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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.

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.

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.

A group of local principals is rallying Hudson Valley educators to push for changes to some of the state's education reforms. Six principals from Sleepy Hollow, Scarsdale, Clarkstown and three other other school districts met Thursday at Sleepy Hollow High School to gather support for a petition against a law that makes student test scores a part of teacher and administrator evaluations.

"BS Deserves Better," said a sign at a rally outside of the Bronx High School of Science, one of the city's most storied high schools that has been at war with itself for years over the pedagogical policies of its principal, Valerie J. Reidy. On Thursday, roughly two dozen current students and recent alumni gathered on the field across from the school's entrance to protest the school's high rate of teacher turnover and what they perceive as a marked shift in the quality of classroom instruction.

New York State's education commissioner threatened on Tuesday to withhold tens of millions of dollars in federal grants to struggling schools in New York City and nine other districts statewide if they do not prove by Saturday that they will carry out new evaluation systems for teachers and principals. Officials and union leaders in each district must first agree on the details of the evaluation systems, like how much weight students' standardized test scores will have on the annual ratings that teachers and principals receive. Compromise has thus far proved elusive.

Sharon McNary believes in having tough teacher evaluations. But these days, the Memphis principal finds herself rushing to cram in what amounts to 20 times the number of observations previously required for veteran teachers - including those she knows are excellent - sometimes to the detriment of her other duties.

City principals are increasingly unhappy with their jobs, according to the union that represents them. In the latest newsletter from the Council of School Supervisors and Administrators, President Ernest Logan reported that 73 percent of union members are not happy with their workload, compensation, and job security. That's up from 68 percent the last time the union surveyed its members, in 2009.

Teacher evaluation--with all its multiple facets, blind alleys, disputed data models, technocratic hype and roll-out problems-- is on every principal's mind these days. It would be great to think that principals in states with new evaluation plans are eager to begin this work, now having permission to sink more deeply into their roles as instructional guides, to have productive two-way professional conversations with their teachers, thinking together about improving instruction to reach specific goals. But no. They're worried about another time suck and avalanche of paperwork on top of an already-ridiculous workload. And--you can't blame them. Being a good principal, like being a good teacher, is impossible. There is no way one single human being can cover all the bases, from keeping the buses running on time to staying abreast of the new math curriculum in grades K through 6. Besides, the new evaluation plans have huge problems embedded, beyond the make-work element.

If principals are given the power to dismiss teachers, will they dismiss the least effective ones?

With ever-declining budgets, education administrators across the nation have been struggling for years with an increasing teacher turnover rate. Now, researchers at the University of Missouri have found that race may play a role in teacher turnover. Lael Keiser, an associate professor at the Truman School of Public Affairs and an associate professor in the department of political science in the College of Arts and Science, and Jason Grissom, who is now an assistant professor at Vanderbilt University, found that turnover rates are lower among teachers who are of the same race as their school principals.

One columnist's idea of a good principal

We can't say how many high school principals get calls from Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, particularly when he knows he'll be speaking with a critic of his policies. We do know that he got an earful when he called the principal of South Side High School in New York, Carol Burris (one of the authors of this article).

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. 

From what I can tell, the part of the deal that was struck between the city and the UFT seems to be a good one: an external arbiter for the subjective teacher ratings by principals, which is necessary considering the number of unfair "U" ratings we have seen from abusive principals in recent years. The rest of the deal statewide is very disappointing.  If I am reading the agreement correctly, it founders on four main points

The sticking point had been the appeals process for teachers who receive negative performance ratings. Under the new agreement, teachers who are rated ineffective by their principal will be monitored during the next year by an independent educator, according to a source. If the principal still finds the teacher ineffective after a second year and the independent monitor agrees, then the burden of proof will be on the teacher to fight the firing, the source said. If the monitor disagrees, the city will be responsible for proving that the teacher should be canned. This new system is modeled after the much-hyped teacher evaluation plan in New Haven, CT.

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.

Among the press releases that went flying after the city announced its first set of school closures earlier today, the one from principals union president Ernest Logan stood out for its stridency. In a statement the length of a short essay, Logan decried school closures as "a losing strategy" that traumatizes needy students, shuts out educators, and prevents scrutiny of the city's reform efforts. Adding eight months to mayoral control's age, he said twice that the Bloomberg administration has had a decade to fix all schools but has not.

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.

One of the signature issues of the Obama administration's education reform strategy is "turning around" low-performing schools. We have been led to believe that schools with low test scores can be dramatically changed by firing the principal, replacing half or all the staff, closing the school or turning the school over to private management. Part of the corporate reformers' message is that turning around a school may be painful but that it can produce transformational results, such as a graduation rate of 100 percent or a startling rise in test scores. The turnaround approach assumes that it is bad principals and bad teachers who stand in the way of school improvement. Any mention of poverty or other social and economic conditions that might affect students' motivation and academic performance is dismissed as excuse-making by the proponents of "No Excuses." Today there is a burgeoning industry of private-sector consultants devoted to "turnarounds." One of the leading turnaround specialists is a company called Mass Insight. I recently received an email in which Mass Insight hailed several schools that had turned around. The stories seemed too good to be true.