Arne supports having flawed NYC test scores published with teachers' names and ratings.

madfloridian

(1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore

Thu Oct-21-10 10:02 PM
Original message

Arne supports having flawed NYC test scores published with teachers' names and ratings.

Edited on Thu Oct-21-10 10:17 PM by madfloridian

I find it intolerable how thoughtless he is toward teachers in public schools.

He is buying into the "bad" teacher mantra. That is the theory that everything can be blamed on teachers, and they had better straighten up fast. He also agreed with publishing the test scores with names in the Los Angeles Times.

That is as much as saying that parents and students are off the hook for any accountability for their actions. I don't remember a time when teachers' evaluations were not treated with respect and kept private between them and their administrators. This is really like a slap in the face to the unions who work on the contracts and the teachers who trusted the system.

I will never say that one thing would turn me from the party. It sounds so petty to say it. This is making me bitter, though.

Just as the city agrees to hold off on publishing the names as the teachers sue, Arne Duncan pops his head out and says he approves of it.

Arne Duncan sides with city in debate over teacher ratings

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is throwing his support behind Chancellor Joel Klein’s decision to release individual teacher’s effectiveness ratings to the press.

Just before the city and union agreed to postpone any release of teachers’ ratings that included their names, Duncan sent a statement to reporters in which he seemed to take the city’s side.

“I give New York credit for sharing this information with teachers so they can improve and get better,” he said.

Duncan was more elliptical in suggesting whether other school districts should follow New York’s lead and release teacher effectiveness data.

He has made it clear previously that he thinks other districts should publish such. He has no concern or regard that this has been a private matter.

The other night someone posted here asking me what were my credentials for criticizing Arne. That person said I was not speaking enough to statistics. She was right. I speak for the children and teachers themselves, and statistics are not the most important thing involved in in-depth learning.

As to my credentials, I was an educator for decades. Arne is not one, never has been one. He speaks for the corporate world, and he is not above breaking union deals already done.

You know what is more appalling? Those test scores have come under great scrutiny now. It appears that they may have been "adjusted" to make the administration of Bloomberg and Klein look successful

Then this year when they "recalibrated" the scoring system because too many were doing well.....then there were massive failures.

So all those glowing school test results were a fraud, after all.

For years, Mayor Bloomberg, Schools Chancellor Joel Klein and top education officials in Albany touted big jumps in math and reading scores statewide - and skyrocketing results among New York City's pupils. The scores, they said, were proof that mayoral control and Klein's data-driven version of school reform had succeeded.

Schools were winning the "civil rights battle of our time," the chancellor claimed, by closing the racial "achievement gap."

.."Now, state officials have revealed a startling nosedive in test scores. Admitting that results from previous years had been inflated, the state announced tougher standards this year - resulting in the lower scores. Thousands of parents who had been told their children were at grade level are suddenly learning they aren't.

Oh, but it appears our Secretary of Education thinks the scores are reliable enough to use to print teachers' names in the newspaper! How about that?

Many good teachers were hurt when the Los Angeles Times printed the names and scores of 6000 teachers. Test scores don't reveal the teacher's true worth.

And neither would the rating that NYC wanted to publish. The factors that go into making a child who he or she is...home life, parents, innate ability, environment, poverty level....will not show up in that newspaper.

Diane Ravitch gave voice to one of the L. A. teachers who was labeled as not so successful a teacher, yet had received a great performance rating from his superiors. He taught at a challenging school, yet he never missed a day. He took his life shortly after the scores were published.

Last week, I was in Los Angeles. I spoke to L.A. teachers, who were shamed by the Los Angeles Times' disgraceful release of test-score data and ratings of 6,000 elementary teachers as more or less effective. I had previously believed that such ratings (value-added assessment) might be used cautiously by supervisors as one of multiple measures to evaluate teacher performance.

The L.A. Times persuaded me that the numerical scores—with all their caveats and flaws—would drown out every other measure. And, in fact, the L.A. Times database contained only one measure, based on test scores. And so I concluded that value-added assessment should not be used at all. Never. It has a wide margin of error. It is unstable. A teacher who is highly effective one year may get a different rating the next year depending on which students are assigned to his or her class. Ratings may differ if the tests differ. To the extent it is used, it will narrow the curriculum and promote teaching to tests. Teachers will be mislabeled and stigmatized. Many factors that influence student scores will not be counted at all.

..."It's worth noting, however, that Los Angeles Deputy Schools Superintendent John Deasy said that Mr. Ruelas had a "great performance review" from his supervisors, but Mr. Deasy couldn't release the personnel records because they are confidential. So only the test scores were released to the media, not the laudatory reviews by professionals who observed his work.

Now NYC wants to release test scores and ratings, with years of test scores open to question for reliability. The ratings were supposed to be private personnel information.

The only people who can stop this lack of respect for and degradation of teachers would be the guys at the top of the ladder at the DOE and WH....and they are encouraging it.

I find that hard to tolerate.