Bloomberg Supports Gun Owners While Bashing Teachers

Bloomberg is one of the leading advocates for gun reform in this country. In fact, this is about the only thing on which I agree with the little emperor. We do need ways of keeping track of who owns an AK 47 and who's out there buying enough ammunition to wipe out a small town (or a school).

So you would think Mayor4Life would support the idea of publishing the names of gun owners in the papers. After all, this is public information that can be obtained legally elsewhere, so why would gun owners object? But when asked, he said, "My instincts would be no..."

Really? Suddenly this mayor is against publishing information in the papers? He certainly wasn't against it when it came to trying to publicly humiliate teachers by publishing flawed Teacher Data Report scores in the papers, even though his hand picked chancellor promised in writing that he would publicly fight against the release of the data, even if it meant going to court to support teacher privacy.

Of course, that didn't actually happen. What did happen was that the TDRs were FOILed, and the city actually pushed for the data to be released, even though they had promised not to allow it and even though they knew the data was horribly inaccurate.

And this mayor is so intent on making sure teacher data gets published in the papers that he is willing to walk away from the $250 million the city would get from a new evaluation agreement because he wouldn't be able to "hold teachers' feet to the fire".

So why not publish the names of registered gun users, Mr. Mayor? You certainly never promised the NRA that you'd never do so.

It can't be because the data would be inaccurate. I'm sure gun permit records are quite accurate in NY. Even if the data was wildly inaccurate, the mayor should object, since he supported the release of TDRs that varied more than 90% in a year.

Could it really be that Bloomberg hates teachers so much that he'd rather defend people building personal arsenals that could wipe out a school or a theater full of people in minutes?

I think it could.

Another Loss for the UFT and Teachers

Before the ink is even dry on the bill, the UFT is going out of its way to frame today's teacher evaluation disclosure agreement as a win. It is nothing of the sort. It is a total loss.

Let's remember how this all happened. The UFT agreed to a "pilot" program to evaluate teachers solely on test scores, with the stipulation that these rankings would not be released. Joel Klein promised to fight against the release of these scores should they be FOILed. They were, and he didn't. Simply put, he lied to teachers yet again, and actually fought for the scores to be released to the papers, which they eventually were.

And what did the UFT gain from giving this to the DOE? A new contract? The same 4% raise that was given to other unions without having evaluations made public? No, all they got was a lot of teachers' names in the papers, and a lot of humiliation for a lot of people.

Remember, no other union has their evaluations published. Now, we will. The UFT will claim that only parents will get to see this info, but there is nothing to stop parents from sharing and publishing this information themselves. This will lead to more teachers being vilified due to faulty evaluations with a margin of error of more than 80%.

The UFT should have pitched it thusly: We played ball once, and we got crucified when the TDRs got published, so we are NOT going to allow it to happen again. Teachers will agree to allow our evaluations to be made available to parents as soon as police evaluations are made public to all citizens in a precinct--in fact, as soon as ALL evaluations are made public, including the mayor, governor, and all of their staff.

Instead, our union has once again agreed to allow its members to be humiliated and targeted. Again, no other union has its evaluations made public in this way. Only the UFT could suffer a loss that no other union has, and still tell its members that it scored a victory.

Teachers Are Not Numbers

The other day, a student I had never seen before stopped me on the street as I walked to my car.

"Hey, I know you," she said. "You're Mr....uhm...Mr..."

"Mr. Talk," I prompted.

"Oh yeah," she said, with a look on her face that said she wasn't entirely convinced of my identity. "I saw you in the papers."

As you can imagine, I was a little taken aback. Had she confused me with some criminal whose mug shot resembled me? "In what paper?"

"The Times," she replied. "You're a 98*."

"Excuse me?"

"You're a 98. You know, that's what you scored."

The fog cleared away. She was referring to my Teacher Data Report (TDR) score.

"You must be a great teacher," she said, smiling.

I thought about offering a rebuttal--of saying that TDR scores are meaningless and that in the previous year I had scored at the bottom. But I knew it wouldn't make any difference. "Thanks."

This student--whom I'd never met before and who didn't even know my name--knew my TDR score. By that number alone, she made a snap judgment about who I was and how I did my job.

I wonder how the conversation would have gone had it taken place a year earlier. Would she have approached me to say "You're an 8*. You must stink"?

There's still talk going around about whether teacher evaluations should be made public, available to parents only, or part of a teacher's personal record that is not shared with anyone. I've always fallen into the third camp because I do not believe that student scores are any kind of indication of teacher quality.

