Thursday, March 01, 2012

UNION DOES RIGHT BY TEACHERS WHO RECEIVED LOW TDR SCORES

We criticized Leo Casey last week when we felt he was trying to sell us a lousy evaluation agreement as a professional gain.  If the UFT reaches a final agreement with Bloomberg on a new evaluation system, then tenure will be weakened considerably.  However, we also are not shy about complementing Leo and the UFT leadership when they do right by members.

Certainly Leo and the UFT leadership's defense of teachers in the aftermath  of Teacher Data Report release  is exactly what the UFT should be doing in response to publication of what is unscientific junk.  Rating teachers on how much value they add to their students based on invalid tests is wrong in so many ways. Leo's advocacy for a teacher the NY Post tried to shame because she had a low score on student growth in her TDR was terrific.  The NY Post hit a new low when they sent reporters to basically stalk this fine teacher, Pascale Mauclair, who received low ratings.

Maybe now people will understand that these TDR's with huge margins of error are a completely useless way to rate teachers. Hopefully, the thought of having an annual release of how students in a particular teacher's class do on standardized tests or other assessments will energize teachers to stand up and collectively oppose any new evaluation system that links student test scores to teacher job performance.

In other news, the Educational Impact Statements for the PLA schools the DOE wants to close on June 30 are in the process of being released and these statements are more absurd than ever.  Basically, they blame teachers for everything. Does anyone really believe that replacing at least half of the staff in these schools will lead to better education? April 26 is when the PEP will be voting to close these schools and reopening them the following day. We should all be there to say to stop this madness

We need to fight to end mayoral destruction of the public school system now before there is nothing left.

6 comments:

ed notes online said...

I agree that the UFT response was the right one. You close with the obvious culprit right now -- mayoral control -- not Bloomberg's mayoral control but mayoral control itself. Ask Leo and the UFT if they are willing to end MC or try some more tweaks.

Anonymous said...

More tweaks.

Anonymous said...

On January 13 Mulgrew sent a letter to teachers at the 33 schools facing turnaround which said, "If and when the DOE begins the legal process for closing your schools, the UFT will be immediately taking the appropriate legal action to stop it." 15 of the 33 schools are now scheduled for the April 26 PEP meeting and the UFT has DONE NOTHING, has SAID nothing.

Anonymous said...

Stop this. We need to get rid of the UFT plain and simple and stop complaining about retirees.
Retirees don't vote on the contract. If we go school to school and get 30% of the teachers to sign up we can have a decertification petition and if we get more than 50% vote the UFT is out. Unfortunately, ICE has never really put the effort in to do this so we have no one else to blame by ourselves.

Anonymous said...

How do you propse to get about 25,000 signatures? That needs to be on paper. That might be harder than winning retirees.

Anonymous said...

No answer to that last comment. I guess they gave up already. Sad.