Bloomberg Proposes Using Students' Test Scores To Rate Teachers

[tonysam]

Bloomberg continues his open warfare against New York City's public school teachers who are already being screwed over:


Mayor Michael Bloomberg introduced some controversial proposals for education reform Wednesday while addressing the Center for American Progress in the nation's capital.
Speaking beside U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, the mayor announced that the city will begin immediately using student test scores to help decide whether a teacher gets tenure.

The state recently passed a law banning the use of student test scores in tenure decisions.

Bloomberg said a close reading of the law shows that the city can use the test scores for teachers up for tenure this year. He said he has asked Schools Chancellor Joel Klein to begin using the test scores in that decision-making process.

"We should use all means that we have to evaluate who the better teachers are, promote them, pay them more if we can," said the mayor. "And, at the same time, those that aren't up to standards, give them the remedial work that will make them integral teachers, and after all that, they can't cut the mustard, then I'm sorry, they just can't work in our school system."

More

There is a video of him spouting off if you have the stomach for it.

[rurallib]

1. Hardly the first time that has been proposed

maybe Bloomie can take a minute, use google and get about 10,000 articles on why that is a truly, truly dumb idea.
Should have done it before he opened his mouth and embarrassed himself.

[tonysam]

3. I guess he wanted to impress Arne Duncan who is dumber

than a box of rocks.

[msongs]

2. using that logic, expell all the kids that flunk tests, right? nt

[tonysam]

5. There you go!

The students don't even take the tests seriously to begin with, and now Bloomberg wants to give principals even MORE power than they already have to boot teachers they don't happen to like.

[dflprincess]

4. I will say this everytime talk of tying teachers pay or tenure to test scores come up:

Why aren't parents ever held responsible for students' performances?

(P.S. I am not a teacher.)

[tonysam]

6. Here is more about UFT and Bloomberg over this issue

The tenure law, passed last year after heavy lobbying from the city and state teachers unions, bars the use of student test scores as a factor in teacher tenure decisions.

But the mayor pointed out this morning that the rules apply only to teachers who began work after July 2008. Teachers up for tenure this year were hired in 2007 and so are not subject to the provisions, Bloomberg argued. If legislators allow the law to expire on schedule this June, then it will never have applied to any teacher.

Right now, 1,200 teachers are receiving regular paychecks and benefits even though they don’t hold full-time positions in the city schools. Bloomberg is proposing to make it easier to move those teachers off the payroll.

Bloomberg also targeted the “rubber rooms,” which hold teachers accused of offenses ranging from incompetence to abuse. A backlog of accused teachers means the rubber room is clogged with people waiting for a verdict on whether they can go back into the classroom.

Bloomberg said that his proposals should not come as a surprise to the union.

link

[Smarmie Doofus]

7. Love it when he turns on the charm.

The subtext is we are in contract negotiations which have stalled. The union is preparing to file for an "impass" ; which seems to mean that the state will appoint an arbitrator... or something short of that, a fact-finder.

Question for Bloomberg (and other I-will-no-longer-call-them-reformers) : How are you going to attract and retain the best and the brightest... which you profess is your aim... while at the same time making the job more onerous?

[tonysam]

8. As long as there is a glut of teachers, I don't think Bloomberg

or any of his ilk in the other 49 states really cares about quality at all. Hire 'em, and then after 2-3 years, sack 'em.

Disposable teachers is now the trend in public education.

[exboyfil]

9. I can think of a metric I would like my daughter's sixth grade

teacher be measured on - performance of class on the PreAlgebra assessment test. In my daughter's case only one kid out of a class of nearly 30 was able to pass the test and get into PreAlgebra in 7th grade (for the others they are on the path of never getting Calculus until college). Higher percentages came out of the classes at the other two feeder schools. Now I guess that I could argue that my daughter's elementary has kids which are not as math smart, but their ITBS' are the highest of the three schools so I think they are all comparable.

Another supporting piece of evidence that the teacher probably did not do as well as she should have was the results of the 7th grade Algebra assessment test. In that test six of the seven kids which passed the test (or were close enough to allow classroom performance to also matter) were from my daughter's elementary. They skipped PreAlgebra (which is a large component of rehashing of 7th grade Math). Normally only one or two students are able to do this according to the 7th grade teacher.

Final piece of evidence - even without PreAlgebra my daughter had the highest grade in her class in 8th grade Algebra according to her teacher.

When it comes to high stakes placement (and you don't get any higher stakes placement than accessing Algebra in 8th grade) I think teachers should be measured somehow on performance. Not to the point of retention or even salary decisions, but situations like this need to be corrected. My daughter's sixth grade teacher was good in the other subjects.

[tonysam]

11. In my opinion, children that young should not be taking pre-algebra

It is a recipe for failure. Most students do not have the abstract thinking ability to master the concepts of algebra. School districts, under pressure by the "standards" mob, are shoving classic algebra in late elementary and middle school--concepts that were not taught when I was in school until high school. I was horrified seventh and eighth graders in the middle school where I taught life skills were having full blown algebra shoved down their throats. Most of the kids could NOT master it.

This has NOTHING to do with the teacher's ability--it's the shitty, inappropriate curriculum. No wonder so many students are in special education because of "math disability" when in fact there is nothing cognitively wrong with these kids.

