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NYC To Release Teacher Evaluation Data Over Union Protests
langelgjm writes "Bringing a lengthy legal battle to a close, New York City's Department of Education will today release detailed evaluation reports on individual English and math teachers as a result of a request under public information laws. The city's teachers union has responded with full page ads (PDF) decrying the methodology used in the evaluations. The court's decision attempts to balance the public interest in this data against the rights of individual teachers. Across the country, a large number of states are moving to evaluate teachers based on student performance in an attempt to raise student achievement in the U.S."
I went thru the public skool sistum.
Tough rocks. A few shitty teachers made life a living hell for one of my kids so pardon me if I'm not on the worship-the-teacher bandwagon.
Why *shouldn't* they live under the same thumb they so firmly implant on their students?
Rather than focus on actual learning, teachers will be tempted to just focus on getting their students pass various tests, going as far as actively cheating or encouraging/enabling students to do so.
And here I thought everyone read Freakonomics...
I think the job performance of any public employee should be public information as long as it doesn't included protected information such as health (which it shouldn't). The union has every right to protest evaluation methods, but then they should work on changing the methods - not hiding the information.
Can you point us to your publicly-accessible evaluations?
I think the teacher's union would have more credibility if teachers were ever fired for poor performance. If there appeared to be any kind of performance-based accountability, the public might not care about this.
While I detest the notion that a report of that sort would be kept secret from the people who are paying for, and entrusting their children to, those being reported on, I would be quite interested to know whether the evaluations are actually worthwhile, useless, or even worse than useless.
As with the story about Australia pruning academics who didn't push papers fast enough that we discussed yesterday, there are a lot of bad ways to measure teacher effectiveness. Unfortunately, these include many of the easy ones and many of the popular ones.
Teachers aren't mystically unquantifiable flowers; but in a world where people can, with a straight face, propose 'Hey, just tot up their students' scores on the standardized test! Now you know which teachers are good!' without any sort of correction for such minor matters as 'student demographics' it is hard to be uniformly optimistic about teacher evaluations...
The other, broader, consideration is whether the teachers should feel justified in complaining about the level of public scrutiny that they are being subjected to relative to other state functionaries in positions of trust and authority... While there is a good argument to be made that teachers' job performance is a matter of public importance, I wonder if you could get a detailed evaluation of a NYC cop's record as easily as you could an NYC English teacher?
Before the rants start about over-entitled public employees I think it's worth thinking this situation through. How many people in the IT field would want their performance, as measured by some random measurement (such as the ever popular Lines-of-Code-per-Hour), published by their employer? For their clients and future employers and clients to see?
There are major problems with this approach. It gives even stronger incentives for the teachers to try to game the system, which is generally detrimental to the quality of teaching. It frequently punishes teachers working in badly run schools, while it rewards teachers for working in well run schools (as their performance will in most cases be better when they work in a well functioning school). In addition to this the statistics are rather jiffy...
There are much better ways to improve the educational system than this... Such as for example paying teachers a decent salary. The day an average teacher earns as much an average engineer you will start to huge improvements in your educational system. Of course it will take 20 years before that approach starts to really pay off, in having a better educated workforce.
On the other hand, who am I to offer advice on the American educational system? It offers us engineers in northern Europe a great competitive advantage. Please keep destroying it! ;)
The issue is that it's not entirely the responsibility of the teacher.
If the kid has a bad home life and their peers and family do not value education it's likly they will not either, and thus perform more poorly.
Ever notice how schools in low income areas perform worse, even when they bring in special teachers who have done well in other schools to try and bring up the performance?
I have a friend who is a teacher, she was have a parent teacher conference about the poor performance of the child. The parent basically concentrated on their phone the whole time, all the while being told about how the student was not turning in their home work and thus getting a zero. Parent then looked up and asked "Well what are you going to do about it?"
As though they had no part in their child's education.