I am even more firmly in the third camp after that conversation. If that one girl knew me by my score, how many other children and parents make the same hasty judgment based upon a number with a huge margin of error?

If turning teachers into numbers is such a great thing, why not do it with the children, too? Students could wear a 1, 2, 3, or 4 depending on how they scored on their exams. Heck, we could make parents wear those numbers when they came in for parent teacher conferences, as well. Maybe we could get Bloomberg and Walcott involved--they could wear their approval rating numbers whenever they visited schools.

Of course, such public shaming is reserved only for teachers in this city. If you are a teacher, you are a number. Unless the powers that be in Albany see the light.


*not my real numbers, although they are close. The numbers have been changed to protect the innocent (namely me).

Bloomberg's Impeccable Logic

The New York Post gives Mayor4Life Bloomberg an A for his logic on teacher evaluations. You see, Mike is concerned that if teacher privacy is preserved to even a small extent, as in giving the information only to parents, that it will result in harm to teachers. “It would lead to just chaos — and it would be very bad for our teachers," said Bloomie, who is world-renowned for his deep concern for educators.


You see, he's afraid that by giving teacher evaluations to parents, the information might be collected on some rogue website put together by some vindictive parents. And if that happens, says Mike, "the information it presents would be unreliable — and possibly misleading."

Of course, one might argue that this is a reason for the parents not to get the data at all.

I see what's happened here. While I fully believe Mike when he shows his compassion for teachers, there may be something else at play here. You see, what Mayor4Life is truly afraid of is that parents might be trying to infringe on some of his territory.

If there is any harm to be done to teachers, Mike would like to do it himself. He practically has a patent on harming teachers. How dare rogue parents even think about taking some of that action? And when it comes to unreliable and misleading information, who does it better than Uncle Mike? He managed to pay millions for a TDR system that has an 87% margin of error. Who do parents think they are--potentially posting even more misleading data for free?

You can understand why Mike is steamed. He has worked damn hard to harm teachers, and he's not going to let parents take over his turf.

A Lesson in Irony

Recently, Mayor4Life Bloomberg insisted that Teacher Data Reports, which have a margin of error of 87%, be released and published in the papers because the public has a right to know. Never mind that such inaccurate data would publicly shame good teachers, or that slimy news outlets like the Post would choose to highlight and vilify individual teachers as being the worst in the city (unjustly, of course).

The public's right to know, however, apparently does not extend to the shenanigans of the mayor himself. Following the CityTime debacle which cost the city $700 million dollars more than projected for a system that still doesn't work the way it was supposed to, we now have the 911 scandal. If you're unaware of that one, the city contracted for a new 911 system at a cost of 1.3 billion dollars. The system has now cost 2 billion dollars, or 800 million more than projected. And a scathing preliminary report alleges that the city's response time has actually worsened since the system was implemented.

Bloomberg has refused to release that report, and you'll never guess why.

He claims it is inaccurate.


Here's what he said: “You can’t take a working paper where no one’s really checked the facts and just put it out,” the mayor contended on his WOR Radio show. “Because all of a sudden, everybody believes that’s the truth."

There are a lot of NYers who believe the TDRs are the truth, as well, but that didn't seem to bother the mayor. Putting data out there only seems to bother him when it's preliminary--not, as you would think, when it is totally inaccurate. Or maybe it bothers him because it shows that he is a crummy mayor. The CityTime and 911 scandals have cost the taxpayers of this city a total of 1.5 BILLION dollars in cost overruns. That's chump change to a man who has 20 billion socked away, but it's real money to the rest of us.

If that report, which the mayor may have to release on Monday when a judge will rule on it, shows that response times have actually slowed, it will mean that the entire two billion dollars spent on this system has been an utter waste. Added to CityTime, that would mean close to three billion dollars that this mayor has flushed down the toilet on these two projects alone. God only knows how much else he has squandered.

And let's not forget that this is the mayor who used his vast wealth to buy himself an illegal third term, despite the voters having twice opposed an end to term limits, allegedly because the city was in a financial mess and we needed his wise stewardship to keep our fiscal house in order.

The only consolation we may end up with is that this mayor may well be remembered as one of the worst in the city's history, despite his efforts to hide his incompetence.

David Padarathski--Backstabber of the Year

In a school system as big as NYC's, it is a daunting task to figure out who is the biggest douche, especially now that Cathie Black is gone. Bloomberg, of course, remains a perennial favorite, and his pet chancellor, Dennis Walcott, is right behind. A number of the Asshats4Education, including Evan Stone, Sydney Morris, and Ruben Brosbe rank right up there, as well. What these folks have in common, however, is that they all have either left or never participated in education, and have chosen instead to use their public platforms to denigrate the teaching profession.

