After six years of steady growth, the city’s graduation rate flatlined. (GothamSchools, AP, NY1)
Bloomberg praised the numbers but said they would be “tougher” to keep up. (GothamSchools)
A principal was fired after stealing a grand piano from his Bronx school. (Post, City Room)
Walcott said he has experienced the stop-and-frisk policy firsthand but still supports it. (NY1)
A school that banned “God Bless the USA” will no longer play a Justin Bieber song at graduation. (Post)
A school bus driver was beaten in the Bronx after clipping a car during his route. (Post)
In his presidential bid, Mitt Romney champions school choice but avoids the voucher issue. (Times)
Chicago’s teachers union voted to tell city officials that the union will strike if it decides to. (Tribune)
Parent protests against high-stakes testing are on the rise in states across the country. (Reuters)
Most students at a high school admissions test prep center are from Bangladesh. (Insideschools)
The Bronx district attorney will hear reports of past sex abuse at the private Horace Mann School. (Times)
Ellen Mc Hugh
Principal Fired for Grand Theft Piano….For those of you who have been around long enough do you remember District 9 in the Bronx? A piano was stolen from a school there in the far distant past when Mayor Mikey was still touting his talent as a non-politician politician. His election and the legislation to give the Mayor control of the DOE was supposed to STOP STOP STOP this type of larceny. Instead we have SESIS and ARIS and an over cost 911 system.
I almost long for the days of a simply foolish piano theft. But, as Mayor Mikey insists, we must raise the bar for all………thank heavens we have well educated and larcenous owners of computer programming companies. Now we can chuckle at the fond memory of the petty piano thief.
Ken Hirsh
“Under the union plan, parents would be briefed verbally on their kids’ direct educators — but prohibited from taking notes or leaving with anything in writing, sources said.”
Well, at least they aren’t requiring parents to wear earmuffs.
Copernicus
Please understand that the potential for harm here is very serious. The results of these “evaluations” are based on a THEORETICAL formula with THEORETICAL targets based on the DOE’s opinion. A teacher’s students can make progress, and significant progress, but if it doesn’t meet the DOE’s THEORETICAL target, the teacher receives a poor rating.
There are many, many principals, teachers and DOE officials who cannot explain the formula or how it works. This extends to the parents as well. They take the results at face value and do not question the source.
We have seen, first hand, those who feel it their “duty” to spread the word about these results and the pain and suffering it can cause.
Unfortunately, we live in a society that revels in drama. If people had reacted more reasonably during the recent release of data, and not gone on TV yelling that they wanted their children removed form a certain teacher’s class, maybe teachers would be less terrified of the possible consequences.
Also, it seems somewhat hypocritical that students’ data is so closely guarded and confidential, but teacher data is subject to public consumption. How would parents and students feel if in addition to the DOE data a teacher was allowed to publish the grades and performance data of their students, so the information was in full context?
NYCParent
Well said, Ellen. I was thinking of the 1990′s piano theft also when I read about this one. The NYT article that cited that long-ago theft helped galvanize the final push toward mayoral control. How fitting that an identical story should bracket this “lost decade” for NYC schools under an autocracy rather than under democratically elected school boards. As the French say, “Le plus ce change, le plus c’est la meme chose.” (“The more things change, the more they stay the same.”) Give me petty larceny under democracy instead of autocracy any day. As you note — the magnitude of theft from the city only got higher under Bloombergian autocracy, not lower.
Larry Littlefield
I don’t agree with sending teacher evaluations to parents. But the union proposal is nonethless infuriating. An appointment with the principal? How many parents would actually be able to be seen, and what would that cost. And since a zillion hours of management time is required to remove an incompetent teachers, and NYC spending on administration is and has been way below average, doesn’t it mean that the more parents are told their child’s teachers is bad, the fewer bad teachers will be removed?
Spinning it into another loss for the children. Here is the game plan. The schools are going to be gutted even more by the soaring cost of retroactive pension deals, and the goal is to secure this victory while deflecting blame. One aspect is to buy off the yuppies while denying education for those less powerful — by letting the pushy and politically connected parents get the shrinking number of teachers who continue to do their jobs, with materials they pay for themselves, as the system collapses around them (ie. the scabs). As in the past. Is everyone donating money to their incumbent state legislator, so they will be motivated to take action on “constituent services?”
There must be a publication locked away in UFT headquarters: “The 1970s Nivrana, and a Step By Step Guide to Getting It Back.” They are 75% or more of the way through the steps.
