The New York State Board of Regents will no longer require school districts to evaluate teachers, based upon State tests. Obviously, the 20% statewide opt out rate had greatly influenced the decision.
Moreover, the State gave the school districts the authority to use collective evaluations rather than an individual evaluation for the teachers.
How does that affect New York City teachers is still in question since the DOE has shown no inclination to change the teacher evaluation system. Moreover, will our union demand that Charlotte Danielson be eliminated and a fairer metric be used to evaluate teachers. Finally, will teachers be collectively evaluated since the State now allows it and most suburban school districts have already implemented it for this school year.
Will the NYC teacher evaluation system change enough to be appropriate for the majority of teachers? Only time will tell.
12 comments:
Hi Chaz. I hope the evaluations stay as is b/c basically every teacher is rated effective in most part due to the MOSL's for their schools which brings them up even if they are developing, considering if the school gets an effective on MOSL. Most do. At my school we have a vindictive admin but thanks to the MOSL we are all effective. I have personally been brought up from an overall rating of developing on my MOTP to an effective overall rating due to the current system so I hope it stays the same. I'm also enjoying my top pay in the low 120K's and with per session and summer school pushing me towards 140K it's simply an amazing place to be. Tenured teachers get observed informally for 15 minutes twice a year. I like this a lot. The one thing I really hate is the Monday/Tuesday after school meetings that for the life of me I can't figure out who agreed to this. Sitting there with the other teachers and wondering what this waste of time is really bothers me but since my salary is what it is, I just deal with it. My ATR friends are happy as well. 6 figure salaries to have no responsibility. One lady at my school helps collect phones. Actually she is doing a great job and has similar responsibilities to the school aides who make around $16 an hour but she makes over 120K. She's not complaining about our union. She told me she was going to retire but figured why would she at this salary and her TDA adding up. I understood perfectly when she said she would retire when they actually placed her in a school to literally teach. Oh well, there's plenty of questionable concerns but you have to just laugh b/c it could be worse, you could be working today on Yom Kippur. Always a pleasure Chaz. Oh I just checked my retro pay for the upcoming October 15th check. Bingo! Another year too? No complaints here.
The best is when LI schools go for a single test to throw in to the district teachers' evaluations. Our district uses the 11th Grade ELA exam. So, even if I don't know the kid and never taught the kid, his/her score counts as 50% of my evaluation. I teach math, BTW. Why not stop a random kid on the street in some other school district or city in NY, find out his ELA exam score - and apply it to my evaluation (since I haven't taught and don't even know that random kid either)? So stupid you couldn't make it up but I'd say the majority of LI schools use this method nowadays.
What do you mean by the phrase to "collectively evaluate" groups of teachers? How does that work in the suburbs? I have never heard of this.
I think our union demanded that Charlotte Danielson be used. And I think our union has insisted on using tests - but perhaps they have shifted? Someone should ask.
Anon 4:29
Read the Newsday article
The bigger question is when will the state completely repeal our current evaluation law and return 100% of evaluations to the local level. (Default S/U) THAT IS WHAT WE NEED!!!
Anonymous 3:15- as the only teacher in my school on a TIP because I was screwed over by the MOSL, I completely disagree. Everybody thinks the MOSL is great until they're f*$ked like I am now.
@3:15 hahaha well said everything is so true. For the art, PE and music teachers I thought the link to MOSL made no sense, but as long as my schools is effective its great.
Danielson is pretty fair, admin can find anyway to get someone if they despise them, most will use student's as informants anyways.
Still have no clue why our money was not accruing any interest in the last 10 years.
1. if the subject you teach ends in a regents, youre automatically tied to the students scores. Ex. math teach algebra, your tied to those results. They cant even select ela for you. its not an option.
2. art, pe and music. You can select English if your schools exam scores are good. Otherwise you can choose the new assessments designed specifically for you. You can give your students fall and spring benchmark exams in art and pe now. So you dont need to be tied to English if thats a problem.
3. your mosl committee can choose goal setting if that works better for you.
most people dont read the 80 page mosl handbook every year to seee all the options, or they dont understand how it all works.
4. dont worry, everything will keep changing as it has been every year for the past 8 years. So dont get to hung up on this year!
Yes, return to the old S/U system, because if an admin wants to get you, they have to do a LOT of legwork. With Danielson's they just circle a few boxes lower and you're on the trouble train.
Yes, and I find the S/U system was much more helpful. It was tailored to your lesson. The supervisor had to come in announced or unannounced and stay the entire period. They would then write up the lesson in narrative form unobjectively. Everything you did was written down. Then at the bottom you were given the strong points of your lesson and suggestions for last time. As an ATR last year, I had to be given one of these observations and I found it much more helpful in that it was specifically about me and not sentences copied and pasted from a rubric. Also, what they don't understand is that it was easier to give a teacher a U under this system than it is to get a teacher ineffective overall. If your MOSL is effective, the lowest you can get is developing.
I do agree the S/U was nice. The admin had to have sufficient evidence on you to be a U.
7 years ago my wife's principal changed her S to a U because she went to my school's graduation since she taught those seniors as well. Long story short, we thought the UFT would easssssillly win this case since the principal did not have evidence to make that dramatic change on the last day of school. Said wife was insubordinate because she didnt go and my wife had 15 absences the principal used against her even though she had medical notes for, but that was enough and THE UFT LOST HER CASE AND SHE HAD A U!
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