More heinous than these douches, IMO, is the backstabber. This is the teacher who is actively engaged in teaching and yet publicly skewers his peers. Ruben was the biggest backstabber until he fled teaching when he realized it was hard and he would once again be denied tenure. But Ruben is small potatoes compared to the new champion turncoat, David Padarathski.

In today's Daily News, Mr. Padarathski thrusts his dagger into already distressed teachers and twists. You see, this turncoat extraordinaire scored high on the TDRs that were recently released, and decided to talk with the Daily News about it. Instead of being humble, or pointing out that the ratings have a margin of error as high as 87 points, or crediting all the teachers who came before him with helping bring his students along, Padarathski seized the opportunity to besmirch his fellow teachers:

“I teach with passion and I love my kids,” said Padarathski, who has taught in city schools for 24 years. “Those who are skeptical [of the ratings\] — maybe they have something to hide,” he added. “I think they are not working to their fullest potential.

You see, if you don't get scores like Mr. Padarathski, you obviously don't teach with passion, and you hate your kids.You also aren't working very hard.

I hope Mr. Padarathski's peers at PS 289 shun this pariah for his self-serving, loathsome behavior. I doubt a person like him has many friends, but if he does, I hope they spit on his shoes tomorrow. On second thought, perhaps not, as he would probably just shine them and admire his flawless reflection.

On a bright note, another teacher who scored high, one Rebecca Victoros of PS 122 chose a different path. When asked about the TDRs, she said:


“There is so much involved in the job that I can’t see one measure deciding whether you are a good teacher,” said Victoros. “Someone could get a zero and still be a fantastic teacher. I’m sad for those teachers.”

Thank you, Ms. Victoros, for showing class and respect for your colleagues. David Padarathski could learn a lot from you.


 

TDRs, Part Two

If you thought the release of two year old TDR data today was bad, just wait for the sequel.

The new teacher evaluation deal struck last week will rate teachers ineffective, developing, effective, or highly effective. While the UFT and DOE have yet to iron out all the details about how and when the deal will take effect in the city, you can bet on one thing: these ratings will be used to further humiliate teachers. Imagine your name in all the daily newspapers, with the word "ineffective" next to it.

If you're thinking "No problem. I'm a good teacher. There's no way I'll be rated ineffective", then think again. The UFT has already agreed to a cut score of 65 to be rated ineffective, and it's all too easy to get below that number.

Leo Casey, apologist for the UFT's failed negotiations for as long as I can remember, makes the case that good teachers will get most or all of the 60 points that are allotted for classroom observations. This is nonsense. Remember that the test scores will come out well after most of the rest of the evaluations have been completed. As such, principals have a stake in fudging those numbers even for the best teachers. Imagine giving a teacher a full 60 points, and then finding out later in the year that the teacher's test scores only netted 5 points out of 40. You might think that teacher would be given a passing score of "developing" for getting a 65, but in truth the teacher would be rated "ineffective" because "Teachers rated ineffective on student performance based on objective assessments must be rated ineffective overall." Your principal is not going to want to explain to his superiors why he gave you a perfect score on evaluations when your students scored poorly.

A much more likely scenario is that principals will fudge the numbers, giving even their best teachers a score of, let's say, 45 to allow for improvement and recommendations. If that's the case, you would need to score 20 out of 40 on the test score portion of the evaluation--in other words, a good teacher with excellent evaluations would need to score in the top HALF in order to avoid being rated ineffective.

Of course, if you are not a favorite of the principal, you might get a 30 out of 60 on observations, in which case you would need 35 of 40 points on test scores to avoid being rated ineffective.

As you can see, it will be pretty easy to be rated ineffective under the current system. And that is the point. If Bloomberg can rate 10-20% of teachers ineffective, he can do several things:

• Fire senior teachers, like he's always wanted to.
• Push for and like get a merit pay system, like he's always wanted.
• Make sure that no one entering the system will ever get a pension again (who will be able to go 30 years without being targeted?)
• And most importantly, he can shift the blame for his failed tenure as the "education mayor".

That blame, of course, will fall entirely on YOU, dear teacher. You are the one whose name (and perhaps picture, if the Post can get hold of it) will be besmirched, while Bloomberg claims credit for having run laggards like you out of the system.

