Louisiana may forgo new textbooks because of Common Core alignment issues. (Curriculum Matters)
Teacher: The UFT should secure pay raises in exchange for an evaluation deal. (NYC Educator)
Some Indiana parents have pulled their kids out of school over bullying concerns. (HuffPo)
The Campaign for Fiscal Equity may reopen a lawsuit over education funding. (NYC PS Parents)
Doug Harris’s teacher evaluation proposal merits a closer look from states. (Quick and the Ed)
Joel Klein is among education company leaders supporting Fla. Gov. Jeb Bush’s policies. (CNBC)
A bill to let Chicago school closings happen later awaits Gov. Quinn’s decision. (Catalyst Chicago)
eval that makes sense.
Doug Harris’s proposal is right on target. It is exactly the right way to use value ad… as a screen. Data shines a light, but it shouldn’t be deterministic.
http://ednotesonline.blogspot.com/ Norm
Your headline on NYC Educator misrepresents the content and tone of the piece most of which attacks any evaluation deal. This when I read your lede I was shocked since I knew NYC Educator would be against trading ed eval for a raise — yet that is exactly what you are saying he says. But maybe given Gotham’s recent foray into common core territory wishful thinking is not surprising.
How far off the real message can you get? Here is a selection of what he was really talking about
“Again, I will not vote for any contract that includes junk science. I
find it reprehensible that teachers will be fired as a result of invalid
measurements. One teacher fired for no reason is one teacher too many. And hundreds? Based on junk science? Too much for me.
Selling teachers down the river so the state can get money to do more
reformy stuff is insane. …. We, the
teachers, can say no to contract. And they, the leadership, should say no to junk science. At the absolute
bare minimum, they must demand a contract before agreeing to this
nonsense. I still won’t support it, but at least we won’t look like a
bunch of morons with no negotiating skill whatsoever.
ms. v.
“LA” for Louisiana… I was expecting Los Angeles. Oh well.
The superintendent says: ”It’s no one’s fault; there no logical reason to expect a publisher to be ready for an assessment that is two years from being completed,” White said.
True. But as someone who also rejected every textbook we looked at for CCSS, I really wish they’d stop making cosmetic changes (or no changes!) and slapping a “Common Core-aligned” sticker on everything. Why not just say, in good faith, we are still working on developing new texts for the Common Core, but in the meantime, we have this supplement to our old textbook to offer for $5/student, to help you through the transition as we all figure this out?
Looking through texts that seemed like blatant attempts to take money from the hands of schools that didn’t look closely, I couldn’t help but feel a little extra dose of cynicism about the textbook publishing companies. I’d appreciate more forthrightness, folks, when I’m making an expensive decision.
ms. v.
That MA matrix is a brilliant example of multiple measures, including, in some cases “review rating” to look at what is going on, and with dismissal only “possible” even for those with both low growth and low principal ratings.
A.S.Neill
NYC Educator’s post is partially contradictory depending on his frame of reference. On the one hand, he does say that while he would personally never vote for a VA evaluation model. On the other hand, he does explicitly state that he advises the UFT to not “even think of agreeing to an evaluation system without procuring,
at the very least, the 8% raise all other city employees got between
2008-2010″. So Gotham’s post title seems fair enough or at least not intentionally misleading. Also, Gotham deserves some credit for thinking the post important enough to link so people can read the original. Gotham does a great job and in my opinion doesn’t need this kind of negative attitude.
Sydney
I think what NYC Educator is saying is that he does not want the UFT to sell us out on new evaluation deal. However, he especially does not want the UFT to sell us out for a new evaluation deal for no money. What NYC Educator is stating is something that many NYC teachers are feeling. We no not want a new evaluation deal but understand that New York State law says a new evaluation “deal” is required. We are all terrified that our own union is about to sell us out on an evaluation that will cost veteran teachers their jobs due to flawed data and worthless new “gotcha” rubrics. Do we want a raise? Sure we do, but we are way more concerned with working under a fair evaluation deal that is not meant to put our very livlihoods in on the line year after year. As for me, Hell, I’d almost rather just work under our current contract until I retire instead of being put under a microscope with the new evaluation “deal” that will probably be handed to me in a month or so.
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