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the morning after

February 27, 2012

At PS 321, Mulgrew finds universal opposition to ratings’ release

by Philissa Cramer, at 10:11 am

Public Advocate Bill de Blasio and UFT President Michael Mulgrew spoke out against the release of Teacher Data Reports outside P.S. 321 in Brooklyn Monday morning.

UFT President Michael Mulgrew started his week at P.S. 321, a high-performing elementary school in Park Slope whose principal has taken an unusually outspoken stance against the release of thousands of individual teachers’ city ratings.

Elizabeth Phillips, the school’s longtime principal, published a column on the New York City Public School Parents blog this weekend arguing that the Teacher Data Reports were based on inaccurate data and generated results that conflicted with her own assessments’ of teachers.

The reports are years-old “value-added” assessments of teacher effectiveness for about 18,000 city teachers who taught math and reading in grades 4-8 between 2007 and 2010. They were released Friday after a long legal fight, and many local news organizations chose to publish them. GothamSchools did not because of concerns about the data.

Dick Riley, a union spokesman, said P.S. 321 had been chosen for Mulgrew’s appearance because it was a successful school that was accessible for reporters. That Phillips had taken a strong stance against publication was “serendipitous,” he said.

Standing outside the school as teachers and families started to trickle in, Mulgrew said the reports’ release was potentially a watershed moment for city teachers.

“We’re going to do everything in our power to prevent the mayor doing any more damage to the city’s schools,” he told reporters. The comment echoed one he made to the New York Times, which reported today that the release could wind up being a political win for the union by galvanizing support at a time when Mayor Bloomberg and others have taken aim at the union and its members.

Today, Mulgrew told GothamSchools, “More and more teachers are becoming more motivated to really start pushing against this mayor.”

Mulgrew said he had spent the weekend speaking with teachers who were concerned about repercussions of having their ratings in the public view for the first time. One teacher whose low score was mentioned in the press this weekend told him that she had chosen to work with some of the city’s highest-need students and had gotten positive reviews from her principal but now feels demoralized. “I don’t even want to leave my house anymore,” Mulgrew said the teacher told him.

Teachers entering P.S. 321 — a school that is bursting at the seams with Park Slope families who are eager to enroll — said they were also unsettled by the ratings’ release.

Simone Frasier, a 12-year fourth-grade teacher, called the release “outrageous and disheartening.” Ronda Matthews, a fifth-grade teacher, said, “It’s another way to be humiliated as a teacher. It absolutely has no recognition of what we do all day.”

Both teachers said they had received reports but declined to discuss them. “It’s irrelevant,” Matthews said.

Some of P.S. 321′s teachers’ scores were likely affected by added instability among teachers whose students mostly had very high or very low scores. The difference is due to the nature of the state tests, which were designed to distinguish among middle-level students — those just above and below the state’s proficiency cutoff. As a result, small differences among students at the top and bottom had an outsized impact on a teacher’s rating.

Phillips, who emerged from the building to greet Mulgrew and Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, said the large margins of error for teachers of high-performing students rendered P.S. 321′s scores useless. Last year, 87 percent of the school’s students passed the state’s reading exams and 92 percent passed the math tests.

“When you’re talking about high-performing kids, whether a child gets two questions wrong in third grade and three questions wrong in fourth grade — it’s meaningless and goofy,” she said.

But Phillips said the release would have been just as “devastating and demoralizing” to teachers even if the underlying test scores and formula were sound.

“I don’t think it’s appropriate to publish any test scores with teachers’ names attached even if it’s done correctly,” she said.

Earlier this month, de Blasio urged the state and city to sign on to new teacher evaluations, which would be based in part on a value-added analysis of student performance similar to the one the city applied to generate the Teacher Data Reports. But de Blasio, a presumptive candidate for next year’s mayoral race, said the public could learn enough from seeing school- or district-wide composite scores.

“Releasing names — I still think it’s problematic,” he said. “I don’t think it’s necessarily the best way to manage a system.”