Some will say just about any math is algebra, but what I am referring to is the equations with letters and numbers--REAL algebra--doing the whatever on both sides of the equation, etc. Integers and order of operations are difficult enough for young kids, but 2y + 3x =n is just too much for them. A student has to have pretty advanced abstract thinking skills to master it. Most middle school students do not; hell, even many adults never master it.

[exboyfil]

12. Yes but a whole lot do master it

and if your daughters are talking about medical school you almost have to be on a Calculus in 12th grade track to have any sort of shot at merit scholarships for their undergraduate science. The really high achieving kids are taking Algebra in 7th grade. Algebra in 8th grade is not unusual, but I agree it should not be mandatory (ala California). Algebra in 8th grade was typical when I was in school back in 1970s (probably 20-30% or so of my 6th grade class did this).

The problem with 6th-8th grade math is that it can quickly become a hamster in a wheel in which you never get off. The difference between 7th and 8th grade math is slight and good kids run the risk of being bored out of their skulls in 8th grade (all because they cannot pass a single assessment test). You always run the risk of correlation versus causation, but studies have shown Algebra or higher in 8th grade is strongly correlated with future earnings.

I only know the capabilities of my own daughters, and my oldest has demonstrated that she was misplaced going from 6th to 7th, and a big part of that misplacement was due to an assessment test in which she did not have a fair shot at (not having some of the material on it that the other two feeder schools had covered). That is a problem with the teacher. We are talking about highly prepped kids here (ones whose parents are university professors, engineers, accountants, etc). I normally did not get into the business of the teachers and I trust their judgment, but I am very critical of this situation.

[tonysam]

13. Well, "really" high "achieving" kids were NOT taking algebra in middle school when I went

This is entirely the fault of the standardistas, as Susan Ohanian calls them, and it is completely inappropriate to teach high-level math in middle school, and it is trickling down into the lower grades, and many if not MOST kids cannot handle it. But that's okay, because there are always special education teachers to pick up the slack, and the kids who are "failing" math are forever labeled as "failing" when in reality it is shitty, inappropriate curriculum that is being shoved down kids' throats.

Thirty or forty years ago one almost NEVER saw kids in special education (only those who would be labeled "life skills" students were found in self-contained classrooms--the TRUE special education students such as the "mentally retarded" and of course others severely disabled weren't in schools at all or were in institutions) and very few students got ANY remedial help in reading or in math, and yes, there have always been second-language learners in public schools, so that isn't the reason for the huge explosion of kids in special education, nor can poverty or divorce be blamed, either. No, what happened is trends in education "upped" the ante in requiring kids to go on college-track preparation in high school and the lower grades, thanks to the fraudulent Nation at Risk report and other reports pushed by anti-public school politicians saying this country was falling behind academically compared to other countries and many, many kids have fallen through the cracks as a result because they can't do the work. And then there was the whole language fad, promoted by Ken Goodman and others trying to put an inappropriate high school-style language arts pedagogy on elementary school students who need explicit, sequential language arts instruction. Inappropriate curriculum/pedagogy is the real reason so many kids are in special education today, and if there is any blame leveled at teachers, it should be that many of them aren't taught how to teach reading.

Now your child is an exception, but it is the exception which proves the rule. Hundreds of thousands of middle school kids can't handle abstract concepts like algebra. That is a fact. They aren't stupid, they aren't lazy, though standardistas would say they are, or they, like you, blame the teachers. These kids simply aren't cognitively ready to handle abstract concepts.

By the way, many, many intelligent adults can't do algebra, either.

[exboyfil]

14. The question becomes do you continue to drill

arithmetic when the child already has a firm grasp of it. I am not saying Algebra in 8th grade is for everyone, but given the potential downside of not doing it for otherwise excelling children, I would prefer to take a chance in 7th grade Pre Algebra. You still have another chance to run through the same material again in 8th grade by repeating Pre Algebra (which would have been the path in our school system anyway constantly spinning around the same subjects for 7th and 8th grade occasionally throwing minor concept variations into the mix along the way).

I agree with doing the traditional three year cycle (6th-8th grade culminating in Pre Algebra in 8th) for those weak in math, but my school system is far too selective with accessing Pre Algebra in 7th grade. It should be recognized that an important societal selection is happening in 7th grade. That particular decision could be worth $1,000s of dollars later down the line (decreased probability of merit scholarships, need to take additional math classes in college which slows progress in other classes and leads to later graduation, cost to take classes that could be done with AP as a HS Senior,etc).

Probably the ability to do Algebra/Trig/Calculus is one of the greatest class separators in our society. Probably not fair but engineers, scientists, and actuaries do better financially than most other majors, and science majors go on to medical school as well.

I do not consider those unable to do Algebra as unintelligent - they have their gifts like all other individuals. My younger daughter is not as good in math as her older sister, but she is good enough. Her skill set is verbal, but she aspires to medical school as well, and I will do everything in my power to enable her to reach that goal including pushing on Pre Algebra in 7th grade with her agreement. Getting any information from her teacher (the same one as my older daughter) has been difficult. I am doing my own prep program to ensure that my younger daughter has at least seen all the concepts which she will be tested on in the Pre Algebra Assessment Test.

Sometimes I get the feeling that the teachers are trying to hold back good students to reduce the performance spread.

[proud2BlibKansan]

10. Once again a non educator forgets about the Art teacher and the Music teacher and the counselor

and the nurse. And special ed. And ESL.

I guess they don't deserve tenure?