There are bad teachers, and there needs to scrap the current system, but blaming it all on the teachers is not going to help, since that's what we have currently.
and start holding parents accountable. Oh, wait the culture of victimization says we have to blame somebody... The teachers, no the unions - If your kid sucks in school it is because you are a shitty parent, I know several people that went to Cleveland public schools and went on the get college educations and do well in the world, yeah - I am sure they had some good teachers some bad ones and everything in between but you know what they did have for sure? They had parents who expected and demanded no less they became educated and made something of themselves.
Oh, wait, no they're not.
I find it amusing so many people think that the only way to improve student performance is to critique the teachers. How come we don't make the actual student's data public? How come we don't create a list of parents whose children failed these tests? If we're going to determine teacher salaries by student achievement, why not asses fines to parents whose child doesn't do well?
Of course, those are mostly rhetorical questions. The answer to all of them is because, "then people won't vote for me". If you want to improve student achievement in school, start with the parents. A teacher sees a high school student an average of 1 hour a day, or 5 hours a week. A parent (theoretically) sees their child 16 hours a day, or 80 hours Monday-Friday.
Want to improve student achievement on tests? Critique the parents instead.
I agree, except that parents of elementary and secondary students are notoriously overbearing and bloodthirsty, and school boards are notoriously spineless and completely unwilling to stand up to oversensitive parents. If the parents have a reason to try to get a teacher fired, that teacher will get fired.
I see this causing more harm than good. With the way they get treated, it's a wonder we have any teachers at all.
Full disclosure - I am a teacher at a public middle school in an area with a 90% free and reduced lunch rate, high unemployment and 85% poor minority.
The problem is really how you evaluate teachers and schools, there are so many ways to take data and interpret that data. Do you give a standardized test and grade every student exactly the same and base a teacher’s performance off of the pass/fail ratio? If so, those teachers in buildings like mine which have traditionally low performing students will look bad. The cynics will say that it shouldn’t matter but I have many students who come to me from foreign countries who have had little to no formal education and do not speak English. Even after a few years in the United States their English is many time not proficient enough to pass a formal exam. The teachers in my building do a great job but I see more and more good teachers leaving our building for “better” students because the pressure is so high teaching traditionally low performing students and they don’t like being called a bad teacher when in fact they work their tails off to get the results they do.
Do you base a teacher’s performance off of the progress made by students while in that teacher’s classroom? Take a baseline score and see how they progress through the year. Critics of this method will argue that a failing grade is a failing grade no matter how much progress the students have made.
We have created a system in the US in which every child is treated exactly the same, assumed to be that same and assumed to be able to meet the exact same “high” standards. The realist among us realizes that this is far from the case. Because of this attitude that everyone is the same our high achieving students are being cheated because we teachers spend the majority of our time trying desperately to bring the low end up and ignore the high end while those in the middle are coasting along. We refuse as a nation to serve each student in the way they should be served. The trend in education today is to mix all students together in a classroom and this creates a nearly impossible scenario for a teacher who may have over thirty kids in a classroom (I know physics instructors in our district with over 40) in which they have to serve all levels of students at once.
I will step off my soapbox now.
I think the teacher's union would have more credibility if teachers were ever fired for poor performance. If there appeared to be any kind of performance-based accountability, the public might not care about this.
That's the core of the argument, but the part the union is fighting. This is the kind of fight which erodes the union's credibility.
Back when I lived in Michigan the auto workers unions were busy blaming the car companies for their eroding market share, quality of cars, etc. Then an amazing magazine, as part of the Detroit Free Press, was published containing several accounts by former auto workers, who seemed to be lacking a lot of guile or simply felt there was nothing to lose, confessing how overstaffed the assembly lines where - because the union would never back down. At the least little action by companies the workers would go on strike, so they hamstrung the automakers. Now it's a different generation of auto workers and a leaner, more competitive several auto companies. The excesses forced upon the manufacturers have taken decades to undo, nearly bringing GM and Chrysler to the end in 2008, because they were still saddled with retirement and benefit plans, negotiated decades before, which were crushing the companies.
