Putting On the Ritz – Grumpy Old Teacher

Putting On the Ritz – Grumpy Old Teacher

Putting On the Ritz

Forget Fred Astaire, imagine if you will, (oh, my, Grumpy Old Teacher–GOT–is mixing metaphors or at least pop culture references–apologies to Rod Serling) the face of Miguel Cardona, our newest, brightest, and shiniest U.S. Secretary of Education, or something like that on the face of the premier danseuse (that means the guy in front.) Testing must go on. So in school after school after school across the land, it’s time to put on the Ritz.

GOT googled the meaning of that phrase. It means to dress fashionably. Yes, that covers it. Time for testing and we are going to dress up poorly written, badly constructed, devoid of sound pedagogy tests in fancy clothes. We’re “putting on the Ritz!”

Time to threaten 8-year-old children that we will hold them back a year if they don’t score high enough on their reading test. We’re putting on the Ritz.

Time to threaten teachers with VAM scores that are more meaningless than CONTINUE READING: Putting On the Ritz – Grumpy Old Teacher

NYC Educator: Can We Agree on a Fair Evaluation System?

NYC Educator: Can We Agree on a Fair Evaluation System?

Can We Agree on a Fair Evaluation System?

That's a tough question. Our esteemed chancellor writes us missives telling us how much he respects and cares for us. Our safety is the most important thing there is. Yet you don't see him setting his foot in a school unless it's pre-screened and a whole lot cleaner than any I've seen over the last decade or two. 

If Regents exams are canceled, and if no student can fail, how exactly are we supposed to come to a fair evaluation system? We can't use Danielson. The participation in online classes, or in socially-distanced masked classes, is something altogether different from that which we've experienced over our careers.

I am big on classroom participation. I love when kids act spontaneously, and nothing makes me happier than seeing some kid get up an take a class over. However, I can't count on that happening, and my plans ensure we'll be doing something productive if it does not. I can't guarantee on any given day that kids will carry me to highly effective. (If you can, more power to you.)

Nonetheless, Danielson herself said that her rubric laid out an ideal, and wasn't intended as a rating system. Of course, that didn't stop her from taking a shit-ton of cash to allow it to be used that way anyway. In fact, it didn't stop her from writing some kind of online rubric too, hoping to cash in further. It's Spaceballs II, The Search for More Money. 

Let's say we finally agree on something, just for the sake of argument. Let me ask you this--how many times have CONTINUE READING: NYC Educator: Can We Agree on a Fair Evaluation System?

Laura Chapman: Can Teachers Be Measured by the Same Methods Used for Cows? | Diane Ravitch's blog

Laura Chapman: Can Teachers Be Measured by the Same Methods Used for Cows? | Diane Ravitch's blog

Laura Chapman: Can Teachers Be Measured by the Same Methods Used for Cows?

Our wonderful reader Laura Chapman reports here on the origins of the laws that purport to measure teacher quality by the test scores of their students. The founding father of this methodology was the late William Sanders, an agricultural statistician who believed that the same productivity used to measure cows could be used to measure teachers. His ideas were adopted and promoted by Arne Duncan’s Race to the Top, which required states to adopt “value-added methodology” if they wanted to compete for a share of billions of federal dollars. The Gates Foundation also embraced test-based accountability. These methods proved to be ineffective at measuring teacher quality; they are inaccurate and demoralizing.

According to a 2019 report coauthored by Audrey Amrein-Beardsley, 15 states are still inflicting teacher evaluations by VAM (value added measures) and 28 are using the equally invalid process of writing up Student Learning Objectives (SLOs). SLOs require you to predict the end-of-year (or end of unit) achievements of students, among CONTINUE READING: Laura Chapman: Can Teachers Be Measured by the Same Methods Used for Cows? | Diane Ravitch's blog