More Stupid Evaluation "Reform"

Principals are very often the LEAST qualified people to "evaluate" teachers having often been failed teachers themselves, and they also have ungodly amounts of power to ruin teachers they don't want. THIS is why attempts to reform teacher evaluations will fail miserably. Teachers' careers are literally in the hands of ONE PERSON who can do whatever the hell he or she wants:

In a Chicago Public Schools system where half the schools are on probation yet 93 percent of teachers are rated “excellent” or “superior,” administrators are testing an evaluation process to more accurately measure a teacher’s classroom performance — with an eye toward closing the huge gap.

A pilot program called Excellence in Teaching, now being tested in 100 Chicago schools, seeks to produce an honest conversation about performance, useful feedback to teachers from principals and more realistic evaluations of performance in the classroom. Instead of a vague checklist that principals use to rate teacher effectiveness, the new program aims to define good and bad teaching, gives principals and teachers a common language to discuss frankly how to make improvements, and requires evidence that teachers meet certain criteria.

The Chicago Teachers Union has indicated support for the concept behind Excellence in Teaching, but specifics of any new evaluation system will have to be negotiated with the district.

Does it ever occur to this teacher-bashing "reporter" that maybe 93 percent of the teachers in Chicago ARE good at their jobs, but high poverty and other outside factors make it harder for students to "achieve"? Of course not; the NYT continues with its teacher-bashing propaganda campaign.

NYT

The Education Wars: How Principals Easily Ruin Teachers' Careers

In Chicago, it's called an "E-3"; in New York, it is called a "U" rating. Other districts have other names, but the result is the same: "unsatisfactory." And once a teacher has the scarlet "U" on his or her forehead, his or her career is finished.

It's unbelievable how EASY it is for rotten or incompetent principals to ruin a teacher's career, but it happens all the time.

Here is the "E-3" in Chicago Public Schools:

The law was perhaps originally well-intentioned—designed to protect children from someone who might have experienced a mental or physical breakdown. The assumption has always been that such a situation is the result of aging and only a few older teachers might qualify for an E3. Much to the contrary, however, given the current high stress level at CPS, one doesn’t find many teachers hanging on past retirement age into their dotage. The E3 has morphed into a tool of reprisal and revenge, used by principals to rid themselves of unwanted teachers.

A great many factors have combined over the past several years to damage the reputation of American schools. Rather than address the problems honestly, politicians look around for a quick fix or, better yet, scapegoats. The E3 has yet to reach its full potential as a weapon of career destruction because it takes a particularly asocial and amoral principal to falsely label a superior or excellent teacher as unsatisfactory. That has the same earmark as lying under oath. Not all principals are ready to sink that low. The current mob of managers wouldn’t recognize good teaching if it bit them in their rigorous spreadsheets. What they do recognize, though, is the bottom line, so high-priced veteran teachers are targeted with E3s.

It's the new age discrimination. I know what it is.

The Education Wars: More Anti-Teacher Bullshit [Updated]

from the New York Times, which thinks turncoat "union" head Randi Weingarten's proposed sellout for teachers is just what is needed to "reform" education:

The shortcomings of evaluations were laid out last year in an eye-opening study by a New York research group, the New Teacher Project. Where they can be said to exist at all, evaluations are typically short, pro forma and almost universally positive. Poorly trained evaluators visit the classroom once or twice for observations that last for a total of an hour or less. Nearly every teacher passes and the overwhelming majority of teachers receive top ratings. Yet more than half the teachers surveyed said they knew a tenured teacher who deserved to be dismissed for poor performance.

The process shortchanges students, who are saddled with ineffective teachers. It also hurts the careers of the talented beginners who rarely get the help and guidance they need to become master teachers.

WHO is to determine who is "ineffective"? And what about the assholes who are running the schools, the principals? Of course they can do whatever they want, which they do anyway, with the full support of the district, the taxpayers, and the court system.

And WHO founded the "New Teacher Project"? Why it is none other than D.C. chancellor and tyrant Michelle Rhee. Consider the source, which the paper did not.

Update: But Diane Ravitch says Weingarten didn't say what the media said she said, whatever it was she said:

First, states should set out clear professional standards that describe clearly what teachers should know and be able to do. Then, to determine whether teachers meet these standards, districts should use "multiple means of evaluation," including classroom observations, self-evaluations, portfolio reviews, appraisal of lesson plans," and a variety of other tools, including student test scores. But the scores should be based on "valid and reliable assessments" and they should not be derived "by comparing the scores of last year's students with the scores of this year's students, but by assessing whether a teacher's students show real growth while in his classroom."