The teachers unions should take a page from this: Don't ruin the education or the credibility of all teachers for the sake of a few - embrase performance review and become a part of it.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
But the ratings for individual teachers do matter, taken in the context of how other teachers in that school (and area) are doing. You're right that it's much more complex than just having good teachers/bad teachers. If one or two teachers in a whole school are having poor evaluations, that probably points to lousy teachers. If all the teachers have poor evaluations, you're looking at a broken school. If the pattern is consistent across multiple schools in a particular area, you know it's an even bigger problem than just one bad school.
Individual teacher ratings are just one part of a much larger puzzle, I just wonder who is going to take the time to put the puzzle together and figure out which problems are caused by bad teachers, bad administrators, bad parents, or even bigger socioeconomic issues. Firing all the teachers in a teacher won't do a damn thing if the kids come from homes in poor neighborhoods with inattentive parents. But there would certainly be times when there's an obviously bad teacher whose poor performance is downplayed or covered up by the administration (or the union.)
While I'm in favor of teachers' unions, the job of a union should not be to protect crappy employees, but to look out for the interests of the employees as a whole. You can't tell me the union is served by protecting shitty teachers!
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The problem is that most of the proposed merit-based evaluation systems that are going into place are as bad as, if not worse than, the existing system.
Evaluating teachers based on student performance results in:
1) Teachers that "teach the test" - as a result we have mediocre educational performance getting rewarded.
2) Teachers penalized for things not under their control - For example, in a large district like Manhattan, if teachers in the high-crime inner-city schools are evaluated in the same pool as the teachers serving students who live on Park Avenue, those teachers will be at a fundamental disadvantage simply because their job is harder.
However the current seniority-based system is also shit - once a teacher receives tenure there is no incentive to continue performance.
We need to move away from the current system - that much is clear. The problem is that so far, all of the "merit" based proposals don't have any metrics for "merit" that are worth jack shit, and will make our educational system even worse than it already is.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
The teachers unions should take a page from this: Don't ruin the education or the credibility of all teachers for the sake of a few - embrase performance review and become a part of it
And the problem comparing autoworker unions and teacher unions is the lack of competition public education faces. If unions bring down an auto company, the company fails, or at least it is supposed to if it does not get federal funding. Education is going to get public money no matter what. For that matter, the worse they do, the more money they get. How many times have we heard, "The schools are failing. We must increase funding and pay teachers more!"?
The answer is to increase competition. Stop sending kids to schools based on where they live, but actually give parents a choice as to where the students go and fund the schools accordingly. The voucher program was an attempt to do this and has worked very well where it has been tried. It even leveled the playing field for kids who could never afford to go a private school. Of course, the teacher's unions rapidly opposed this and pulled out all the stops. The main argument was that it would cut funding to public schools. To which I answer, So? It may cut funding to PUBLIC schools, but it also cut the number of students. It did not cut funding to education, however, and all the kids still received an education. Not just any education, but the education the parents wanted them to receive while still meeting guidelines.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
No shit.
Friend of mine worked in public education in Dallas. Was a great teacher, repeated teacher of the month and a couple teacher of the year ratings by the district, ESL certified, the works - but they were under the gun to hire more "native spanish speaking ESL teachers."
Their solution? Stick all the troublemaker kids in his class, and REFUSE to give him a second adult to back him up for classroom discipline. We're talking the ones whose dads were in jail for gang violence, who would regularly start fights, who it was known their relatives were members of antagonistic gangs. Sure enough, one day, two of them went at it - one (black) kid trying to stab one (latino) kid in the eye over a fight between their older sibs' gangs. He got the class up, separated the kids, marched them down the hall to the principal's office, holding each by the arm so that they couldn't try to go at each other again.