And when that happens, remember who sold this piece of shit to you: Leo Casey. The man who also sold you 37.5 minutes. The man who told you it was a good thing that teachers could no longer grieve letters to the file. The man who told you how wonderful it would be now that we have eliminated seniority transfers and you could get a job through the "Open" Market. The man who sold you the entire 2005 contract that eviscerated our rights now wants to sell you the new teacher evaluation system.

This is the man selling you TDRs, Part Two.

I'm not buying it. I hope you don't, either.

TDRs To Be Released Friday

EDIT: TDRs will be released Friday, not today, as previously reported.

The only question about today's release of Teacher Data Reports for 12,500 teachers is: Who will get the data out first? While the teacher-bashing Post would seem a good bet, New York Times Schoolbook seems to be straining at the leash, with up-to-the-minute coverage and even a place where teachers can add comments to their numbers.

I'm sending kudos out to GothamSchools, which, as far as I can tell, is the only news outlet refusing to release the data. That's merely a gesture, of course, because the data will be plastered everywhere. Nevertheless, I thank them for their journalistic integrity in this matter for refusing to join the teacher shaming parade.

In a real twist, even Bill Gates came out in favor of teachers today, with an op-ed in the Times calling for the city to use whatever data they have to help teachers rather than publicly humiliate us in the papers. How bad have things gotten when Bill Gates is the person defending teachers?

I've already discussed my numbers and the reasons I believe they are garbage, so I won't go into that here. But I would like to send a word out to my colleagues:

Don't get obsessed with your numbers. You know how hard you work. And only you know the challenges that your particular population of students presented to you. If you know that you're doing your best for your kids, that's what should matter. Don't let the bullies at Tweed define you. Teaching is an incredibly challenging and complex profession, and most of us in this city are doing wonders every day under far less than ideal circumstances with minimal support. Bloomberg wouldn't last a day in your classroom, nor would most of those people who bash us on a regular basis.

Be proud. Your reward is in the faces of your students when they comprehend something for the first time. Nothing in your TDR can offset that.

Teacher Data Reports to be Released

Bloomberg finally got his way. Teacher Data Reports (TDRs) will, apparently, be released, according to NY1. Let the public shaming of teachers begin.

Now that teachers will be rated from ineffective to highly effective, you can bet those rankings will become public, as well.

It seems the court ruled that despite the fact that the data sucked, it was nevertheless public information.

The only bright spot to come out of this is that we might get to actually see some of the data on our favorite teacher bashers, like Ruben Brosbe, Sydney Morris, and Evan Stone.

Promises, Promises

Just got a nice invite from the DOE to participate in a survey about my school. It sounds great. The purpose of the survey is to "..inform recommendations to school and administrative leaders – at NYCDOE and across the country – on how to attract and keep great teachers for schools serving low-income students."


Awesome! Sign me up!


But wait. I had a deja vu moment as I read the email. It said: The surveys will be voluntary and confidential. No individual schools, staff or teachers will be personally identifiable in any future reports or publications, and individual responses will not be shared with anyone from NYCDOE. All data will be reported in the aggregate.


Now, where have I heard that before? Oh yes. That's the same bullshit that they told us when they asked us to participate in Teacher Data Reports.  If you recall. none of that data was ever going to be shared. The DOE promised us it would remain confidential. They promised that they would actively resist any attempt to use that data in any way and fight against its release.


Oops. Turns out they were just joshing us. What they really meant to say was that they would try to release that supposedly confidential information at the first possible opportunity. The UFT is still in court trying to make the DOE keep its promise. As of right now, the UFT is losing that battle.


If you look at the survey, there are so many personal questions that it would relatively easy for someone to figure out who took it. They ask you things such as subject, years teaching, years in the district, years in your school, etc. They also ask you how happy you are with your school's leadership by asking a whole host of questions. I bet your principals and APs would love to read that.


Oh, but they can't. Because the surveys are confidential. It's even in bold print! Just because the DOE screwed 80,000 teachers once by reneging on a confidentiality agreement doesn't mean they'll do it again, does it?


I wouldn't bet my career on it.
 

The Value Added Lie

Maybe some math teacher can help me here. I'm trying to understand the numbers behind the controversial Teacher Data Reports issued to NYC teachers. These TDRs rank English and Math teachers in the 4th through 8th grades by assigning a percentile based upon the alleged "value" the teacher added to his or her students scores. This number is increasingly important as Governor Cuomo pressures the UFT to accept these value-added scores as 40% of a teacher's evaluation.

