Logical, Vile Consequences
This Sunday, right after the (error-prone, unreliable, demoralizing, result-of-a-broken-promise) NYC teacher ratings came out, the vile *NY Post*published a hit piece on one of the "lowest rated" teachers in the city. I refuse to provide a link to this disgusting piece of filth, and I have no problem violating copyright laws and the normal ethics of blogging by reprinting the entire thing below (with the teacher's and parents' names removed): The city’s worst teacher has parents at her xxx school looking for a different classroom for their children. Xxx Xxx, a tenured $xx,xxx-a-year ... more »
Corporate Reformers' Motivations Explained!
Why do Bill Gates and Eli Broad and Michael Bloomberg and the Waltons and the Koch brothers and David Tepper and all the rest think they can come in and radically remake both American schools and the teaching profession to their liking? Here's one explanation: It wasn’t just the candy experiment, either. In a game where a computer rolled dice and any score above 12 got the user a $50 gift certificate, those making more than $250,000 were more likely to lie to researchers than those making less than $250,000. “A $50 prize is a measly sum to people who make $250,000 a year,” Berkeley... more »
Reformy Cory
Newark's mayor is one reformy dude: Newark Mayor Cory A. Booker said Monday that he backs Gov. Chris Christie’s education reform measures — including school choice and teacher tenure changes — but he is critical of the new plan for higher education. [...] In addition, Booker said he favors more educational choices for children, including charter schools, public schools run by nonprofits and school vouchers. But he said he was not giving up on traditional public schools, either. “I hold no allegiance to a school delivery model,” Booker said. “I really don’t care if you’re a charter sc... more »
Fool Me Twice...
When ACTING NJ Education Commissioner Chris Cerf worked in NYC, he swore that teacher evaluation data would NEVER be released to the public. Last week, it was. Now, he's making the same promises in New Jersey. How do you think this will turn out? Yesterday, acting education commissioner Chris Cerf tried to quell worries and said he would be against public disclosure of individual teachers' scores. "I don't believe in that," Cerf said in an interview last night. "It is counterproductive, and I believe it is not something we should put out. And especially putting that out in isolatio... more »
30 Pieces of Silver
It doesn't take a lot of money to sell out teachers: In the latest move to use money as an incentive, Gov. Chris Christie's administration has added to its new school funding plan a multimillion dollar program to reward schools and districts that meet specific goals and implement targeted reforms. Acting education commissioner Chris Cerf outlined the new "Innovation Fund" in last week's 83-page report on school funding, which serves as the basis of Christie's proposed system for distributing state aid to schools next year and beyond. Under Cerf's plan, the Innovation Fund would serve... more »
Poverty, Schmoverty
Childhood poverty bothers ACTING Education Commissioner Chris Cerf: he's worried the little waifs might be ripping him off: In New Jersey and across the nation, the number of students living in poverty is determined by how many of them qualify for free and reduced-price lunches, a federal program run by the Department of Agriculture. But the count is not just about the federally subsidized meals — schools with poor students in the lunch program receive up to 57 percent more state aid than their peers. Citing growing concerns with the program’s susceptibility to fraud and error, acti... more »
Who Has a Job For Life?
Not teachers; politicians: Success of congressional incumbents has become something of a half-funny joke recently. These are the figures for those Representatives who sought reelection in the 13 biennial national elections for 435 U.S. House seats from 1982 through 2006: *95.17%* of incumbents who sought reelection were successful. What's more, an average of 396 of the 435 incumbent seat holders sought another term, leaving only 39 "open seats" each biennium for new Members of Congress (Jacobson 2008, 28-29). You can see these effects graphically via thirty-thousand.org - Reelec... more »
The Coming Nightmare For Principals
When they start releasing teacher VAM scores in the 'burbs, watch out: Cheryl Champ, principal of Lakeland High School and leader of the northern Westchester/Putnam group, said she agreed with a column written this week by Microsoft founder Bill Gates in which he wrote that making ratings public would be “shaming poorly performing teachers.” “There is a lot of fear around the numbers becoming public,” she said. “It will open a can of worms with parents fighting over teachers with the highest scores. But if we have two classes to fill, we can’t put 60 kids in one teacher’s class.” A... more »
The Incoherent Arguments For Releasing Teacher Evaluations
The only argument I can see here for releasing the error-ridden ratings of NYC teachers seems to be: "Because the unions didn't want us to": UFT President Michael Mulgrew is furious, having failed first to avoid meaningful teacher evaluations and now to block the public release of those ratings. After using money taken from teachers’ salaries to pay lawyers to litigate in vain, he’s now using union funds to wage a media ad campaign attacking the city Department of Education and the rating system. Mulgrew screeches that the ratings are flawed, based on “bad tests, a flawed formula a... more »