NYC Educator: Measures of Student Learning

NYC Educator: Measures of Student Learning:

Measures of Student Learning

As per Reformy John King's mandated junk science plan, a committee in my school needs to determine which local measures we will use to determine 20% of teacher ratings. I was not able to attend the first few meetings, but I'm informed that measures will include comparisons of how students performed on last year's Regents exams with this year's Regents exams. There are also measures like comparing Regents exams to AP exams.

Music teachers will be judged on Social Studies exams, I'm told. Every single example I was given makes no sense at all. How on earth can, for example, you compare a student's progress on two distinct courses and determine anything whatsoever? Yet these, I'm told, are growth measures.

I went to the DA the day we were to vote on the NYC junk science plan. Mulgrew told us that growth measures were reasonable. In any class, he said, you ought to be able to move kids from point A, wherever they began, to point B, someplace that showed some progress. While I've seen no research to that effect, and while there are certainly factors outside my control that would impede or prevent it, I'm willing to entertain such notions. For one thing, I have no choice. Under the law negotiated by the UFT, Reformy John may do whatever he wishes.

However, the measures I've heard about do not even meet that standard. They measure how students did in other subjects with how they do in mine. That's absurd on its face.

My colleagues who've gone to these meetings report that it was a matter of trying to choose the least awful of a