Indefatigable blogger Reality-Based Educator often pegs the margin of error of these numbers at 12-35%, while the UFT "...claims the average margin of error is plus or minus 27 points, or a spread of 54 points". Even the sample TDR the DOE provides shows a MOE of +/- 25 points (although, in typical DOE doublespeak, the report calls it a "range" and not a margin of error).

Now, if any of these numbers is correct, or anywhere near correct, it's clear that these numbers are garbage. The sample DOE report shows a teacher with a 50 percentile rank, who may be as low as about 22% to as high as 72%.

I'm no statistician, but I am a baseball fan, so I can understand and explain why these numbers stink. A baseball team ranked at the 50 percentile would be perfectly average. But a team that won 22% of its games would be the worst team in major league history, while the team with a winning percentage of 72 would be the greatest team of all time. Baseball fans, who tend to eat up crazy stats, would spit on value-added because it doesn't mean anything.

I understand that the "margin of error" is meant to show the range into which a teacher may fall in a given year. But I would argue that that number is even more meaningless than it appears when we look at multiple years. I'll use myself as an example. Two years ago, my TDR placed me at the very bottom of the pile, with a single digit score. According to the report, the highest score I could have attained given the margin of error was a 33. Yet this year, I scored at the very top, and the lowest score I could have attained according to the report is an 83.

So, according to these reports, even given the margin of error, there was a 50 point difference between the best teacher I could have been one year, and the worst teacher I could have been the next year.

That is 50 points beyond the margin of error.

Some math maven will likely point out that this result is over two years, and the value-added score only measures one year, but I really don't see how that matters.

I am the same teacher, in the same school, teaching the same subject to the same grade, using the same curriculum and lessons, and my score changed almost 90 percentage points.

Perhaps my results are extreme, but they happened. I've spoken to many teachers who've had drops or spikes nearly as large. To me, that means that just about anyone can find himself in danger hitting the bottom and becoming a target of administrators.

If any math teachers care to explain where my analysis went wrong, I'd like to hear. Or perhaps I'm right, and the value-added numbers just don't add up to much.

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Improve your TDR in Three Easy Steps!

I always try to learn something from even the most trying situations. For example, I recently had a root canal, which I generally find to be rather painful. So this time, as the dentist dug in elbow-deep, I tried a meditation technique. I stared intently at a crack in the ceiling while visualizing soothing waves washing over a serene white beach. It still hurt like a bitch, but at least now I know that meditation is of little value when a large man is shoving pointy metallic instruments into your gums. Next time, I bring whiskey.

Today, as I settled into day two of my five day sentence in ELA grading hell, I focused my mind on learning something from the experience. I don't often focus my mind without something breaking loose, and it did today. I discovered three sure fire ways to make sure your kids ace the exam and boost your TDR scores. Here they are:

1. Make sure your class is NOT graded on day one. Break into the scorer's room, if you have to. You see, all scorers are trained for hours, using model answers that no actual child would write. When the real exams come out, teachers scrutinize each answer with great care, picking everything apart with a critical eye. If the answer did NOT appear on one of the training examples, it gets down graded. By day two, scorers no longer care what the answers are. If they seem vaguely correct, they are awarded points. TRUE FACT: After telling us all day yesterday that a particular answer was unacceptable, the people running the show decided that the answer was acceptable after all. Of course, we could not go back and give credit to all the students who had given the answer yesterday, so only those tests scored today will get the benefit. So, after all your hard work preparing your students with the utmost care, you may end up jobless and homeless, subsisting on nothing but discarded pizza crusts, when your TDR plummets just because it was graded on day one. You've been warned.

2. Next year, make sure that your students know that spelling, grammar, and punctuation do not count on the reading exam--they only count on the writing exam. For example, if the question asks "How did Johnny feel when his sister dropped the anvil on his foot?", a response like "jonee feldded terrybull wen da Anville wuz droppted on hiz fout" gets full credit. This is not a joke.

3. Learn about noise. "Noise" is the new buzzword in ELA scoring. Simply put, it means that scorers should search for the right answer, and if it is anywhere in the response, that makes the entire answer correct, because all the rest is considered "noise". So, using our example of poor Johnny above, if the student answers "Johnny felt good wonderful spiritual proud brave silly selfish foolish ignorant bad", the answer would be correct because the student threw the word "bad" in there, which makes the entire answer correct. All the other choices were noise. What we now call "noise" is what we used to call "wrong". So make sure your students write as many words as possible, as one of them may turn out to be correct.