He gets put "on leave" and let go at the end of the year for - wait for it - "touching a student against policy" by breaking up the fight. And they would have run him off the other way if he'd let a kid get stabbed in his classroom.
Teacher evaluations based on student performance or incidents? Fucking bullshit, there are a dozen ways administrators with an axe to grind or who decide they just don't like someone in an office-politics way can screw with the numbers.
Yeah, let's teach these inner city kids and expect them to do as well as the children of millionaires!
Daddy wear's his pants down around his knees, he's fathered six kids, he's twenty five years old, he can't read at a second grade level, he's unemployable and has a record. Momma has had three kids, in on public assistance, lives in public housing uses drugs and alcohol is twenty six years old and bipolar, she is a felon and is functionally illiterate!
The kids live in a poisonous environment, constant fear, noise, violence, unstable parents who (might) speak English well enough to understand what is being said to them and kids who struggle to understand the lessons.
Gee, do you think that Bloomberg's Park Avenue, spoiled, billionaire, candyassed mind can even begin to grasp what most of these teachers deal with!
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
The public teachers in NYC should take the critique and act upon it to make them better at their jobs.
You really expect us to believe these evaluations are accurate and unbiased enough to be taken as constructive criticism? Can it be guaranteed that nobody "fudged" the evaluations just because they had a personal problem with someone? As soon as someone's livelihood is trashed by way of false data, it's too late to undo it.
If it must happen, the data should be anonymized an only be as granular as school district or school itself, not individuals. If a school/district is a problem let the local governing bodies figure out how to bring their scores up.
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It's irresponsible and dangerous for an adult in a position fo authority to exert that authority to get a dangerous situation defused and under control without cowering like a timid sheep in the corner while he waits 3 hours for the 911 responders to show up? Get the fuck out of here and return to the Utopia you came from. The rest of us are busy living in the real world and trying to encourage people to act like responsible adults.
Firing all the teachers in a teacher won't do a damn thing if the kids come from homes in poor neighborhoods with inattentive parents.
Exactly. The next logical step is therefore to allow teachers to fire students. If teachers are liable for students performance, then they need to have the power to remove failing students. And if that isn't possible due to social reasons, then it is difficult to assign blame to the teacher for having a poor performing class.
Imagine being the boss of a company, where the employees are unpaid, and often not motivated or interested in the work that you want them to do. Add to that the fact that you can't select the employees, and you can't fire them, but you *personally* will be judged on their performance. Oh, and all the employees are teenagers and many just plain don't want to be there... Does that sound like an appealing prospect?
I like metrics, and I support the idea of improving teaching, but I don't trust that the government will implement either the correct metrics or the correct system to deal with the results of those metrics. For example, everyone is gungho about firing teachers, but the most effective solution may well be to spend more money and train the teachers better in the first place. More research is needed - for example, how come countries like Finland have the shortest hours per week spent on school teaching in the Western world, but also manage to get the best performing students? Do they have teacher metrics? Do they fire teachers who perform badly on those metrics? We should learn from the best in the world, instead of assuming that adopting some unproven system is going to magically make things better. Maybe firing poor metric teachers will put off people from joining the profession, and education as a whole will suffer? These things need to be considered before changing systems wholesale.
What teachers make
This is a ridiculous statement. You are suggesting a policy in which society never attempt to help their fellow citizens. Don't touch! It's not your job!
It's this weak-minded insanity that contributes to our decline. You get sued/fired/condemned if you try to stop a stabbing? Guess what, you get sued/fired/condemned for doing nothing and letting a kid get killed while you stand there watching and waiting for cops to show up to mop up the aftermath too. You are exactly the kind of polically correct hands-off nutjob that puts a teacher in a hostile environment in a no win situation. Why the hell would any good and honest human being put themself in a situation in which they are nearly gauranteed to be eventually burned to the ground?
You are actually telling people to not do the right thing and try to stop violence and crime. It's no wonder this world is so fucked up.
