The audit prompted the city to overhaul Regents grading and credit recovery policies. (GothamSchools)
An aide at Queens’ P.S. 52 was charged with molesting multiple girls. (Times, Post, Daily News, NY1)
More than 30 percent of Americans have graduated from college, the highest level ever. (Times)
Jim
The big news of the week is by far the audit, not the teacher data reports. The people at Tweed (and some of them are good ones, by the way) only scratched the surface with that audit and were extremely troubled with the systemic tampering they found. The higher ups felt similarly and have taken decent actions but don’t want attention focused on this. Folks, you’ve been PWN’ed by the DOE and its press strategy–they want the audit story buried, and TDRs, which they no longer care about and now wish others had never pushed for their release in the first place (thanks Klein and Ravitz!) served that very useful purpose.
old teach
Teacher Data Reports( the brainlesschild of former chancellor and now defender of the disgraced Rupert Murdock owned city corp newspaper conglomerate), are as invalid and inaccurate as much of the data that the Bloomberg administration tout as proof of their education miracle. Lump TDR’s with credit recovery, graduation rates, component retesting, small themed high schools, state examinations vs NAEP examinations, and the gap between minority students performance they all add up to the data being flawed as flawed as the legacy of the Bloomberg administration.
Vote NO!
It’s unfortunate, but not surprising, if anyone has been reading posts by many NYC teachers on this site over the past few years. There have been many posts where teachers have made allegations of questionable policies regarding passing rates, and credit recovery programs in some schools. GS has also reported many stories where these allegations were made in the local papers.
With the “high stakes” as (education reformers like to call it) attached to school, and teacher data. Stories like this audit will most likely become commonplace across the country in coming years.
Many of the credit recovery programs are based on new computer software which is popular with “reformers,” and which allow tech companies to make huge sums of money with no-bid contracts to school districts across the country.
Ask
Gotham Schools. What is the difference between not posting scores and sharing links to sites that do? A real stace would have have been to not list any links at all. Let people find the sites themselves without the push. Sometimes your site is like the passive observer of a bully in the classroom. You have the power to make the difference, yet sit back and watch it all and say “look I was not Involved”. I cannot commend you for your silence like others have.
JEFF S
It’s funny (or is it). For over a century, New York State Regents exams were given and graded in schools and there were never any allegations that they were not graded properly. The reason, of course, was that these exams were never intended to be used in the manner SED and his royal Highness, Emperor Michael I, he that doesn’t believe term limit laws should apploy to him even though his subjects twice voted for a two term limit are trying to use them. And they act surprised. And now we have a whole new bureacracy involved with grading Regents exams and all these precautions in case, god forbid, some marginal paper is re-read and a student given the benefit of the doubt on some open ended question where 100% honest people could differ slightly in their professional judgment as if there is an iron curtain separating a 63 from a 65.. Please. It’s certainly a very sick world his royal Highness and his lackeys have imposed in this city.
JEFF S
Let’s make sure people understand that when the UFT agreed to work with the DOE to allow preparaton of these reports as a pilot, the DOE agreed in writing these reports would not be made public. They should have been distributed and then destroyed. Yet, when his world start to turn sour, and the truth of his lies about bridging the achievement gap and improving instruction , the former lackey of a Chancellor, Mr. Klein went back on his word. This is an irrefutable fact no matter how anybody might feel about Klein. I leave it to other people to decide what kind of integrity this person has and to think he was allowed to destroy the school system for 8 years with his inane ideas starting with the imposition of discredited literacy and math programs mandated by all schools. History will be the judge of just how much d
Michael M. (parent still)
My favorite quote from the beneficiaries of the leak, and co-FOIL-filer, NYDN article:
“Many of the rankings to be released Friday have wide margins of error. For example, the 2009-10 rankings for some teachers have an average margin of error of almost 35 for math. That means the score of a teacher with a 50 rating on a 100-point scale could be as high as 85 and as low as 15.”
The AVERAGE margin of error range is 70 points on a 100 point scale. Stupendous.
(I’m not sure the 521 low and 696 high are the final tallies, as the NYDN went on to say they received tallies for “more than 12,000 teachers”, but also “18,000… fourth- through eight-grade math and reading teachers received the reports…”)
Just for kicks: 521 / 12,000+ = 4.3%. 696 / 12,000+ = 5.8%. So now I’m wondering if the Lows and Highs would remain so after consideration of the ridonkulous Margin of Error, if not considered already. And that’s even before seeing if the rankings remain the same if done another year. Prior GS coverage of the lack of robustness would suggest… slim chance.
Such hokum. Glad the DOE isn’t teaching my kids statistics.
Michael M. (parent still)
Imagine if they had the DOE’s value-added method in Salem in 1692:
“There’s a 50% chance she’s a witch. Give or take 35%. Best we got. Dunk away.”
http://twitter.com/SoBronxSchool Bronx Teacher
I commend GS on refusing to publish the TDR’s of teachers. However a does remain. Will GS choose not to report and link to The New York Post story when it eviscerates teacher as a “failure” due to that teachers TDR?
Guest
I love that Bloomberg and Walcott are trying to dial back the data. I love that the press are pointing out the margins of error. I think in the end, this may help teachers overall (some will be damaged terribly) because when people really look at the data they will wonder why it is/was being used. There will be a large backlash.
I think Cuomo and his stupid and dangerous new deal are going to now have problems. Their 20% and 20% are going to have to be much tighter and not have errors like this.
This might be the beginning of the end of value-added data.
At least I hope.
G. LeTendre
Schools around the country are being forced to cope with ever increasing amounts of data, usually with no clear context for evaluating that data. Paul Goren wrote: ” The implicit and explicit assumption is that if these data exist, improvement will soon be evident.” It is not clear how this latest release of data will improve teaching. http://www.ajeforum.com/archives/57
G. LeTendre
Schools around the country are being forced to cope with ever increasing amounts of data, usually with no clear context for evaluating that data. Paul Goren wrote: ” The implicit and explicit assumption is that if these data exist, improvement will soon be evident.” It is not clear how this latest release of data will improve teaching. http://www.ajeforum.com/archives/57
http://www.gothamschools.org Elizabeth Green
Lots of people are asking this question, and it’s a good one. We publish links to what other news organizations cover every day because we think that what the education press does is newsworthy in and of itself – whether or not we agree with other outlets’ journalistic decisions. We will publish links in the case of other papers’ Teacher Data Report coverage, too. A link is not an endorsement. We’re just letting you know everything that’s out there, and collecting everything you might be interested in looking at in one place.
Wallnot
How can we get Dennis Walcott to run for president? Ah haha haaa!! His comments on the media are hysterical. He has different opinions on the same matter depending on your position, whether you’re a school aide, teacher, principal, or anything else, different rules for different people. He’s a mess. I can see why he only lasted 1 year in the classroom.
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