Group items tagged

Both a value-added method and principal observations tied to a teaching framework identified the same teachers as particularly high or low-performing under Chicago's teacher-evaluation pilot, a new study concludes. But principals struggled to provide high-quality "coaching" and support to teachers based on the results, the report says-a finding indicates just how difficult it will be to use the systems to improve teaching and learning.

Tennessee's new teacher evaluation system has hit an unexpected snag. With teacher tenure and job retention riding on a top score, Williamson County is banning student teachers from working in core subjects in high school and suggesting individual principals not allow them in grades 3-8. Even though they're not under formal policies, other principals and teachers statewide who formerly volunteered to take student teachers are backing off, too.

A summary of the public comment and the response by NYSED for their waiver application from NCLB is now posted online; presumably the application will be voted on by the Regents Monday or Tuesday. NYSED says it received "over 50 submissions from "persons associated with Class Size Matters" and over twenty submissions from individuals associated with the principals' letter, signed by over one third of New York's principals, objecting to the new teacher evaluation being developed by the state.  Yet the NYSED summary responded substantively to none of our concerns, as expressed in our earlier letter.

It is hard to put in words how honored I am to have been invited to speak to this group. I can think of no gathering whose work is more important to the future of this nation, or have handled this responsibility more honorably, than public schools principals in the state of New York. You are the last line of defense between public school teachers and a political juggernaut of unprecedented proportions seeking to change the way public education in the United States is organized. This movement, led almost exclusively by people who come from business and the law rather than education, is responsible for the public demonization of members of a human services profession unprecedented in American history, yet it commands virtually unanimous support of the press and broadcast media, leaders of both political parties, the nation's wealthiest foundations and some misguided civil rights leaders.

As a veteran teacher, I cringe when I hear politicians say that current evaluations do not include student learning as a factor. When my principal observes my class, he will witness student learning in many forms. For example, he might see me call on a student who has been struggling. Perhaps that student will not be able to answer the question perfectly, but he will be able to do it far better than he would have at the beginning of the period. My principal is a veteran and knows learning when he sees it. I trust his judgment. The new evaluations hinge on a flawed notion of student progress. This will lead to their downfall.

UFT President Michael Mulgrew started his week at P.S. 321, a high-performing elementary school in Park Slope whose principal has taken an unusually outspoken stance against the release of thousands of individual teachers' city ratings. Elizabeth Phillips, the school's longtime principal, published a column on the New York City Public School Parents blog this weekend arguing that the Teacher Data Reports were based on inaccurate data and generated results that conflicted with her own assessments' of teachers.

Some teachers said they worry that the public release of individual teacher data is going to lead to fights over high-performing students, and to the neglect of those who most need their help. Others said they were angry that their teaching careers were being reduced to a sliver of data. And principals spent the first day back after a week-long vacation trying to explain to parents that numbers can't capture "the magical instruction that goes on every day'' inside the classroom.

Here is a message from Elizabeth Phillips, Principal of P.S. 321 in Brooklyn, who writes: " I am absolutely sick about the public release of the TDRs.  See below for some details in terms of what it actually means at PS 321."

The information below comes from Elizabeth Phillips, principal of P.S. 321 in Park Slope, N.Y., about how badly the newly released rankings of New York City public school teachers reflect the reality at her school. Phillips wrote that she is "absolutely sick" about the public release of the Teacher Data Reports (TDR) of some 18,000 teachers based entirely on student standardized test scores. And, she said, the amount of data that is wrong is "staggering." This same information was posted earlier on the New York City Publbic School Parents blog.