Imagine if they did this in math. If they asked "What is 2+2?" a student could answer " 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, tuna fish" and be correct because the answer contained a 4.

I hope this helps lessen your test taking anxiety. Next year, when you are teaching test prep and a child in your class stares at a crack in the ceiling, resist the temptation to clock said child across the cranium with a blunt object. Just relax, take a deep breath, and work on those three steps I've told you. Jabbing the child in the gums with something pointy is optional.

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Ruben Sandwich, Hold the Beef

Ruben Brosbe, highly qualified columnist for Gotham Schools, has been strangely silent these past few days since the release of the Teacher Data Reports (TDRs). I say strangely, because he was the one who informed us that he was below average when compared to first year teachers when he began his career, and that he was a low average when compared to second year teachers the following year. In fact, so insistent was he that the numbers be public that he penned an opinion piece for the NY Post in which he argued for the release of the data to newspapers.

So my question, Ruben, is this: Where's the beef?

I've basically released my own data, so I think I am entitled ask Ruben for his, especially as he wants to make everyone else's number public, despite the written pledge from the DOE that the number would only be used internally.

Ruben believes in data. If data had an orifice, Ruben would be out buying lube. He and his Asshat4Education cronies believe that these reports should be a huge factor in determining layoffs and tenure. Ruben is up for tenure this year, so his score should be very interesting. Will he get tenure no matter what, due to his olfactory buggery up the DOE's anus?

When you post the numbers, make sure you tell the truth, Ruben, because we'll almost certainly be able to fact check in the newspapers soon. No sense waiting until you are outed, like you were when your membership in Asshats was uncovered by Bronx Teacher.

Maybe I'm being harsh. Maybe Ruben just forgot to post his numbers. I'm going to drop him a little reminder at his latest post on GothamSchools. I'd encourage all of you to do the same. Just go here and leave a comment.

C'mon, Ruben. Show us that you're more than a couple of empty slices of damp bread.


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Ruben Brosbe, The Face of Asshats4Educators

Asshats everywhere rejoice! Ruben Brosbe has come to lead you!

Yes, just when you thought there were no more ed deform toads left to crawl out of the woodwork, out slithers Ruben, ass backwards, to lead us to new heights of idiocy.

In case you don't know Ruben, he is the newbie teacher who, despite his limited teaching experience and writing skills, has managed to get himself a platform on GothamSchools. Not only that, he managed to stick a knife in the back of his colleagues by writing a column for the completely unbiased New York Post in which he advocates releasing the Teacher Data Reports based on flawed test scores and an unscientific value added metric. Ruben was even kind enough to tell us that his score sucked, but he's willing to work hard to make it better, unlike those nasty senior teachers who only come into the schools for all the neat office supplies.

The problem is, Ruben may not get a chance to improve. His score sucked, even though he was judged against other newbies on his TDR, and not against the senior teachers he rails against. And today, "Chancellor" Cathie Black stated that she wanted to end "last in, first out" seniority rules and lay off teachers based on merit. Poor Ruben! With his awful scores and his lack of seniority, he may soon find himself out of a job. And that would be a shame, because he's willing to try to be better!

I guess that's why Ruben joined "Educators"4"Excellence", a group led by a couple of people who have even less experience than he does. In fact, as far as anyone knows, the founders of E4E don't even teach anymore. They've moved on to take tons of money from ed deform groups in the hopes of changing the status quo and improving the socioeconomic lot of many New Yorkers. Especially themselves.

Perhaps Ruben wants a job with E4E, especially given his tenuous position with the DOE, what with his shitty scores and low seniority and all. That is problematic, however. Ruben doesn't like being part of a group he doesn't agree with, like the UFT. Fortunately, even though until recently outed, he hid his membership with E4E, he is now on their Teacher Evaluation Policy Team. Isn't that terrific? I didn't even know E4E had one of those! Thanks E4E! Just what teachers needed--more evaluations from totally unqualified newbie teachers! I can't wait for the recommendations of the TEPT to come out, although I'm fairly sure UFT scab teachers with crappy TDR ratings will be allowed to keep their jobs.

I still think Ruben's talents are wasted with E4E. Given the trend of giving totally unqualified people like "Chancellor" Cathie Black positions of unbridled power, I think Ruben should aim higher. He should form his own organization and get it funded by Gates or Bloomberg or Broad or one of the other billionaires willing to scatter largesse to educators who have no qualms with sticking shivs in the collarbones of their colleagues. Reality Based Educator had a great idea for a name--Asshats4Educators! Here, as I see it, is the A4E platform:

• Teacher Data Reports shouldn't be counted for newer teachers, because they are really really trying.


