GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

From  the  Buffalo  article  about  student absenteeism  being  counted  against  the  teacher  in  evaluations:

“The state has made it clear that the educational growth of all
students — regardless of how regularly they attend school — must be
counted toward the local measure of growth that accounts for 20 percent
of each evaluation, Dixon said.
“I don’t think we should say, ‘Oh, we don’t even have to count those
kids [who are chronically absent],’” Regent Robert M. Bennett said.
“That just isn’t fair to the kids. Plus it’s the law.”

Bennett said he has made it clear to Rumore that all students must be counted, regardless of attendance.

“The one thing we can’t budge on is counting the whole cohort. That’s
just part of a data system,” he said. “It’s not blaming a teacher for
kids who are absent.”

Experts say growth models do generally take student attendance into account in some fashion.

“Most places include everybody in some kind of growth model. They
say, ‘Do what you can to get these people to school,’” said Robert H.
Meyer, director of the Value-Added Research Center at the University of
Wisconsin-Madison.”

“  It’s  not  blaming  a  teacher  for  someone  who  is  absent.”….No,  the  teacher  will  just  be   FIRED!  There  will  NOT  be  anyone  with  any  degree  of  competence  willing  to  teach  in  NY’s  urban  districts  if  they  continue  with  this  “evaluation”  nonsense.

The CityTime scandal has been called “the single biggest fraud ever perpetrated on the city of New York,” by U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara. Perhaps if the reformers in Washington were really interested in education and Race to the Top, they should have Mr Bharara investigate the fraudulent results of the test scandals on going throughout the nation. For starters they should look into the pactices that have been in place in New York City under mayor Bloomberg. Special investigator Richard Condon reported the largest number of allegations of test tampering the city has ever had, yet, with the exception of a few high profile cases very little has been uncovered. Scandals in Washigton, D.C., Atlanta, and Philadelphia all districts with reform agenda have been exposed but here in New York there has been no larger investigation into record numbers of complaints. In fact, it has been reported that schools in New York are not required to maintain test papers for more than a single school year. Those potential erased papers may not be available how is that for coincidence. While an 800 million dollar fraud against the city is damaging financially, the damage done to an entire generation of children cannot be measured by dollars and cents, it is a potential bigger crime than CityTime.