What this means is that districts would have to test students when they enter a specific classroom in the fall and again at the end of the school year to see how much progress they have made in that teacher's class. Hardly any district does this now. Most do exactly what Randi said was inappropriate: They test students in the spring and compare this year's students to last year's students. This is not a reasonable way to measure the teacher's effectiveness, since the groups will vary considerably from year to year.

Randi also said, as part of her package of prescriptions, that the goal of evaluation was not merely to identify teachers who were good or bad, but to help teachers get better at their work throughout their careers. So she proposed that every district should offer "solid induction, mentoring, ongoing professional development, and career opportunities that keep great teachers in the classroom."

Of course a lot of districts are doing that now. It's not going to stop the privatizers from continuing their dirty work.

Here is her speech:



It fucking pisses me off though that most AFT members according to a survey she mentions in her speech don't seem to understand that you HAVE to have protections from wrongful dismissal and that is MORE important than namby-pamby courses to make them more professional in their teaching. Do these teachers REALLY believe that if they take all of this "professional development," that it is going to stop asshole principals from coming after them?

If asshole administrators are after you, no amount of teacher development classes is going to save you. You are fucked, completely and totally fucked because of the way the public school system is set up, which goes out of their way to help administrators.

The Education Wars: Evaluating Teachers, Students, and Schools

David Berliner, who was written extensively on the issue of public education, looks at the sheer stupidity of NCLB and "evaluations" of test taking by students as keys to get teachers and schools to "shape up" or be fired or closed. It takes an idiot like Arne Duncan to not understand that kids are evaluated all the time, but formal testing really doesn't accomplish anything, especially given the reality kids don't take the tests seriously.

What Happens to a Teacher with "U" Ratings?

By way of explanation, a "U" refers to "unsatisfactory" performance in the New York City public schools, but there are similar ratings in all school districts in the country.

However, as readers of this blog know, or should know, the "U" is being misused widely by principals who simply want to get rid of undesirable teachers, and they are being told to do it by the higher-ups in NYC schools, i.e., Bloomberg and Klein. This is being done to save money on pensions.

From the NY teachers' chatboard of Teachers.net:

I really need some information. A teacher I know - he has
been teaching 20+yrs, has recieved 3 U's in the past few
years. He was apparently removed from our school today.
How long does the school have to keep them on the payroll?
They can't hire a sub or an ATR until the teacher is off
the payroll and I have been pulled from my small group
reading to teach this class.

This post got a couple of to-the-point answers:

You sound like the only reason you want a response on this is
because you are being inconvenienced by the teacher's
predicament. In that case, screw you. A proven, S-rated
teacher starts getting U ratings in the twilight of his/her
career and you don't question that, only when can they fill
the position so you don't have to work so hard?
Someday you too may be the victim of Kleinbloom's age
discrimination and I hope you get just as little sympathy.
Scores of wonderful older teachers are suddenly finding
themselves the recipients of U ratings as a way to force them
out -- teachers who were mentors, who served on curriculum
committees, who were rated S for 15, 20 years. Suddenly
their experience and salaries are a detriment to the
administration and they are being targeted. But you just
want to get back to your old schedule. I bet you are a
Teaching Fellow.

And this:

You can betcha that the goal is to take away the pension that she
spent her whole life working for, on some trumped up charges.
That is what happens, and you have to hire a lawyer to try to
prove you are innocent.

"To prove you are innocent."--This is what happens in "due process" hearings--you have to prove yourself "innocent" of whatever bogus charge is brought. The hearing officers decide on the basis of "the preponderance" of "evidence"--evidence that is typically doctored or in the case of witnesses perjured--whether you get reinstated to your job--a near impossibility--or whether the principal's dismissal is upheld, which is almost always the case.

The Education Wars III

D.C. teachers, under the ironfisted rule of tyrannical chancellor Michelle Rhee, are getting a taste of the new "evaluation" system:




I expect teachers all over the country, including Nevada, will undergo similar evaluations.

Principals and other administrators, of course, will get off scot free.

Age discrimination in D.C. is evident, as noted in the post below the video here.

Rhee apparently doesn't want anybody working in the schools who is older than she is, which is 39, I believe.

The Assholery of Arne

Arne is going around promoting his harebrained scheme of tying teacher evaluations to student test scores.