Larry Littlefield
By the way, Bloomberg (against the wishes of the UFT and all the machine pols) ended (or at least cut back) the secret formula under which schools serving the affluent got more money, and the practice of those with connnections getting the teachers who actually wanted to voluntarily do their jobs.
That cost of that pension deal will wipe out most of what he and many others consider reforms. And this proposal for releasing evaluations, as proposed by the union and state legislature, will help to turn back the clock on who gets which teachers.
Ken Hirsh
Mostly, I think this is another example of the formula:
Government + Union = Absurdity
nycdoenuts
Or bracelets.
Follow the Money
What about the formula: proliferation talking points + lack of intellectual curiosity = anti-union sentiment
Follow the Money
*proliferation of
Tim
“How would parents and students feel if in addition to the DOE data a teacher was allowed to publish the grades and performance data of their students, so the information was in full context?”
One of the big (only?) positives of NCLB is that this student information–state test score results and fairly fine-grained demographic data–IS published and readily available:
Clearly there ought to be a reasonable middle ground between individual VAM-based ratings being available to everyone and a system that would require parents to file FOIL requests and waste their principals’ time.
Copernicus
Tim, the information you mention is presented in aggregate form, not individually. It is illegal for anyone except school personnel directly involved with a student to view their individual data.
However, any real educator knows that VAM-based data is meaningless without the individual students’ data attached. I sincerely doubt there is one parent in the country, much less NYC, that would agree to having their child’s name and classroom performance data published alongside the teacher’s info.
Mr. Flerporillo
Even assuming that “VAM-based data is meaningless without the individual students’ data attached,” I don’t see what the point of publishing students’ names would be. Why would anybody need to connect names to individual performance data? Or is this just another “how would you like it if I published your kid’s names and grades in the paper” argument?
Copernicus
No, Mr. Flerporillo, spiteful conduct is the purview of the Bloomberg/Walcott team. If VAM-based data is meaningless than it shouldn’t be published, or used. If it is to be meaningful, or useful, it should be published in the correct context with the accompanying individual student data.
Despite the Bloomberg’s camp to make it seem other wise, the performance of students on standardized tests, and in class, is very much a function of the individual student, their socioeconomic background, and their family situation. That is the reality, as opposed to the fantasy construct that Bloomberg/Walcott/Moskowitz/The Post/The Daily News would have evryone believe.
VAM is useless theoretical garbage and reflects nothing about what actually goes on in a classroom or a school. Its use will have no positive effect on teaching or learning and a very negative effect on our educational system. VAM is a thinly disguised weapon to remove teachers who move into the higher salary ranges and does not give parents any useful inforamtion about their child’s education. Speaking to the teacher and visiting the classroom, being actively involved in promoting a respect for knowledge and education in a child, and giving a child a healthy home environment are much more powerful tools than sitting with a principal discussing useless data that neither the principal or the parent understand.
Mr. Flerporillo
Sure. But to be clear, I gather that you concede that, apart from spite, there’s no reason why the NAMES of students should be published as part of a package of “accompanying individual student data.”
Follow the Money
Mr. Flerporillo – I gather then you concede, according to your very own logic, that there’s no reason why the NAMES of teachers should be published apart from spite. Right?
Somedeepthinking
Government + Union = NASA
David Dunn
Why didn’t Gotham Schools cover the UFT’s Shanker Scholarship last Thursday? Over a million dollars was given out to some very worthy high school grads.
I’m disappointed in GS.
Larry Littlefield
Perhaps they are catching on to the “illions” issue. In a city this large, one $million constitutes a PR stunt. It is 12.5 cents per city resident or just $1 per student.
The focus needs to be on the $billions, being sucked into the past.
No, there are logical arguments in favor of publishing teacher ratings along with the names of teachers. There’s the “accountability to the public” argument. There’s the argument that parents should have access to this information because it’s relevant to the education of their children. There are probably others, but it’s late and I’m tired. Please note that I’m not saying these arguments are compelling enough to outweigh countervailing factors and justify publishing teachers’ names along with their ratings. But they are arguments that have a logic apart from spite. So in that sense, they differ from Copernicus’s argument that teacher evaluation reports are meaningless unless they’re accompanied by a list of student names.
Put differently, you could argue in good faith that teachers evaluations should be published along with the names of teachers. You might be wrong, but you make the argument in good faith. But you can’t make Copernicus’s argument about student names in good faith, as Copernicus has demonstrated.
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