this is what I keep saying

Another example of the importance of poverty, graphically displayed:

publicizing teacher evaluations

Considering that high stakes testing results are not always released in a timely fashion (which count for 20% of a teacher's evaluation), this whole process will create more chaos than good. Public exposure using these methods may tell who are ineffective but it could potentially classify teachers as ineffective or developing when they really are not. We only need to look at the Value-Added scores being released in the New York Post several months ago to get an example of how scores can be wrong (How to Demoralize Teachers).

The question that I ponder is why is this so important? It feels as though politicians and reformers are looking to slap a scarlet letter on teachers in an effort to shame them out of the teaching profession. Bloomberg says "motivate", but it seems to be more of an effort to force schools into a corner. Will schools fight back instead of making all of these new mandates work?

Teacher evaluations are highly important. All teachers should be observed and appropriately evaluated by competent administrators. One of the reasons why this debate is coming up is that there are administrators who did not do their jobs and there are teachers who are not good at educating students. Once again, that is the exception and not the rule.

-- Ed Week

are teachers too easily caught in the crossfire?

Well, are there ineffective teachers? I'm sure there must be. I've heard stories of ineffective teachers. And I certainly don't think there should be even one ineffective teacher in any school.
And it's the job of the administration, the job of the principal primarily, to make sure that no ineffective teacher ever gets tenure. Once they get tenure, all that means is -- it doesn't mean they have a lifetime job. It doesn't mean they get paid for breathing. It means that they have a right to due process. If, after getting tenure, the principal says, I want to fire you, they have to have evidence. They have to have a hearing before an impartial administrator.

That really is not such a burdensome thing. But it's very clear that this is not the key problem in American education, because the lowest performance is not in union districts. The highest performance in America is Massachusetts, Connecticut and New Jersey. These are three states that are all union states.

They have very strong collective bargaining agreements and the highest-performing states. The weakest performance is in the states that have no collective bargaining and where there's a lot of poverty. I think it's really important in your discussions about education that you recognize that the most -- the biggest single correlate and, very likely, I would say the cause of low performance is not teachers or union contracts. It's poverty and racial isolation.

-- PBS interview with Diane Ravitch

from my awesome teacher friend, mr. s

Five really important things to think about when thinking about education in the US.

1. Education reformers are attempting to privatize education to open a new market.

2. There is no education crisis sweeping the nation. Factor out poverty and US students are near the top of international standings. We need to address poverty issues that hold children back.

3. "Full-Service Community Schools" are a model for addressing poverty issues that affect education. "Community Schools NOT Charter Schools"

4. The charter school experiment is a failure. 20 years of data show that only 17% of charter schools perform better than the neighborhood school and nearly 40% perform worse. Giving 4 in 10 students a worse education is not going to close any gaps if you only give 2 in 10 a better education.

5. 50% of teachers quit before 5 years. This means most of the bad ones leave on their own before tenure. No other sector is as self-selecting as this.

on nyc's recent data reveal

In case you haven't heard, New York recently published ratings for all teachers in the five boroughs of the city based entirely on test scores. Since each teacher is placed on a bell curve within their school, and then all teachers are presented as equal out of context, there is little value to the data. The message, however, is alarming. Is this where we are going with education?

Why would any sane person want to teach? Also explore the problem with humiliating teachers.

standardized testing: day 3

Some photos for your viewing pleasure:

 

You can see where ALL of the energy in this building is focused.

standarized testing: day 2

"Hey there T [fourth-grade sib of one of my students], how did your science test go today?"

"It was good, but hard. They asked us about the inventor's names of some stuff. I didn't know that."

standarized testing: t-1

After all the students we gone we stood in the office talking. Mama Z, nurse-office-manager-recruiter-saves-us-daily, interrupted us.

"Please Lord, help all of our babies with this test. And let them all pass."

We, laughing-but-dead-serious, chorused, "Amen."