• Senior teacher suck and should be fired.


• The UFT isn't doing everything we want in terms of helping its members get laid off, so we must make sure it dies.


• We should go around talking about how education is the civil rights issue of our time, especially when a billionaire is nearby.


• Committees are needed for everything, including the Teacher Evaluation Committee, the Using the Media as a Front for Hedge Fund Managers Committee, and the Committee to Wear Stupid Beards to Look as if We're Grown-up Enough to be Teachers Committee.

Yes, Ruben, the billionaires would love you even more then. You're just the kind of toad they want to help them take public education private.

I've mostly tried to avoid writing about Ruben, but he launched an attack on Ms. Eyre, one of my favorite bloggers and someone I can tell is an outstanding teacher. I've even had Ms. Eyre chastise me a few times here for being mean to ed deformers, like when I compared Joel Klein's head to a bowling ball. And she may have had a point. So I apologize in advance for my tone, but remember, Ruben is an asshat.

When dealing with an asshat, you can't turn the other cheek.

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Why Verify?

We now have a golden "opportunity" to verify the information in our Teacher Data Reports, or TDRs, that a judge ruled may now be released to the public. My question is, why verify?

The judge clearly said that it doesn't really matter whether the data is valid or not: “...there is no requirement that data be reliable for it to be disclosed.". Data is king, and must be released even if it's known to be garbage. And garbage it is--it is based on the flawed value added system, which has been fed the garbage test scores on the NYS ELA and math tests, which were so flawed that the grades had to be reconfigured.

In my own case, there are a number of errors in the classes I taught and the students who were in them. I have already blogged about how CTT teachers have been hammered by this data, and how I will refuse to teach that again until something is fixed. I'm sure I'm not the only victim of bogus information heaped upon flawed test scores.

The only effect that verifying the data will have is to give the DOE the opportunity to claim that teachers have fixed errors and all is fine and dandy with the numbers now. But that just isn't so. The formula used--value-added--stinks. The data drawn from the dumbed down tests stinks. And no matter what you "verify" it is highly unlikely that the DOE will recalibrate the scores based on the new information. They'll just release the same old information they had before, but claim that it is now "teacher verified". Remember, the judge in this case flat out told the DOE that the accuracy of their data doesn't matter. They can release whatever scores they like, based on any information they like.

So why is the UFT telling us to verify this information? Isn't it bad enough that the myopic UFT went along with this scheme and accepted the "word" of the city that the scores wouldn't be released? Now they want us to give the city more ammo by verifying class lists without any acknowledgment that the data underlying those lists is fundamentally, and fatally, flawed?

It reminds me of schools 200 years ago, where recalcitrant students were told to go break a branch off a tree so they could be beaten with it. Except now, teachers are the victims, TDRs are the weapons, and the UFT is urging us to hold our ankles.

Next, Mulgrew will be telling us to respond "Thank you, Ms. Black. May I have another?"

Cut Mayor4Life a Break Already!

C'mon, people! I know that in a dire emergency, people feel the need to place blame somewhere. Almost all of the blame for Snowmageddon 2010 has gone to Mike Bloomberg, our hard working mayor. But really, what could he have done about it? This storm was not in his control, and he's a tad too old to get himself a shovel and help out, as his fellow mayor Cory Booker did in Newark. It's not his fault that his street was plowed out by 3PM Monday down to the blacktop, while many NYers, myself included, have yet to see a snow plow. Someone has got to get plowed first, and it just makes sense that it's the mayor instead of low life scum like you and me.

The truth is, no matter what you think of Bloomberg, it seems unfair that after 8 years as mayor he will be judged by this one measure, much of which was out of his control. Surely he has done some good in this city, his education policies notwithstanding. This Mini-Katrina, while bad, should not define his mayoralty, should it?

On an unrelated note, it's likely that we will have a ruling on the release of the Teacher Data Reports this week. For those unfamiliar with the TDRs, they attempt to rate the work a teacher has done for the entire year on the results of a single test. This is fair, because rating teachers on a single measure while most of the variables, such as poverty, homelessness, and truancy, are out of his or her control just makes sense.

While I wait for the ruling, I may go out and shovel some more in hopes of getting my car out some time in 2010.

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"Chancellor" Black and Blue

You might have read about the riot that occurred at Murry Bergtraum HS when a misguided principal decided to close the bathrooms in response to a fight. I'm not going to comment on the actions of the principal or the students. I would like to say that things like this are more common than the public realizes.

