NYCDoE rates teachers – more response
Continuing yesterday’s discussion…
Last night’s UFT Executive Board passed a moderately strong, broad-enough resolution against the DoE using test scores to rate teachers. (It probably won’t be on line until the Delegate Assembly ratifies it. I’ll see if I can post it before then). It repeated our opposition to using this data for any high stakes decisions.
Anyone who today trusts in either the good intentions or general competence of the DoE is a danger to themselves and to others.
I found three missing points: since the DoE linked teachers to their class scores, they will use this data. 1 We should object to the linking. 2 The schoolwide bonus (merit pay) decisions are not directly referenced; these are high-stakes decisions and we should actively object to the data being used for allocating money, and we should direct our members not to consider it. 3 this is now the 4th time in just a few months that the City has shown itself unable to appropriately use numbers (Progress Reports, Quality Reviews, NAEP). They should be publicly humiliated for their general incompetence, and we and our allies should take the lead.
I’d characterize the New York City Department of Education as loving data but hating research. The senior administrators are true believers in the power of data to drive decisions; but there is a remarkable lack of understanding of the fact that data don’t speak for themselves.
Bingo. When Eduwonkette says (in the body of that same post): “it is their right to examine whatever data they please to produce new knowledge” She misses the point. Progress reports. Quality Reviews. Test data that doesn’t match NAEP. We should crucify them for bad data collection, bad analysis (not to mention, bad faith). It is our obligation to interfere with the rights of the incompetent, to prevent harm being done to ourselves, our schools, our students.
Eduwonkette observed in the same discussion:
as Leonie Haimson suggested when she sent me this video in September, we all knew where this could go. And it did.
Which brings me to the UFT. City Sue, our director of policy research, sat on a panel from September that considered, in theory, what the DoE have announced they are doing in fact. We should have known. We should have informed our members.
Me? As programmer I was instructed to tie my member’s EIS # to their class lists, and that was enough. I was able to figure out what they were up to.
We must assume, given their record, that nothing the DoE does today is honest, that everything they do has nasty purpose, and that they’ll screw up anything they try in any event. Today no teacher, no parent, no student, and certainly no UFT leader has any excuse to trust in the DoE’s good intentions, to trust in the DoE’s competence, or to trust in the DoE’s commitment to improving anything about the school system whatsoever.
JD2718 
So if you were “able to figure out what they were up to” as you say, how come we heard no alarms, no ringing bells or calls to arms from you? Even assuming we guessed, too, what then? What scenario do you envision? In our legal system, pre-emptive strikes are rarely permitted. You cannot grieve or go to court about something that you suspect will happen but has not yet taken place unless it is a matter of life and death.
I started e-mailing Frank V, and Leo last April. I went straight to Randi this fall.
And I posted this Fall. 3rd paragraph (of 3) is directly relevant.
I’d be happy to forward you the e-mails.
Just so you can breathe easier — the VA project had nothing to do with high school teachers. It’s just grades 3-8, ELA and math. So the grades you were recording had nothing to do with this study. You need standardized tests with scale scores that can be made comparable year to year. And they can’t even do it right then.
I can’t breathe easier when the DoE has teachers in its sights. So what if its not me?
And yes, it is possible to do this with regents exams, which go across more subjects in high school than the ELA and Math do in middle school.
Programmers don’t just record grades. They were instructed to link teacher names (which are just labels in HSST) to real people, making all of the class grades and all of the regents grades link to a teacher’s employee number.
Methodologically we could talk about why one is harder than the other.
On principle we should not help them push an anti-teacher, anti-student agenda.
Jonathan
How do you get Fair Treatment?
Is anyone entitled to Fair and Just Treatment?
Principals, Teachers, Parents, all in a bind if they need FAIR TREATMENT.
Lets be real, no one, Randi or whomever
can untie this bureaucratic system of patting on the backs, smiles, fudging and ignoring the real issues all for the sake of paychecks. The DOE and its in ability to run a beneficial equitable school system is plainly a failure, a ripoff of a people’s intelligence and futures, teachers included! Teachers are waisting time sitting in there. PERIOD! Most should leave and find a community to build or something else since the leadership at the DOE is wrong at the core….
They don’t care about Black People! Period. This is a City Wide Trend.
For the Past 25 republican years!
I was terminated without an excuse. All of my documents in place and still ignored because they had another plan for my position that I was never told about.
Was I supposed to do stop teaching; become an administrator at the Regional Office and file my own documents?
They are all having 8 hour coffee and lunch breaks, They work on your issue when you stand there with them. How do you teach while asking them to file your papers at the same time? After you leave them they forget all about your written requests your
situation or your problems.
A bunch of patty wackers!
THE DOE UNDER Mr Blumburg is worse than ever!
RACIST AND OPPRESSIVE Power hungry FOOLS!
I can’t know the particulars of your individual case.
I can tell you that you are seeing something real: they are making the teaching force whiter and whiter.
I’d like to see the actual numbers, but the over the last ten years the number of Black teachers has declined. They are chipping away at progress, wherever they can.