For their part, P.S. 321 parents said they weren’t putting much stock in the ratings.

Cassie Schwerner, a parent who works for an education policy foundation, said the ratings would get “less than zero” consideration from her family, which she said had made a joint decision not to seek out teachers’ scores. Another father bringing his daughter to school said he hadn’t heard much about the ratings this weekend and wouldn’t seek them out now.

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  • Larry Littlefield

    I just don’t understand why the city would decide to release these reports, but will not do what I think should be done. 

    Which is to send to every parent, teachers and taxpayer total NYC school spending per student and per 20 students, compared with the U.S. average and the average for the suburbs, Upstate, and New Jersey — by category highlighting the amount going to teacher wages, benefits, and pensions.  Base it on Census Bureau data for the most recent year, but provide an update for the city.  Shouldn’t people know what they are paying?

  • KitchenSink

    What exactly does “accessible to reporters” mean?  If I read it right, it means that principals of schools in poor neighborhoods don’t want the public in the building to see what’s going on inside.  That’s the subtext I’m reading.

  • Frank Single

    teachers are becoming motivated to really push back against this mayor, true, now if only we had a union that would support this idea of actually standing up to Bllomberg we’d be in good shape.

  • Tim

    I don’t know if I agree with you 100%, but 321 sure is an odd choice, even if all the cool reporter kids live in Brooklyn. I mean, yes, it’s a high-performing and sought-after school, but how can you hold it up as an example at the same time you’re arguing that the effects of poverty are the biggest obstacle to quality instruction. How many schools in New York City have a $700,000 PA budget?

    PS 172, just a few stops south of Park Slope on the 4th Avenue line, would have been a more sensible choice–in terms of logic, optics, etc. 

  • bee

    I would like to see Mr. de Blasio take a firm stance against these flawed evaluations, not just the name releases. I would like to see a mayoral candidate who takes a firm stance against mayoral control of NYC public schools,is  against charter schools, not just NIMBY but in NYC. I would like to see a candidate who is not funneling millions of dollars to obscenely wealthy developers, no bid contracts, and who is not interested in privatizing NYC.

  • Larry Littlefield

    Can anybody explain the city’s motivation in releasing this information?  I don’t get it.

  • D13 parent

    Why does de Blasio always show up when things get political. His job was created so we would have an ombudsman for the people when the little guy got mired in bureaucracy and bias, not the UFT. He is supposed to be above politics, not constantly campaigning for higher office.

  • EdintheApple

    DoE instructs principals not to speak to reporters w/o a DoE Communications Staffer present.  The vast mjority of principals comply.

  • anonymous

    That is not true. DOE will give principals communications advice upon request. Principals will often talk to reporters without that guidance for feel-good stories, but in touchier situations, principals often do not want to talk to reporters and DOE will decline interview requests on principals’ behalf in those cases. Other principals just like to stay “under the radar” and avoid press entirely and again, DOE will decline interview requests for principals in those cases. The only time DOE will suggest strongly that principals do not talk to reporters is in cases where an investigation is ongoing or litigation is likely. But even then, it’s a principal’s discretion.

  • http://ednotesonline.blogspot.com/ Norm

     Ha, ha, ha Larry. Finally, something funny from you.

  • http://ednotesonline.blogspot.com/ Norm

     I guess with KS spent his measly 4 years teaching in poor  nieghborhood public schools, that was the policy. In my 27 years in a poor neighborhood parents had open access. You just ended up in the wrong place KS. If you were at my school you might still be teaching.

  • http://ednotesonline.blogspot.com/ Norm

     Sorry Larry – in case you were serious here is the link to the answer to your question: http://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/2012/02/why-public-shaming-of-teachers-is.html

  • Vote NO!

