher’s overall grade comes from the categories that the law says count for only 40% of that grade. And I suppose that the other 36% would come from the observations that the law says counts for 60% of a teacher’s grade? Of course, this is all done through weighting? I’m wondering if you have a link to back that up?
    Or are you relying only on your own anaylsis of something you’ve read? Apologies for asking you for proof to back up what you’re saying, but…
    …given your track record of trolling the comments section of this site many many times in the past (distracting and otherwise disrupting the comments), I think the request is in order.
    Don’t you?

  • Jot

    Don’t call Flerp a troll he gets very angry and then he will attack your report card and your education. He really has no idea what is the truth all he wants is someone who will agree with him.

    show the proof oh but you can’t did you learn that in law school?

  • Flerp

    Right.  It’s easier to see if you look at the decision.  The link is here:  
    http://www.nysut.org/mediareleases_16923.htm

    Essentially, you have to get 65 points overall to be rated higher than “ineffective.”  If you get 0 points, or 64 points, you’re “ineffective.”  The way the scheme was implemented, if you received an “ineffective” rating in each of the two student growth/achievement categories, you would receive a maximum score of 2 points in each.  That’s 4 points for those two categories, which represent 40% of the overall score.  So even if you aced the remaining 60% — which would give you 60 points — you’d end up with a total score of 64.  In short, the system was designed such “ineffective” ratings in the 40% categories would automatically lead to an overall rating of “ineffective.”  So the court found that the weighting system didn’t give the 60% category “meaningful” weight in the composite scoring. It seems to me that even a 50% weighting for the achievement categories is overweighting those categories. 

  • Nycdoenuts

    Vote NO!
    Please use the link to the judge’s ruling that Flerp (who should get points for not trolling) kindly provided and direct me to the page where the judge says that. Because I don’t see it. I see a dispute over which student growth categories to use. A ruling that is somehow easier for me to follow than some of these these explanations!!
    Thanks

  • Flerp

    (page 12 or so.  there’s a table showing the scoring weights.)

  • Vote NO!

    Doenuts,

    Flerp  explained  it  correctly.  Read  from  the  last two  lines  on  page  12  to  the  end  of  the  ruling  on  page  15. 

  • Vote NO!

    Flerp,

    You  said:
     ” It seems to me that even a 50% weighting for the achievement categories is overweighting those categories.”

    I  agree  with  you.  That  is  why  I  often  post  about  this  new  law  as  just   a  mechanism  to  fire  teachers  in  the  urban  districts.  The  impatience  of  the  governor,  mayor,  and   NYSED  to  implement  the  law  only  exacerbates  my  fear.

  • I noticed that…

    My confusion has always been if a teacher teaches a regents class and half the class decides not to show up for the exam how can the teacher be evaluated on the 20% state exams?  Students are absent for the regents exam; teacher is penalized.  Where’s the fairness?

  • Nycdoenuts

    Vite NO!
    I agree with Flerp as well, which is why I shared that Twitter rumor I had read earlier in the week about NYSUT caving on that issue.
    But that does mean that the threshold for avoiding ineffective is 65, not 50. And it’s also important to note that the threshold for being an “effective” teacher, according to the law, will be a 75, not 65.

  • Michael Fiorillo

    Two points:

    - The RTTP funds are little more than a “loan” that is to lead to ever-increasing obligations to spend money on testing and accelerating diversion of resources to parasitical but politically juiced consultants, networks, so-called non-profit management companies, coaches, and mentors. It’s like the first taste of a high-addictive and toxic drug that a dealer is happy to give you for free, knowing you’ll soon have no choice but to keep coming back for more.

    - The new evaluation procedures are an end run around tenure and due process for teachers, to be implemented by supervisors who will frequently have far less classroom experience than the people they are rating, and who will be under pressure to rate as ineffective a set percentage of teachers every year. The immense margin of error of value-added measurements will insure that every classroom teacher will at some time be vulnerable to low ratings based on test scores.

    When the recently-retired Jack Welch of GE was brought in as a celebrity instructor at Klein’s then- new Leadership Academy, he urged the DOE to do as he had done: fire 10% of the “low performers” every year. As this plays out in the near future, we will see how the low performers will be seasoned and senior teachers who remain in the system. Young people foolish enough to enter the field, seeing no possibilities for a viable career in the classroom, will leave at even faster rates than they already are. Thus will eventually disappear all those pesky pension obligations that Mr. Littlefield is so obsessed about.

    The privatizer’s wet dream of a neutered, irrelevant union and a constantly churned, at-will labor force will have been achieved, and the Race to the 19th Century (albeit with high-tech command, communication and control facilities) one of the objectives of this entire process, will have progressed further than anyone might have previously imagined.

  • Donnie

    I still don’t understand the purpose of having an E.P.O.  All they’ve done in my school is recommend getting rid of elective classes, told A.P.’s and the principal to give more ineffective observations, and made us take away 50 minutes worth of instructional time (literally, the students classes are shortened on Wednesdays and there are less periods) for staff development (which they don’t even have anything to do with).  We’ve had to lay off staff and had our budget cut for supplies, yet they were paid $900,000 for the first half of the year?!  What the hell?!  I’m hoping John Liu’s office or maybe our union can make the public aware of this historic waste of money. 

  • Nycdoenuts

    I don’t think there is ANY fairness in that scenario at all. What’s more is that I think there are going to be many scenarios just like that very soon.

  • Vote NO!

    The  treatment  of  the  PLA  schools  with  the  SIG  grants  has  been  an  absolute  disaster.  Making  these  schools  “turnaround”  will  only  compound  the  disaster.  The  Federal  grant  money  should  be  returned.

  • Donnie

    No doubt, although the tone in my building has not been tarnished.  Many are retiring or quitting and we’ve been beaten down by Bloomberg and his asinine policies enough that we knew closing was inevitable… after all any school with a high number of ELL and Special Education students is doomed for closure. 

    Absolutely correct- the money should be returned.  I don’t understand how a non-profit company can pocket over a million dollars in one year and let NONE of that money go into the school and the students.  Where on earth would any superintendent get paid over a million dollars a year?!  A disgusting waste of money.

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