Plan B Forum

Students can’t pass tests, but teachers are ‘A’ OK

By Aaron Short and Carl Campanile

December 17, 2014 | 1:55am

This does not compute.

More than 90 percent of the city’s public school teachers were rated as successful instructors ­under a new and supposedly more rigorous evaluation system mandated by the state, it was reported Tuesday.

But the sky-high scores released by the state Education Department came as two-thirds of elementary and middle-school students taught by the same instructors flunked standardized math and English exams last year.

Perplexed parents accused educrats of grade inflation for teachers and claimed the results lacked credibility considering the number of students failing to meet academic standards.

“New York state’s teacher-evaluation law is a joke,” said Mona ­Davids, head of the NYC Parents Union, who has filed suit to overhaul the state’s tenure law.

“Teachers are great, it’s the kids that are just not educable, right?! Outrageous.”

Under the first mandated ratings for city teachers, 82.5 percent were graded as effective and 9.2 percent were rated highly effective under criteria set by the state.

Another 7 percent were rated as “developing,” meaning they needed to improve, and only 1.2 percent were considered ineffective, or failures.

Students, meanwhile, were struggling — only 34.5 percent passed the Common Core math exam and 28.4 percent the English Language Arts test last year.

Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch admitted the chasm between the teachers’ grades and the students’ doesn’t make sense.

“The ratings show there’s much more work to do to strengthen the evaluation system,” Tisch said.

“There’s a real contrast between how our students are performing and how their teachers and principals are evaluated.”

Hard as it is to believe, New York City’s ratings were actually more rigorous than the rest of the state.
More than 58 percent of teachers outside the five boroughs were rated “highly effective.”

Advocates noted that Gov. Cuomo and state Education Commissioner John King imposed a more rigorous system on the city after the teachers union failed to reach an agreement on evaluations with the prior Bloomberg administration.

Jenny Sedlis, director of StudentsFirstNY, said it was “absurd” that so many teachers statewide were rated highly effective.

The new, four-level evaluation replaces the old system that rated instructors as either “satisfactory” or “unsatisfactory.”

Under the revised system, classroom observations account for 60 percent of evaluations, results on state standardized exams account for 20 percent and local assessments account for 20 percent.

United Federation of Teachers President Mike Mulgrew called the new rating system “a step in the right direction.”

By BigRR
I presume a rating of "effective" or "highly effective" are not related to student's performance on standardized tests?

classroom observations account for 60 percent of evaluations, results on state standardized exams account for 20 percent and local assessments account for 20 percent.

United Federation of Teachers President Mike Mulgrew called the new rating system “a step in the right direction.”

oldr_n_wsr wrote:

“Teachers are great, it’s the kids that are just not educable, right?! Outrageous.”

Thoughts?

Big RR wrote: Personally, I'd do away with the standardized tests and rely more on the assessments of students progress by trained educators, but that's just not politically correct right now.

Guinevere wrote:So do we now want teachers to just teach to the tests? Or do we no longer care about an actual education??

My godson attends the "best" public school in Chicago (application only). His parents are less than thrilled about the education he is receiving because the focus is far too heavily weighted on keeping their "best scores in the state" ranking, and less about "education."

No thank you.

So do we now want teachers to just teach to the tests?

oldr_n_wsr wrote:

So do we now want teachers to just teach to the tests?

Teachers in my district have been complaining about that for the last few years as CC has inflitrated.
There must be some way to balance the need to evaluate (testing etc) and the need to really teach (not just to the test).
I don't have a solution. Seem I got a pretty good education without CC, but times were different 40-50 years ago.

The increase in testing began with "No child left behind", not CC. But people had been pushing for it before then as well.

Gob wrote:

oldr_n_wsr wrote:

“Teachers are great, it’s the kids that are just not educable, right?! Outrageous.”

Thoughts?

Totally agree for some UK and Aussie students. Kids these days are taught they have "rights", and that teachers have no power to discipline them. Kids who do not want to participate in class cannot be made to.