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Chancellor Dennis Walcott with PS 40 teachers during a training session.

Teachers at Manhattan’s P.S. 40 played students this morning, engaging in role plays, “turn-and-talks,” and “sharebacks” to learn about the new way they will be evaluated this year.

Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott joined the teachers for a training session about Charlotte Danielson‘s “Framework for Teaching,” the teacher evaluation model that principals are supposed to start using this year.

Without an agreement between the city and teachers union on new teacher evaluation rules, teachers will still be judged as “satisfactory” or “unsatisfactory” at the end of the year. But the city has instructed principals to follow Danielson’s framework — which divides teachers into four categories, from “highly effective” down to “ineffective” — when they conduct observations throughout the year, in conjunction with the rollout of new “common core” curriculum standards.

“We’ve worked out some pieces with the UFT around the evaluation, but right now, my goal is to make sure we’re having the training take place around the Common Core,” Walcott said.

A group of five P.S. 40 teachers acted out a scripted classroom scene, with one “teacher” pushing her “students” to think critically about a nonfiction reading on Polynesian settlement in Hawaii. Walcott and the rest of the staff watched on and consulted yellow photocopied evaluation rubrics to see if the “teacher” should be judged highly effective, effective, developing or ineffective. (more…)

Remember how, in 2001, when he was first running for mayor, Michael Bloomberg vowed to require all public school students to wear uniforms, to bring in private companies to take over long-failing schools, and to re-evaluate tenured teachers every two years?

These are among the fun facts included in a self-evaluation Bloomberg released today, running through all the promises he made in his 2001 and 2005 campaigns, and reporting that he’s followed through with most of them (97% in 2005, the report says).

The list of education promises Bloomberg terms stick-a-fork-in-it “Done” (as opposed to those he “reconsidered”) includes many that did obviously happen, but it also includes claims that could inspire challenge. Four promises that caught my eye:

• Improve access to selective schools for students in under-served communities. (2005 campaign promise) The mayor’s report notes that the city now offers summer workshops for parents to encourage them to consider having their children take the entrance exam for selective high schools like Stuyvesant and Bronx Science. The city has also offered summer test-prep institutes for low-income students. Still, The New York Times reported last year that proportionately fewer racial minorities were taking the admissions exam, and a lower percentage were passing. There was little change when the paper reexamined the figures this year. Gifted and talented programs for primary school students, meanwhile, have also gotten less racially diverse under Bloomberg’s watch, The Times reported.
• Give teachers more control over how they teach. (2001 promise) The report explains that this “done” stems from the new availability of “a series of tools for teachers that highlight students needs and provides teachers the information to focus on helping students master their subjects.” I assume that refers to projects like ARIS, the data warehouse, and the periodic assessments known as Acuity, meant to give teachers an ongoing portrait of what students do and don’t know throughout the school year. While some teachers embrace these tools, others say the tools limit the way they teach, forcing them to focus too much time on test preparation. (more…)