GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

“In a major win for the state, teachers whose students show no academic growth will get an “ineffective” rating, even if the rest of their evaluation is strong.”

Pace yourself, guys.

Wow it was not until seeing this article that it is clear…Teachers got hammered on this one, and the politicians will do everything they can do destroy our profession…

 ”inexperienced” 

I was actually going to ask; explain yourself, guys. Will the standard of ‘no academic growth’ be defined by the 20% state exams alone? Or would teachers have to perform poorly on the state portion and the local portion in order for a district to say that no academic growth took place.

The reason I’m asking is because it would be a lot more difficult for a good teacher to do poorly on two different assessment pieces (20+20) than it would for the teacher to score poorly on just the state assessment piece (40% in one day). This would make it a little easier on us than it seems at first glance.

I’m also wondering how anyone in the world could justify rating a teacher ineffective based on just 20% of his or her performance review, so any clarification would be great.

So tell me.  A secondary school teacher of language arts.  There is only one English Regents exam given in the senior year.  What state assessment will determine the first 20%  and what local assessment will determine the other 20%.  And despite Emperor Michael I’s best efforts to destroy the large high school, they still exist.  Some of the schools may have 120 or more teachers.  Until now, at least in New York City, a tenured teacher was only required to be observed once by usually an Assistant Principal.  Now the Principal is going to have to observe each staff member at least twice?  Or can one of the observations or both of them be by an Assistant Principal?

Can somebody tell my why I should keep paying my UFT dues? I really don’t see the need anymore since I got sold out today and there is nothing they can do for me or the 80,000+ teachers that they “represent”.

Good point. However, it does not really matter since principals have no control over the 40%. A teacher who is deemed “highly effective” in observations by a principal will get canned if that teacher does not have the test scores to back it up. 

How are foreign language, music, art, CTE, and phys ed teachers being assessed? 

Nonsense like this is why I have much more faith in the future of charter schools than in the reformation of traditional public schools.  

They might not have a way in which they might be tested, meaning that they might find some mystery box floating somewhere, get an arcane formulary book written in ancient Mohenjo Daro alphabet…and then use it to grade people.  

PS:  Why is there a necessity of mention Art and Music teachers, as the State and City Ed departments have insulted the notion of what makes an individual qualified to teach these classes?  Students take computer courses, listen to garbage music, plagiarize text blocks from the Internet and give them credit.  An absolute insult to all the dead artists that fill the walls of museums in the Museum Mile and what little classical music venues left in NYC.  

PS2:  Physical Education teachers?  What about using Wii sports for Physical Education credits?  

I actually agree with you ken; is this why DFER and all the groups that you and the other hedge funders support came out so strongly in favor of this ridiculous agreement?  Because they knew how much it would undermine our public school system?

probably by how fat the gym teacher is and how goofy the art teacher is.

 I was under the impression  that all union members had to be evalutaed in the same manner. How will nontesting grades and cluster teachers be graded?

Good one!  Seriously, I don’t think that is DFER’s intention, but I could understand how it might look that way if you think that the old system is better than this ridiculous Rube Goldberg contraption.  I prefer the new system, but only because the old system is even more ridiculous (if a whole lot simpler).  My preferred system, of course, sidesteps the DOE/UFT dance of the absurd.

Nycdoenuts,

This system would be a huge setback for most charter schools.  Sadly, that doesn’t mean it isn’t a step forward for traditional public schools.  I’m not sure of its merits in part because I don’t understand it well enough (and in part because big changes often have unintended consequences).  I suspect it will be a significant improvement, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it turns out to be a big mess.  I’m pretty skeptical of the merits of having an independent validator assigned to a teacher for a full year after they are flagged as ineffective.  Not sure I understand the process though…

Great question…Gothamschools get on it!

The state has just sold out the teachers BIG time.  What if the most effective teacher imaginable gets assigned to teach students that don’t bring pencils or paper to class or are habitually disruptive, or are English Language Learners?  Their scores will be deficient, despite the valiant efforts of the teacher.
As Leonie Haimson noted in comments on the sister article dealing wit NYC’s agreement, the state’s rating distribution means that teachers with students scoring in the 0 to 64 range will be deemed ineffective. Teachers who serve the neediest students will be penalized with losing their teaching licenses.
With this kind of sell-out, is there any wonder that many NYC teachers are
mobilizing to form a new caucus to challenge the UFT leaders’ reign of ineptitude?
200 met already in a preliminary conference on February 4.  Keep an eye
online for for details on the State of the Union, Part II. Join us in March 10 to launch a
caucus to challenge the sell-out policies to the tyrany of Cuomo,
Bloomberg and Duncan. Teachers across NYS need to engage in similar attempts to oust their leaders.

Your school has music and art?  In NYC most schools don’t have those frills.  Kids are in triple periods of English and double periods of math.  The teachers in those arts fields?  They’re in the ATR pool.

I assume you think these kids are capable of learning. If so, there is no reason why they wouldn’t make a year’s growth in a year’s time. Value-add is complex and hardly perfect, but it’s a growth measure. In fact, many would argue that it’s harder to show measurable gains with high-achieving kids because it’s harder to see measurable growth if they’re already performing near the top of the scale. This is particularly true in state testing grades because the scoring band for level 4 is very narrow, so missing just 1-2 questions can drop you down quite a bit when you’re performing at the higher end of the scale. Meanwhile, if you are teaching motivated immigrant students who realize the opportunity they  have in getting a quality education, whose parents are invested in their students’ success and moved to a new country to ensure their kids had a better opportunity, and who have a lot of room to grow, you should probably see good results. In fact, many of the International schools score really well on the city progress reports for that very set of reasons. About 25% of the students in my school are ELLs (and many others are former ELLs). Many of those students were inadequately educated in their native countries. But they are some of the brightest and most motivated students in  our school. While they have a long way to go, I’m routinely inspired by the progress they make from year to year.