I've been teaching a while, and I've broken up my fair share of fights, much like my blogging pal Chaz. (Hint to newbies: Don't try this at home, or at work.) One time, a student shoved me into a chalkboard. Another time, I took a knife away from a student with nothing more than a stare. I don't expect kudos for these things; I'm simply stating that events like these are a fact of life in many public schools in NYC.

Michael Bloomberg and "Chancellor" Cathie Black would have it that teachers should be judged on Teacher Data Reports that allegedly take into account all kinds of factors. I don't know how they factor in working at a school in which the students riot, or carry knives, or beat each other, or curse out teachers, or kick them and cause miscarriages, but the city claims they can do it.

I'm more skeptical. Until you've worked in a dangerous school, you don't really know how difficult it is to teach in one. That's how I came up with the Bergtraum Solution as a way of settling, once and for all, whether those Teacher Data Reports should be released.

You see, Bergtraum is a high school for business careers. As such, handling the students there should be a piece of cake for someone as forceful as former business maven Cathie Black. So I propose that we ask Cathie to stand in the middle of the main floor of Bergtraum while the principal announces that they have decided to close the bathrooms permanently. She'll only have to stand there long enough for one change of classes to occur. She doesn't even have to teach anything. If she can do that, then we should stop opposing the release of the TDRs.

If, as I suspect, she runs out screaming as if her hair were on fire, or she's carried out on a stretcher, then she has to drop the TDR matter immediately and admit that there's more to teaching in NYC than any statistician could ever account for.

I suspect the "Chancellor" will find the Bergtraum Solution less than appealing. She doesn't even have the courage to face real reporters, much less the adolescents of the schools she'd like to shutter. I'm sure she'll stick to well managed elementary schools where she can comment on the cute "little people" there.

She'll never go a dangerous NYC school, lest she become the punchline to the joke, "What's Black, and white, and black and blue, and red all over?"

A Caste System for Students and Teachers

I got a lot of interesting comments both on this blog and on Reddit concerning my post about my lousy Teacher Data Report, or TDR (I received many condescending comments, including some from people who may have actually used utensils before, about how I should have explained all the acronyms in my post, despite the fact that the majority of my regular readers are NY [New York] teachers who already know them. I stand corrected.) For those who don't know, TDRs are calculated using VAD (Value-Added Data) which most researchers have concluded is BS (Bull Shit).

One theme that emerged throughout the comments is that good teachers should be assigned to the good students, and bad teachers (like me, judging from my TDR) should be assigned the bad students. For too long, say these commenters, we, as a nation, have neglected the top echelon of students and concentrated most of our scant resources on the under-performing ones. It's high time, they say, that we worked on developing our brightest minds, so that the USA (United States of America) can once again lead the world in rocket science, computer science, and other technologies, and the Chinese, who are, after all, a bunch of Commies, can go back to manufacturing Kewpie dolls. I have to say, these commenters present a compelling argument.

The statistics in movies like Waiting for "Superman" support their position. Of the 793 countries that outperform the US (United States) in math and, surprisingly, even English, most of them tend to fudge their statistics. They do this by chucking bad students out of school at a young age so they can go to work in coal mines and have mistresses, like the guys in Chile. Their top students get blanketed with praise and attention, while the ones who don't do their homework get blanketed in anthracite ash. What could be fairer?

I'm proposing that Obama's DoE (Department of Education) mandate a similar caste system for all school systems across the nation, including the NYC (New York City) DoE (Department of Education, no relation). We need to give our top students only the very best teachers, who can catapult them (the students), figuratively we hope, into the educational stratosphere with countries like Finland, which has produced almost two Nobel Prize winners this century, compared with the dismal American education system that has produced just seventy-three.

Of course, some will say this system is unfair, as it will most likely result in a disproportionate number of minority students getting the worst teachers. To which I can only respond--so what? Chile isn't the only country that has coal mines, you know. These kids may end up with lung cancer, but at least a mistress will be awaiting them as they emerge from their collapsed mines.

Besides, it's time we stopped coddling children just because they come from extreme poverty, abusive households, or disinterested parents. With all that stacked against them, having a crummy teacher isn't going to make much difference, is it? And speaking of crummy teachers, why allow them to ruin the minds of our best and brightest when there are future miners to be educated?

As for the teachers with the lowest TDR scores, I think I have an equally satisfying solution. They claim to want to help children, so I say, let them. They can be the first into the coal mine to check for CO (carbon monoxide).

Think of all the money we'll save on canaries.

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