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Ultimately, I admitted my mistake in originally registering with the Principals' Letter database.  I wrote to Sean Feeney, requesting removal from the signature roster. What could have been an attempt to cooperatively work with educators of all levels had evolved into a mess that could well hurt our teachers. 

The chief academic officer of New York City's public schools said on Monday night that principals were not alone in being concerned about the state's new teacher evaluation system: He also has qualms. At a panel discussion on high-stakes testing held at the Brooklyn Secondary School for Collaborative Studies, Shael Polakow-Suransky, the chief academic officer for the city's Education Department, told a packed auditorium that the new law contained "real risks," for teachers and principals alike.

When revisions to the state's teacher evaluation law came before the State Senate late Wednesday night, not a single senator cast a "no" vote. That's because nearly all of the Senate Democrats had walked out of the Senate chambers to protest a controversial redistricting deal. While they were out, Senate Republicans made quick work of bills that had already been approved by the Assembly. That included the teacher and principal evaluation bill.

As public school principals lead a growing insurgency against the state's new teacher-evaluation system, some teachers are beginning to question why their largest state union is defending the system and not supporting the principals' movement. Several presidents of local teachers unions told The Journal News that there is a growing dissatisfaction within their ranks with union leadership on the controversial system, which will grade teachers on a 100-point scale based in part on how their students progress on state tests.

The architect of many of the metrics the city uses to assess teachers and measure student growth spent Monday evening defending his work against a steady stream of criticism from parents and educators. Chief Academic Officer Shael Polakow-Suransky sat on a three-person panel titled "High-Stakes Testing 101″ hosted at The Brooklyn School for Collaborative Studies and The Brooklyn New School. The panel included two principals, Long Island's Sean Feeney and Elijah Hawkes of the James Baldwin School in Manhattan, who have publicly criticized the city's and state's use of testing data to measure student growth and evaluate teacher effectiveness. Hawkes was one of about 170 city principals to sign on to a petition Feeney authored against the state's use of student test scores in teacher evaluations.

I could, of course, create longer rubrics that attempt to cover every eventuality, but such beasts would probably be too thick to attach to a student's paper without leaning my full weight upon the stapler. And even with such a rubric, it's inevitable that some students would still come up with things I never anticipated, because great writing is nuanced, complex and much larger than the sum of the component parts of any rubric humans could devise. This is essentially my complaint about the Danielson framework that will now form the basis of teacher observations in New York State. It features a beast of a rubric that has all the stapler-bending properties mentioned above, coupled with the daunting task of somehow reducing "good teaching" to its component parts so that it can be quantified and evaluated.

"New teacher evaluations, based in part on student achievement, will be introduced in schools across the state in this school year - and with them will come more student testing. To evaluate teacher effectiveness, schools must measure how much progress students make in each course. So schools are adding locally developed tests to their existing schedule of state tests and course exams."

"I received my 'growth score' today from the New York State Education Department. I know,  I really shouldn't care what my score is. I know 100% of my students tested at or above grade level in Math and English Language Arts.  I know my class' scores were near or at the very top of my district's scores. I know my district is also at or nearly at the top of the region's and states' scores. I know I work my heart out and push my students to excel. My students always, ALWAYS  succeed. Yet according to the NYSED my growth score is so so. I'm rated effective with a growth score of 14 out of 20. Keep in mind, my student's mean scale in math  is 708.4 and ELA it is 678.  I'm confident both scores are well above that state mean. So why did I get a mediocre growth score? The state's explanation of it's calculation should be a eye opener for all  of us."

Principals who object to the new state system to evaluate teachers and principals based on student testing have begun circulating a petition against it. In his On Education column in The New York Times Monday, Michael Winerip reported that more than 650 principals from around the state - 18 from New York City schools - had signed. Here, a few of the principals who signed give their reasons.

State Education Commissioner John King Jr., 36, took his post in June at a pivotal time for education in New York. King is overseeing the implementation of education reforms at a time when school districts, and his own department, are financially strapped. During an exclusive interview last Friday, Education Reporter Meghan E. Murphy asked King about the top issues facing the state today: from school funding disparities to criticisms regarding the state's teacher evaluation regulations.

Across the state, hundreds of principals have signed onto a petition urging the state to proceed cautiously with new teacher evaluations. Only two of them currently run New York City schools.

Principals who object to the new state system to evaluate teachers and principals based on student testing have begun circulating a petition against it. In his On Education column in The New York Times on Monday, Michael Winerip reported that more than 650 principals around the state - 18 from New York City schools - had signed. A number of principals responded to a request for their reasons, and SchoolBook published several Monday. Here are some additional replies.

This was written by Carol Corbett Burris, principal of South Side High School in New York. She was named the 2010 New York State Outstanding Educator by the School Administrators Association of New York State.

School principals throughout the state are in revolt against the State Department of Education for imposing a system that is supposed to guarantee reliable testing for students. The leaders of the principals' rebellion charge that the system doesn't actually accomplish that. Instead, it degrades the educators in our schools. One principal, Bernard Kaplan, of Great Neck North High School on Long Island, told me: "It's stupid. It makes no sense."

Through the years there have been many bitter teacher strikes and too many student protests to count. But a principals' revolt? "Principals don't revolt," said Bernard Kaplan of Great Neck North High School on Long Island, who has been one for 20 years. "Principals want to go along with the system and do what they're told." But President Obama and his signature education program, Race to the Top, along with John B. King Jr., the New York State commissioner of education, deserve credit for spurring what is believed to be the first principals' revolt in history.

n October, two Long Island principals posted online a letter detailing their concerns with a new state evaluation system for teachers and principals. They hoped other principals would sign it, and did they ever, starting on Long Island and rippling across the state. As of Sunday, 764 principals - including 31 from five Central New York counties - had signed the letter. Besides principals, scores of other educators signed, too.

In this weeks' program we look at the attempt by education reformers to impose value added measures on teacher evaluation as an example of how neoliberal forces have used the economic crisis to blackmail schools into practices that do not serve teaching and learning, but do serve the corporate profiteers as they work to privatize public education and limit the goals of education to vocational training for corporate hegemony. These processes constrict possibilities for educational experiences that are critical, relational and transformative. We see that in naming these processes and taking risks both individually and collectively we can begin to speak back to and overcome these forces. In this program we speak with Sean Feeney, principal from Long Island New York, about the stance he and other principals have taken against the imposition of value added measures in the new Annual Professional Performance Review in New York State. We also speak with Celia Oyler, professor of education at Teachers College Columbia University, and Karen Lewis, president of the Chicago Teachers Union, about the impact of value added measures on teacher education and the corporate powers behind these measures.

South Side principal and teachers speak out about why the new NYS teacher evaluation system is wrong for schools and students

What King and Duncan don't realize is that forcing a haphazard evaluation plan will not fix anything. It instead will result in an ineffective evaluation process, thrown together in the interest of dollars, rather than students. A story all too familiar in America's schools. New York's education system is an entrenched bureaucracy that requires a complete overhaul. Improving teacher quality is a piece of the puzzle, but not the silver bullet.

Many if not most local districts and their unions that are supposed to have agreements by now are struggling to come to terms on how to evaluate the area's 11,000 or so teachers. Syracuse, which is on an accelerated schedule, recently was penalized by the state for not reaching an agreement, but it is not alone. The state penalized nine other districts, too, (none local) and is under pressure from the federal education department to get its districts to launch new evaluation systems. Governor Andrew Cuomo has called the state effort to change the system a failure.