NYC teachers...start praying now to get good students who test well.

madfloridian

(1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore

Sat Nov-28-09 11:52 PM
Original message

NYC teachers...start praying now to get good students who test well.

Because effectively immediately Michael Bloomberg is declaring that students' test scores will be used to grade your effectiveness. He will effective at once tie your tenure to those scores. Doesn't matter what the union says or does...most of them have caved already.

This is union busting, plain and simple. It is being done by Democrats.

Bloomberg is in control of your schools, and what he says...goes.

Bloomberg says teacher tenure will at once be tied to test scores

While in Washington D.C. yesterday, Mayor Bloomberg said the city will start to use students' test scores when evaluating teacher tenure. The NY Times called the proposal one "that has been bitterly opposed by the teachers� union and criticized as putting too much weight on standardized exams."

Bloomberg, who was appearing alongside U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, pointed out, "You can evaluate teachers on any criteria you want, just not on student achievement data. That's like saying to hospitals: 'You can evaluate heart surgeons on any criteria you want - just not patient survival rates!'"

The Mayor also said the State Legislature should permit teacher layoffs based on performance, �The only thing worse than having to lay off teachers would be laying off great teachers instead of failing teachers. With a transparent new evaluation system, principals would have the ability to make layoffs based on merit � but only if the State Legislature gives us the authority to do it.� However, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver told the Times he wasn't touching that hot potato, "These are all contractual issues that should be dealt with at the bargaining table."

Wow. He and Arne just completely changed the way NYC schools operate...almost overnight. They do have the power to do that.

Please don't tell me that good and experienced teachers will not be fired. Don't insult my intelligence. Some of the best teachers take on OR or given the most difficult classes. Their students won't reach those high scores. It won't be bad teachers who go. It will more likely be teachers at the high end of the pay scale...you know I am right.

It will likely be teachers who have the most challenging classes, teachers who work the hardest.

Here's a little bit more on the topic...including some teachers' views. Oh by the way those "reserve" teachers they mention were most likely teachers laid off from schools that closed because their students did not score well on tests that do not stick to what is on the curriculum. They are often good, experienced teachers who just were not teaching at the "right" schools, the "good" schools....

Teachers interviewed on Wednesday about the plan were universal in their condemnation. �It�s ridiculous,� said Kanayo Al-Broderick, a third-grade teacher at Public School 56 in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, who is in her 22nd year of teaching. �It just means they did well on this test. Does it show we�ve built them to be lifelong readers, to love reading? That�s what all teachers want.�

Education officials said they had no details on just how scores would be used for tenure decisions. Many teachers have no scores to go by: Only children in grades three through eight take the annual English and math state standardized tests, and high school students take Regents exams only in certain subjects.

The mayor also called on legislators to make it easier to fire bad teachers and teachers whose jobs have been cut but who are guaranteed their salaries even if they cannot find a new job in the system. The city is now paying more than $100 million for these so-called reserve teachers, many of whom lost their positions because their schools were closed for poor performance. Mr. Bloomberg said that the state should place a one-year limit of teachers in the reserve pool, something he could also press for in the contract.

Bloomberg ties tenure to test scores

Those "reserve" teachers in effect have already been stripped of tenure, and now if Bloomberg gets his way on this.....there will be none at all unless it is tied to those everloving test scores that are so dear to Arne's heart.

By using the test as the ultimate teacher grader, these so-called leaders are selling out the students. Kids are not little robots that fit well into a test made by private companies that have no oversight. Tests that no one sees until it is administered. Tests that are scored without anyone being privy to the secrets of the scoring. There have many errors in Florida test scoring, but it took a legal effort to find out about it. Only brave parents took it on, most could not afford to do so.

I feel for the teachers in NYC. They will have differing views on this testing and merit pay and union busting according to where they teach.

Merit pay from two points of view

One of these schools

One teacher was in a school in a deprived neighborhood. The principal was not a very good one. The county knew that, but they put their less capable administrators in the schools whose parents would not be too critical. The parents cared deeply about their children and wanted a good education for their children.

But these parents lacked the money and community standing to be demanding of a principal. No one listened to them that much except the devoted teachers. Many did not speak good English, some spoke almost none. In the fancier schools there were people to help translate and aid communication. The poorer school had little access to specialists.

This school had much of the supply money shifted from it to a charter school, or a magnet school, or a school of choice. This school had old worn out text books. Yet when the students did not "produce" in the charter, magnet, choice schools.....they were sent back to the deprived school.

I taught at that school.

My class was so busy with just getting by in life, coping with so many other things...that there was little teachable time left. It was not their brains or capabilities....it was the utter despair some felt.

My neighbor's school was quite different.

My neighbor in contrast had the children of people who had the finances to provide what was needed. Children of doctors and professors who knew better than to send their kids to a school like ours.
They had access to home computers, tutors, anything they needed. The teacher only had to ask, and specialists appeared magically.

Needless to say my class that year did not score well on the state or national testing. It was not their abilities, it was not my teaching skills. It was trying to teach with constant disruptions, no help, and parents who were usually not willing to help at home. I did all the right things to teach them, but too many things got in the way.

My neighbor's class aced the FCAT and national tests.

Under the merit system Duncan and Obama are proposing, she would get a raise....and I would not have.

I taught human beings with hearts and souls and good minds, but life got in the way. I worked twice as hard as my neighbor, but it did not matter that year.

Despite the poverty in our school, most years we scored decently. We scored well enough to get by in spite of it all.

Yet, my class that year I mentioned above simply could not have done it. It was not them or me, it was just the way it was.

What if that year had been the year that our area decided that the students' test scores decided if I went or stayed?

Bloomberg and Arne just took over those schools, and they are undermining what the unions have done for years.

They are undermining good teachers, and they are harming students. You can not base your education goals on just one test. It is ludicrous, but it is mostly just sad.