"But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it,..." - Nancy Pelosi
You need to have a way to get rid of bad teachers.
RIght now, in New York, it is so difficult to fire teachers, that even after demonstrable problems, (multiple DUIs, etc) the process can take years and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Here is a chart that demonstrates the point. I agree this is not the best way to handle this, and some good teachers will be harmed as a result, but it is a natural attempt to get around a system that makes it extremely difficult to get rid of bad teachers.
Ultimately, any system for evaluating teachers is going to be somewhat unfair. But we need to remember that schools are there for kids, not for teachers, and there needs to be a way to get rid of the bad ones. Hopefully this will lead to reforms that achieve that goal.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I can't stand people who oversimplify shit like that. It's not my/your job, so let the situation get much worse, have the kid locked up, because them be the rules... It is also not my job to put out that fire in the waste basket either, but if a throw my water on it now, problem is solved. If I call the fire department and leave, the whole place burns to the ground before they get there. Punishing people for seeing a problem they can solve and solving it; simply because it wasn't their job is Bull. Also, I highly doubt that a typical police officer is as well qualified to deal with students as your typical teacher is anyway.
I don't accept that those schools are going to be bad, but what you have to accept is that they are bad, and all the social experimentation in the world are not going to make them better for the kids that are trapped there right now.
So the way out may be to bring in more opportunity for the youngest generation in those areas. Vouchers can provide that ticket to opportunity for many in that community, and that raises the prospects for the entire area. That doesn't mean we're throwing away the culture - it just means we're bringing in the good parts of a nearby culture (a quality education). It almost sound like you're conflating ignorance and poor education as a cultural component that needs to be preserved. It's not - and neither is any cultural influence that denigrates knowledge and academic abilities.
As a side-note, I would contend that letting students run is more of a social indoctrination, because it leads to ignorance of others, and maintains the current status quo.
I really don't know how you arrive at that conclusion. The current status quo is that there are a lot of schools that simply do not serve their community or students in any positive way, and the administration, the school system, and sometimes even the teachers want to keep the students trapped in that negative environment with no other options. As long as we accept that these schools must be preserved, we will not be able to provide the impetus for improvement.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
You're talking about racial hiring.
One of the reasons tenure is so important to teachers is that without tenure, they would get fired and the school board, or whomever is responsible for hiring, would put in their friends, based on race, religion, politics, or whatever.
One of the most dramatic cases was in Ocean Hill-Brownsville in Brooklyn, NY (where I grew up) several years ago. Under Mayor Lindsay, the local school boards had more control. This board came up with a plan that had the result of firing most of the white (mostly Jewish) teachers and replacing them with local teachers who were black. This was one of the most disruptive things that ever happened to New York politics. There are people who have hated each other ever since.
Before tenure, teaching was part of the spoils system. When Democrats won the elections, the they would fire all the teachers and replace them with Democrats. When Republicans got in, they would fire all the teachers and replace them with Republicans. You think it's hard getting rid of an incompetent teacher? Try getting rid of an incompetent brother-in-law of a city councilman. Try getting rid of Mayor Giuliani's girlfriend.
Tenured teachers can be fired in New York City. It's difficult and it *should* be difficult. Principals and administrators *do* play favorites. Do you want it to be easy to destroy a teacher's life with accusations that may or may not be justified?
One of the fundamental mistakes you make is not realizing that the one factor that predicts test scores most significantly is the child's family income. Everything else, including the teacher, has a smaller predictive value.
Teachers with high test scores are being rewarded for teaching rich kids.
Oh, yeah, so you say correct the test scores for family income. That's the problem. The NYC evaluation system is trying to do that. That's what that complicated formula is trying to do. The problem is that, when they tried to validate it, they found it doesn't work.
They're trying to calculate where teachers rank on a 100-point scale. The ranking has a range of error of over 50 points. You might as well rank teachers with a pair of dice.