CHAPTER LEADER OF BRYANT HS IS ASKING FOR A MORATORIUM ON OBSERVATIONS AND AN INDEPENDENT INVESTIGATION ON TEACHER EVALUATIONS IN THE SCHOOL

Georgia Lignou guest blogs again today on observations. Although she is writing specifically about Bryant, we believe observations should be waived throughout the state this school year, including in NYC.

What if a school had decided to use a rubric of evaluation for student work, and although all teachers were normed on how to use it, one teacher deviated and kept applying the rubric differently? Even after students tried to explain their reasoning, their work was still rated based on what was not there and not really on what they did. As a result, students were downrated and no matter how hard they tried to comply to the teacher’s strict definition of effective work, their scores remained very low affecting their progress and their mental health. What if these students went to the principal with good evidence, they collected proving that they were rated with much stricter standards year after year? What would this principal be expected to do?

This is an analogy to what has been happening in Bryant HS pertaining to teacher ratings. For years we have been claiming that the Danielson Rubric is used inappropriately and unfairly by the Bryant administration. For years we have been claiming that the average rating we receive in our school is Developing and it is far lower than the average received in other schools. For years we have been pointing out the adverse effects this has on instruction and teacher morale. For years we have made the connection between the ratings and micromanagement, fear, narrow-minded and inflexible teaching strategies, low morale, and high teacher turnover. We were ignored and when we asked for our school’s teacher evaluation data the Principal and the Superintendent turned us down.

Now we have proof (see chart below). After filing a request under the Freedom of Information Law, we got the data, and the numbers are clear. In the period between 2016 to 2021 every single year in every single category of the Danielson Rubric teachers at Bryant High School have been rated significantly lower than our counterparts in the Borough of Queens and the City of NY overall. The average rating is at times close to one point lower on the Danielson Scale of 1-4. So, on average, what is rated as 3-Effective in other schools, in Bryant it is rated 2-Developing. The rating of 4-Highly Effective is almost never used, and although the Borough of Queens and the City averages are inching up, in Bryant they are inching down, so the gap is widening. The biggest gap appears to be during the school year of 2020-2021, the year of the pandemic when even the Danielson Group had made a public appeal to reprioritize, over thirty teachers at Bryant were found Developing on the MOTP measure. In addition, a compiled list of educators who left the school during the same period counted 140 teachers and guidance counselors, not including about 40 retirees and about 15 Assistant Principals who were -- for the most part—pushed out. Meanwhile, the level of trust for the administration recorded on the School Environment Survey has been abysmal year after year.

The question then became what to do with this information. First, we went to the Principal and the conversation held no surprises. Then we went to the Union and pleaded with the Union officers all the way up to UFT President Mulgrew to take some action, go public, and include the issue in their consultation. They responded by telling us that the chapter needs to organize, and they will help us do it. A point well taken, and assistance well received as a long-term plan, but for the issue at hand, as effective as asking a battered spouse to find the courage to fight the abuser. Then we went to the DOE and the union mediated a meeting between the Superintendent, the Principal, and the Chapter Leader. This might have been effective if we were telling Superintendent Lindsey something she did not already know. So, again no surprise, we were faced with the whole range of responses on the dismissal scale from avoidance to denial, to cheap excuses and victim blame. Overall, the argument seems to be that teacher ratings are inflated so it might be this Principal who rates with fidelity which by omission and deductive reasoning can be interpreted to mean that the overwhelming majority of Principals in NYC even of the most successful High Schools are incompetent in rating their teachers. If this argument had any merit, it is rebuttable by our MOSL data that elevate about a third of our teachers from a Developing to an Effective rating every year. We asked Superintendent Lindsey how she can explain the discrepancy among the schools she supervises. The only response clear enough to be understood was that the data presented did not reflect only her schools. So, we filed another FOIL and we saw how Bryant compares to the average of the schools supervised by Superintendent Lindsey in Queens North (see chart below). The results showed the overall average to be close to the Borough and the City averages while again Bryant is lagging far behind, and the results from this current school year are equally abysmal.

Many teachers at Bryant feel the work is excruciating and the expectations unrealistic but still the greatest source of frustration is that what we are asked to do does not always best serve the students. In fact, even good instructional practices when they are used every day, in every class, across all subject areas become repetitive and counterproductive lacking spontaneity and creativity. The claim is made that the school has improved, and in some ways, it has, but numbers are never enough to tell the whole story and a well-presented facade can hide a lot of abuse. If we were to accept that nothing is wrong in Bryant, we also must accept the unlikely and highly illogical premise that it has become a magnet for bad teachers. However, ten years into this school administration there is enough evidence to show that this is in no way true. Not only the MOSL results of some of the lowest rated teachers in the school are exceptional, but time after time teachers left Bryant with a Developing rating only to become Effective and have successful careers serving students in schools sometimes only a few blocks away.

We are calling on the DOE to pay attention to the plight of the teachers in Bryant HS. If what they dream is the unlikely situation that the style of management and teacher evaluation enforced in our school becomes the norm in the city, I will remind them of the shortage and the mass exodus of teachers we are already facing, and I will ask how much more of that the system can afford? We are calling on the UFT to pay attention to the plight of one hundred and eighty members in Bryant HS. The argument that the MOTP does not matter if the MOSL is Effective, is invalidated by the fear of the untenured teachers as they see their career endangered, the frustration of our young teachers who all they can see is years of this abuse ahead of them, and the humiliation and insult our veterans feel to be told that after years of teaching their content knowledge and pedagogy does not stand to scrutiny. The attitude that “they have power over you only with your permission” is a valuable Zen outlook on life, but it cannot be a Union strategy. We are calling for a real discussion on instruction and pedagogy because if we do not engage, others have it in our absence.

Teacher evaluation was supposed to establish norms in a system big and diverse. The Danielson Rubric was designed on the premise of objectivity. An ambitious and probably unattainable goal but nevertheless a promise on the side of the DOE and the UFT to teachers who at the time were very nervous on how it could be used in the hands of abusive principals. So, when we bring evidence that it is used subjectively, punitively and retaliatorily, we demand and deserve attention. Unfair evaluation is not only unethical. It is negligent and it is illegal. We demand that our teachers are not penalized for the failures of the system. Teachers are not expendable, and their health and career cannot be collateral damage. 

We are asking for a moratorium on observations in the school and an investigation by outside evaluators. We are publicly asking the DOE to pay attention to our school and to stop the abuse. How many teachers must be destroyed as they are broken and shaped to fit a principal’s vision? It’s been too long and too many already.

PS. Any legal advice will be appreciated.