     Larry, 

    To  give  you  what  you  want.  To  create  a  working  environment  that  is  so  hostile  that  many  teachers  quit.  They  can  hire  new  teachers  at  lower  salaries.  Then if   Governor  Cuomo  gets  his  way  with  pension  “reform;”   the  new  teachers  will  also  be  put  in  a  401K  plan  instead  of  defined  benefit   pension.  There  you  should  be  happy.

  • http://twitter.com/brooklynbreeder Allison

    Uh, no. The subtext is that virtually every reporter in NYC lives in Park Slope.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Buddy-Bronx/100001292810976 Buddy Bronx

    The future teacher evaluations could backfire against the City of New York. Let’s pretend I am a young teacher working for the NYC DOE for a few years. My pay is low, I lack the needed supplies to do my job, working conditons are poor, and I have not received a pay raise in years. When I receive my evaluation report I find that I am in the top 20% for teacher effectiveness. I realize this high effectiveness rating is my ticket out of the working for the City. Rather than remaining with the City, I find the hiring superintendents in the wealthier, higher paying suburbs are actually looking for the best talent in the teaching field. The suburbs offer a much needed pay raise to teachers who have a proven record of classroom effective instruction. As a young teacher the evaluations are my ticket out of the NYC DOE. — The result of this scenario is that these evaluations could result in the City loosing the most talented instructors. Just the opposite of what was hoped for by all! Again, the inner city children and our education system will suffer the consequences.

  • Supporter

    The problem with your argument is that suburban teachers are going to get ratings as well. A “highly effective” teacher from a poor neighborhood in NYC is really not the same as a  ”highly effective” teacher from The Hamptons. (Due to the fact that the scores are graded according to the type of students that they serve) This fact was shown by the fact that none of the top 10 “best” teachers came from Manhattan schools. The scores are based on improvement. When you have all top students in your school there is not much of a margin for them to grow and thus their teacher evaluation scores are not as “good” as the teachers with lower functioning students who improve greatly. Suburban principals are going to keep the teachers that they have because they know that the evaluations are really meaningless. Suburban principals do not need New York State, The Federal Government, dictator mayors, or the rubric of the month to tell them what good teachers look like. That is why the majority of principals who signed the anti-evaluation letter are from Long Island and Upstate New York. I also know that there are plenty of great principals here in NYC. (I am honored to work for one) However, the political pressure here in the city is so frustrating for both teachers and administrators that many are scared to speak up. I think with all the nonsense in the press and what is going on up in Albany, there might finally be a groundswell from teachers, admins, and parents to set things on the right path away from the deformers goal of destroying public education.

  • Michael M. (parent still)

    You assume DOE actually wants to retain effective teachers.  I would suggest they’d be just as happy rolling the dice with a fresh crop of cheap rookies annually.

  • Michael M. (parent still)

     Chumming.

  • Vote NO!

     It  isn’t  easy  to  get  a  suburban  teaching  position.  They  always  have  a  tremendous  number  of  applicants  for  very  few  positions  relative  to  NYC. 

    However,  you  are  right  about  this  new  evaluation  scheme  tremendously  eroding  the  quality  of  the  NYC  teaching  force.  It  takes  3  to  5  years  for  a teacher  to  develop   their  skills.  This  new  evaluation  scheme  along  with  all  the  other  paperwork  teachers  now  are  asked  to  complete,  will  ensure  a  very  high  turnover  rate.   Administrators  will  always  have  to  recruit,  and  train  new  teachers  only  to  have  them  leave  before  they  really  develop  into  skilled  teachers.

  • GUest

    The DOE will prevent this by having quotas.  When they were using Danielson in the 33 schools they released their findings from the pilot saying they found only 4% of teachers were highly effective.  This is an off the record quota and the talent coach at the school I work at said as much.  There was also a quota like this last year that said that principals should offer tenure to less than 50% of candidates.  

  • KitchenSink

    Maybe.  And if you were in my school you might have started a charter school!  (Al Shanker style.)

  • Smelted

    Don’t claim to model after Shanker… As you are clearly missing a major element…a union.
    Could be why your school is on the brink…

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