Given few students even take these tests seriously and thus don't give their best effort, the whole idea is ridiculous.

The Education Wars

Gerald Bracey takes on Barack and Arne's harebrained attempt to pervert the use of test scores in order to "evaluate" teachers. It's utterly stupid to pin education problems on the people least guilty of it.

Meanwhile, principals and other administrators can do whatever the fuck they want. There's NOBODY around to hold them accountable. School boards don't count, either.

States are rolling over and playing dead on this issue because a) they are desperate for money and b) it is unlikely that people like Bloomberg or the Governator--or Duncan-- have a clue about the abuse they are permitting.

Duncan's enthusiastic championing of a "reform" that has been shown not to work very well--charter schools--can only be taken as an instrument for union busting. If the NEA and AFT won't stand up to this abuse of testing, they deserve to be busted.

As I found in my own experience, unions are basically worthless in defending individual teachers. They are nothing but subsidiaries of the districts.
_____

The New York City public school district is arguably the worst and most corrupt in the United States. Apparently there were scads of so-called "U-ratings" of teachers, which translated means "unsatisfactory" and threatens teachers with termination if not stripping them of their licenses. This is a notoriously abusive system of an institution which already has numerous abusive public school districts, thanks in large part to "reforms" of the past thirty years forcing privatization models and schooling inept administrators in the worst aspects of businesses. I like this response from a dissent teacher explaining all of those "U-ratings":

On 7/25/09, And how many are bogus? wrote:
> My guess is about 80%.
>
> What's the definition of an "unsatisfactory" teacher?
>
> Anyone know?

Re: 1,554 U-Ratings Given Out in the NYC Schools for 2008-2009

Unsatisfactory Teacher TO THE *AGW'S :
*(Administrators-Gone-Wild)

One who questions.
One who asks too many questions.
One who points out wrongdoings.
One who reports wrongdoings.
One who campaigns for a better way of doing things.
One who doesn't work after work or on Saturdays as much as
they'd like.
One who reports violence or crimes, rather than covering them
up.
One who is out when they are ill, rather than allowing viruses
to spread.
One who tells the truth about the performance of the child or
the school.
One who asserts their rights.
One who defends the union contract.
One who defends the public trust.
One who is opposed to abuse of other teachers, students,
parents, community.
One who files a grievance. One who tries to organize staff.
One who distributes information to help the staff.
One who the principal conswiders a threat because they don't
appear at their parties.
One who is tenured, experienced and/or over 40 years of age.
One who appears eccentric or of with an accent, or with a
cultural or religious difference that the AGW's find
unacceptable.
One who is not content with Everyday Math or The Workshop
Model.
One who's had the misfortune of a combination of illness,
death in the family, religious observances, someone to care
for, etc., which caused latenesses or absences, which
inconvenienced the principal (supposedly inconveniencing the
school).
One who has an either too fast or too slow but deliberate
delivery of a lesson.
One whom the principal wants out so they can stick a friend in
to replace.
One whom a parent or child or other staff member complains
about for standing their ground.
One whom the principal dislikes for any reason whatsoever and
would seek to "gun for", harass, humiliate, belittle, villify,
retaliate against arbitrarily, capriciously and/or
maliciously.
And then there are cases of real incompetence in perhaps 5%.
Polo Colon

The Audacity of Arne

This is another piece about the education secretary running around the country trying to sell people his ideas of "reforming" the educational system by relying on testing, instituting merit pay, revising teacher evaluations, and other such garbage he hasn't a clue of what he is talking about.

I made this comment below the post:

The problem with education is structural, and none of the reformers really want to address the REAL problem, and that’s the fact administrators have absolute control over teachers. Tenure, contrary to widespread belief, doesn’t really protect teachers from politically-motivated terminations; in fact, school districts use all kinds of tools at their disposal, legal and illegal, to ruin teachers, who, once fired, can never work in any school district ever again. The problem is administrator abuse of teachers and NO accountability whatsoever for their actions. School boards are merely puppets. But don’t expect Arne, Eli Broad, Bill Gates, and all the rest to address the real problems, for the filth that permeates school administration is just what they look for to implement their dubious “reforms.”

Since public school districts are political institutions, with all of the corruption and lack of accountability commonly found in taxpayer-financed enterprises, all reforms will fail because reformers look at every possible angle except the obvious one, and that's the assholes in charge of the districts and individual schools.