But we principals, too, are part of the problem. Not because we have promoted the use of bad data to rate teachers, but because we may have allowed our attention to stray from our chief job of promoting professional growth, training staff, documenting teacher performance, creating community and defining what quality teaching and learning look like in our schools. Newly necessary distractions like marketing and fund-raising and data analysis may have seemed more important than getting into classrooms and working with teachers on how to plan lessons and ask questions. But if we let our attention waiver from those things which we know should be our primary focus, if we asked "How can we help students earn more credits?" instead of "How can we help students learn more?" then some of the distrust we see driving this new agreement is our fault, even if we believe that is what the school system and the general public wanted us to do. We may have felt less incentive to concentrate on the quality of classroom instruction in our schools because we are rated on other things, but we know our jobs. If we chose to focus on tasks outside of instruction, it makes sense that the void such a choice created was filled by psychometricians.

"This is a very important letter from the New York principals who have led the fight against high-stakes testing and the state's invalid educator evaluation system."

Earlier this month Carol Corbett Burris, principal of high-achieving South Side High School in New York, wrote an open letter to Education Secretary Arne Duncan about her concerns about his school reform agenda and I published it here. It ended with this sentence: "Right now the ball is in your court, Mr. Duncan." Duncan, who may or may not have seen the letter, just called her to talk about reform, and this is her account of the conversation.

Gonzalez has touted initiatives to increase literacy and parental involvement to school community members throughout District 7, which is largely poor and low-performing. Now he is trying to turn District 7's attention toward arts education, at a time when many schools are facing cuts to their art and music teaching positions. He is asking a handful of local principals to help him write a large grant to fund after school and summer school arts education at multiple schools in future years.

In a New York City middle school, the principal asked teachers to spend fifteen minutes a day with students practicing how to answer multiple-choice math questions in preparation for the state-mandated test. One teacher protested, explaining she taught Italian and English, not math. But the principal insisted, and she followed his directive. As you might suspect, the plan failed, and in the end, fewer than one in four New York City middle schoolers passed the exam. While the importance of the test dominated the formal curriculum, the lessons learned through the hidden curriculum were no less powerful. Students learned that test scores mattered more than English or Italian, and that teachers did not make the key instructional decisions. In fact once the test was over, one-third of the students in her class stopped attending school, skipping the last five weeks of the school year.

The DCPS school year is under way and many students are adjusting to an unfamiliar environment. They're not alone. A surprising number of both teachers and principals are also completing their first month at their new digs. What impact DCPS's high teacher and principal turnover has on students is less than clear, like most things with the school system. Mary Levy is a DCPS budget expert. Her work sheds light on some very dark places. In an extended interview, directly following her Sept. 7 testimony at a D.C. Council hearing on middle schools, Levy discussed DCPS's increasing de facto segregation, Teach for America, charter schools and more. She began by talking about the lack of transparency in the budget, which she says has gotten worse over the years, despite the internet.

These are some of the 17 new principals - 11 of them under age 40, 7 from outside Newark - recruited this year to run nearly a quarter of the city's schools. They were hired by Cami Anderson, the new schools superintendent, as part of an ambitious plan to rebuild the 39,000-student district, which has long been crippled by low achievement and high dropout rates, but now is flush with up to $200 million from prominent donors, including Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook.

The practice of law in the U.S. is an adversarial system that is widely accepted as being the most effective way of ensuring that justice is done. This is the antithesis of the way educating the young is supposed to be conducted in this country. Nevertheless, the system too often still pits teachers against principals, to the detriment of students.

A new outside study shows that when Chicago public school principals were given more flexibility in firing probationary teachers, they used that discretion to dismiss the ones who were truly less effective.

The teachers union is threatening to curb its efforts toward new teacher evaluations if the Department of Education doesn't remind principals again that the old evaluation system is still in place. The threat comes at the end of an angry letter sent by UFT Secretary Michael Mendel sent to the DOE yesterday. In the letter, Mendel says that UFT members report some principals are preparing to use the Danielson Framework, an evaluation model that the DOE favors, to rate teachers - even though the union hasn't agreed to the change.

Across Long Island, there is growing concern about the direction being taken by the New York State Education Department. In breathtaking speed, State Education officials have made sweeping changes to how our schools operate, how our teachers and principals are evaluated and how our students are assessed.