How to Demoralize Teachers

[proud2BlibKansan]

Two weeks ago, New York state's highest court ruled that the New York City Department of Education could release for public scrutiny the value-added ratings of teachers of mathematics and English in grades 4-8. Rupert Murdoch's New York Post, joined by other media, had filed a "freedom of information" request to obtain the testing data, and the United Federation of Teachers opposed their release, saying that the ratings contained many inaccuracies.

According to The New York Times, current schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott had "mixed feelings" about the naming of names, but his predecessor, Joel Klein, had "championed" their release. A story in the Columbia Journalism Review said that the city's department of education had encouraged reporters to file "freedom of information" requests and responded with uncustomary speed when the requests were received.

The scores were released to the public last Friday.

Just for the record, it should be noted that on Oct. 1, 2008, then-president of the UFT Randi Weingarten signed a joint letter with then-Chancellor Klein that said: "We wish to be clear on one point: the Teacher Data Reports are not to be used for evaluation purposes." On the same day, then-Deputy Chancellor Christopher Cerf (now acting commissioner of education in New Jersey) wrote a letter to Weingarten saying:

more . . . http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/Bridging-Differences/2012/02/how_to_demoralize_teachers.html?cmp=ENL-EU-VIEWS2

[DirkGently]

1. But of course, demoralizing teachers is the whole point of these bullshit ratings.

[saras]

2. "Value-added" has turned every product it has touched into shit. Why would teachers be an exception?

[roguevalley]

3. how about admins, who are the worst part of teaching? Psychos. Apparently some people

didn't have fun in middle school.

[proud2BlibKansan]

4. And they are never held accountable.

[roguevalley]

7. they aren't. I'm retired but I'm still doing rights work with working teachers. I help them

organize grievance and court cases.

[Starry Messenger]

5. And there will never be any consequences for Klein breaking the agreement.

I wonder if this will cause the union to revisit their recent deal with Bloomberg on evaluations. Clearly these agreements are being made in bad faith by the bureaucrats.

[obamanut2012]

6. What a horrible precedent

Not wonder so many terrific teachers are leaving the profession, and so many bright, young graduates aren't going into it.