MULGREW CITES STATS TO TELL CHAPTER LEADERS NEW EVALUATION SYSTEM IS A HUGE UFT WIN

NYC Educator has a comprehensive report on Wednesday's citywide chapter leader meeting.

We expected President Michael Mulgrew to take a victory lap on the latest version of the teacher evaluation system because with Measures of Student Learning counting for half of teacher ratings, it is easy for teachers and principals (they are also rated by this system) to manipulate the student growth portion of the ratings. I knew my own highly effective rating was a joke. I also kind of figured that if I was highly effective, many other people be rated that way and that was confirmed when everyone in my school received highly effective.

The Department of Education has responded, not by accepting the overall higher ratings, but by ignoring them. Some examples:

• In their new Absent Teacher Reserve policy, the DOE will only count the Measures of Teaching Practice (observations) part of the rating when deciding if a teacher s assigned to a vacancy stays or goes from a school.

• The DOE is discontinuing non-tenured teachers who have effective ratings.
• The DOE is charging tenured teachers in incompetence hearings who do not have any ineffective ratings but only have developing ratings.
• The DOE is terminating and forcing tenured teachers to resign in state disciplinary hearings after only one ineffective rating. Read about it at the Chaz blog.

We need our High School Executive Board members to ask if fewer non-tenured teachers are being discontinued and if there is a reduction in tenured teachers facing charges through the state teacher disciplinary process.

We admit that only a few teachers will have the burden of proof shifted to them in dismissal hearings which was our biggest fear with the new evaluation system. There are still a few tenured teachers who have to prove they are not incompetent because of two ineffective ratings and they most probably work in schools where students have the greatest needs. There should be no teachers who carry that difficult burden of proof.

If tenured teachers are still being dismissed and charged at the same rate as they were before, then is it worth it that we all have more observations and anxiety compared to the old satisfactory/unsatisfactory system where it was one and done for the year for observations for most tenured teachers at or above Salary Step 8B?

We must have more hard numbers to answer that question.

For non tenured teachers, do you really care if you are rated effective if you no longer have a job?

Mulgrew's Report on evaluations from NYC Educator:

Teacher evaluation—our favorite topic for last 8 years—within one year of RttT, districts were using new evaluations. States needed the money. Politically, test scores were the fad. Problem I had was passing percentage. Made me nuts, because we always had standardized testing and were looked upon as horrible. Rest of state doesn’t teach same children we do. How long would some of our colleagues around state last in our classrooms?

Remember when we recruited teachers? Many couldn’t understand how children were allowed to act certain ways and left quickly.

There were no good old days of teacher evaluation. Ratings were based on how principal thought of teacher. Did nothing to help us develop.

Decided if we were going to move forward it had to be about growth—where does a child come in and where does he leave? That is what validates our work, not whether he can pass a test. Not same work teaching AP and at-risk. If it’s about test score, I’m putting myself at risk by teaching at risk.

Bloomberg presented a formula to us that said 85% was about passing a test. They didn’t know about variables for special ed. They used one variable and did not consider different disabilities. They were all business majors. We continued that fight. Test scores should not be only thing we measure. We pushed authentic student learning when Cuomo’s rating plummeted.

We do not want to go back to when principal decides if he likes me or not and gives a U or an S. We wanted something that gave a true understanding of what we do, and needed a check and balance against the principal.

If there is evidence about student learning, and principal says I’m bad, then principal’s word is not valid. City would never agree. Mentions matrix, to applause. Blogs said matrix would kill us. I read all the blogs. We have a lot of smart people. We got this into the law because we won the argument in Albany.

I know it looks a little weird, and I heard all the jokes, and said just wait until it kicks in. I know we were onto something because now they don’t want to negotiate overall rating. They want just MOTS. We say no, they must use overall rating. We are not gloating.

When this started 8 years ago, my own experience was there was no support. The only reason I’m still a teacher is because of a teacher I shared a room with. He said I needed help. We don’t have a system that helps people understand how difficult our profession is. We force administrators to do observation in a way that they have to talk about our craft. We take children at all different levels in September and we move them. It’s not about a test. I wanted to validate what we do in NYC.

DOE is way behind on how to do observations correctly. Some schools have collaborative processes.

25.88% highly effective this year. Up from 22.
71.1% effective down from 81.
2.68% developing down from 6%
.34% ineffective down from 1%

Editor's Note: The numbers add up to 110% on last year's system.)

Post will lose its mind, say we hoodwinked them. Some people want to go back to “good old days.” We took journey and figured out basis was student growth. For first time, NYC outperforms rest of state of NY. We’re better at it because we have more experience with children with disabilities and ELLs. Those are areas of growth. Are those kids being educated in schools that say they’re better than us?