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Leo’s  discussion  of  the  evaluations  should  make  you  happy.  It  is  very complicated,  and  would  probably  keep  a  lot  of  attorneys  with  many  billable  hours  trying  to  defend  teachers  deemed  “ineffective”  under  such  a  “Leviathan.”  His  description  will  do  very  little  to  allay  teacher’s  fears.  The  “rubber  will  hit the  road”  when  the  first  round  of  thousands  of  “ineffectively  rated”  teachers  face  termination  hearings.  No  employee,  public  or  private  sector  should  be  evaluated  under  an  system  where  they  have  to  employ  statisticians,  and  attorneys  to  decipher.

It  is  increasingly  obvious  that  an  additional  billion  dollars  in  one-time  federal  funding  is  not  going  to  be  anywhere  near  enough  to  cover  the  costs of implementing,  and  maintaining  this  system  state-wide.

the article about the mid winter recess is slightly misleading.  Having been there and done that…and I am neither a teacher, a para, a principal or a DOE employee…the discussion about the days off for the recess began with Burt Sachs and ended when parents asked that the 5 days be bundled into one week rather than have 5 weeks of four days.  The contract called for the days, the public decided how the days were to be bundled. 
Reporters should be doing some investigations and questioning rather than accepting the DOE line or assuming that folklore is always true, word for word.

In which part did he get an ineffective?  Was it in the observations, no, it was in the 20%, therefore he cannot be but labelled ineffective overall, right?  

430 comments to be exact

I thought it was pretty straightforward.  But I add no value, so maybe it’s complicated. 

My lord, who’s going to be paying these attorneys to lose all these Article 78 petitions? This sounds like immigration law without the occasional satisfaction.  

 ”I thought it was pretty straightforward.  But I add no value, so maybe it’s complicated.’

You  have  to  remember  this  evaluation  system  is  political,  and  economic,  not  educational.  It  was  designed  with the political   purpose  of  removing  as  many  teachers  as  possible  from  the  classroom.  Economically,   it  is a  huge  cost  saving  as  their  replacements  will  enter  the  profession  at  much  lower  salaries,  and  presumably  if  the  new  pension  tier  is  passed,  with  a  much  reduced  retirement  benefit  package.  The  only  way  to do  that  is  to  have  a  system  which  is  based  on  supposedly  “objective  data.”  Which  to  people  outside  of  education,  would  be  standardized  exams.  The  policy  makers  know  this  is  very  unpopular.  Large  numbers  of  people  (parents)  are  already  upset  with  the  amount  of  testing  their  children  are  subjected  to  in  school. 

So  the  policy  makers  have  resorted  to  “edu-speak”  to  hide  the  amount  of  testing  in  this  new  evaluation  system.

I  suggest  you  re-read  Leo’s  piece,  and  substitute  “test”  everywhere  he  mentions  “performance  assessment,”  or  “student  learning  outcomes.”  When  you  add  that  much  more  testing  to  the  school  year,  and  then  try  to  extrapolate  meaningful  numbers  to  evaluate  teachers  from  those  test  results,  it  does  become  rather  complicated.