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Contrasted against each other, this week’s two pieces of teacher evaluation news put some education reform groups in a tough spot.

As a deadline on a teacher evaluation deal neared, the groups anxiously supported Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s work to add weight to test scores for assessing teachers. But in the middle of those negotiations, a court decision on the release of the city’s teacher data reports reminded the public of the pitfalls of relying too heavily on data-driven metrics. Research into the reports had revealed a wide margin of error and instability from year to year.

So, for the most part, groups were mum about the legal ruling, which paves the way for a data dump of two-year-old “value-added” ratings for 12,000 city teachers.

The exception was Educators 4 Excellence, an upstart advocacy group that says it has support from thousands of city teachers. Although they are usually a thorn in the side of the United Federation of Teachers because of disagreement over senior-based layoffs and teacher evaluations, the two groups struck common ground on this issue.

E4E co-founder and co-CEO Evan Stone sent over an email Wednesday saying he was “disappointed” with the court’s decision to let the release go forward and said he thought making the ratings public would do little to boost the issue of improving teacher quality.

“While we strongly support teachers receiving quality feedback about their performance, including how much they’re helping their students progress on state tests, publicizing these results on the front page of newspapers will not help improve teacher effectiveness,” Stone said in a statement.

Stone’s comments, while not as sharply worded, echo the sentiments of UFT President Michael Mulgrew. Principals union head Ernest Logan piled on criticism of the decision as well yesterday. (more…)

A veteran teacher who disrupted an Educators 4 Excellence panel last month has learned that he isn’t welcome at the group’s future events.

Stuart Kaplan, a nine-year teacher at High School for Law and Public Service in Brooklyn, joined Educators 4 Excellence because he believed that the teaching profession could be improved by more dialogue.

“I feel that there needs to be discussions between educators. It was my hope that they wanted to foster a real conversation,” Kaplan said of E4E. He signed a pledge required of all members to agree to certain policy positions help by E4E and he attended several events, which are closed to the general public.

But he publicly disavowed his membership last month after a blow-up with founder Evan Stone at a teacher evaluation panel. Annoyed that the group had released a teacher evaluation proposal earlier in the day because he believed too little feedback from E4E members was solicited, Kaplan repeatedly interrupted Stone, prompting an early end to the event

But E4E did not remove him from its email list, and he received invitations to additional events, including one tonight, which he accepted.

Last week, Stone personally called him to inform him he wasn’t welcome unless he recommitted to E4E’s core principles. Kaplan refused and Stone said that he would be barred from attending future events. (more…)

A panel discussion that featured officials on each side of the teacher evaluation stand-off was halted abruptly last night after a disagreement escalated. The disruption did not stem from the teachers union and Department of Education official on the panel, but from a small group of audience members protesting the event itself.

“Okay, I’m going to cut it off,” said moderator Evan Stone, following a crescendo of interruptions that built up for nearly five minutes. Stone is a founder of Educators 4 Excellence, which hosted the event. “Clearly, we’ve broken a lot of norms of respectability.”

The interruptions came from at least three people in an audience of more than 100, most of them teachers. They began in response to Stone’s handling of the panel and then escalated into an airing of grievances that targeted Educators 4 Excellence and its teacher evaluation recommendations, released yesterday, which the protesters said did not reflect their views.

“I am a teacher and I have never been asked what I thought,” yelled out Stuart Kramer Kaplan, one of the protesters.

(Click here for video of the exchange.)
(more…)

Sydney Morris (left) and Evan Stone (right), two teachers in the Bronx, founded Educators 4 Excellence to give teachers frustrated with how they're evaluated a voice in policy debates.

New York City’s teachers union likes to say that it speaks for all teachers. But two young teachers at a Bronx elementary school are starting an organization with a distinctly different point of view.

Both in their third year of teaching at P.S. 86 in the Bronx, Evan Stone and Sydney Morris started “Educators 4 Excellence” last month out of frustration with how their work is supported and evaluated.

One of their first battles will be against the state’s “last-in, first-out” law, which forces the city to lay off newer teachers in advance of their more experienced colleagues.

“We want it to be the ostensible solution to a lot of screaming on both sides,” said Stone, 25. (more…)