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.

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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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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Mr. Talk Gets High

No, not that way. I'm talking about my Teacher Data Report (TDR). If you haven't seen yours, check your DOE email. Mine arrived today.

If you follow this blog at all, you know that my previous TDR was a stinker. I'm not as daring as Ruben Brosbe, who disclosed his lousy TDR to everyone on the planet by announcing it in the NY Post. But I will give you a hint as to what it was. Think single digits.

So when I saw the email announcing that my current scores were in, you can imagine how my heart skipped a beat. Another number from the crapper, and my principal would have to take notice. I began picturing myself on the front page of the Post, with the caption "Worst Teacher In The City--End LIFO Now!"

But a funny thing happened on the way to the Teacher Hall of Shame. I opened the report, scrunched my eyes--and laughed. Yes, laughed. And this time it was because I was high. I'm talking about my Performance Catergory. Again, I'm not disclosing the number, but to end up in that category, one has to score in the 95th percentile or above.

Value-added has an alleged margin of error of 35 points, by most accounts, which is lousy in and of itself. In my case, however, the data changed more than 85 percentage points.

I don't put this information out there to pat myself on the back. I'm the same teacher, teaching the same curriculum as last year, but my numbers varied widely. I'll repeat what I said back when my number was microscopic. These numbers are worthless.

A lot of you will be opening your TDR reports tonight to not such good news. Don't let it get to you. The numbers don't reflect reality. It's just a moronic formula dreamed up by a bunch of non-educators who believe that you can quantify everything. What you should do, regardless of what the TDR says, is ask yourself whether you are really working hard and doing a good job. If you are, then the numbers mean less than zero.

What gets to me, though, is how those numbers can be abused. Based on that worthless formula, some of you will be denied tenure. Others will be targeted for U ratings. Had Mayor4Life gotten his way on ending seniority for layoffs, that formula could have cost you your job. It's insanity.

I wonder which numbers will appear in the papers, should the FOIL request be granted. I hope both of mine appear, so that everyone can see just how ridiculous value added really is. I'd love to hear from anyone else whose number changed more than the accepted 35% margin of error. If there are enough of us, maybe we can expose the TDR fraud for what it is.

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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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The Next Great Compromise

You can see it coming, can't you? The DOE has agreed to put off releasing the Teacher Data Reports until next month, when the case goes to court. BloomKlein has a history of doing whatever the hell they want, the law be damned (witness Bloomberg's shameless theft of a third term as mayor and his current assertion that the term limit extension should only apply to him). So why didn't they release the TDRs before the union had a chance to sue?

If you buy the argument by my fellow blogger Norm that the UFT is in league with the city, the answer is simple. The threatened release of the reports was just a head fake. If you recall, the city signed an agreement with the UFT saying that they would not disclose TDR information to the public. As such, they would most likely lose in court. At that point, the data would be sealed forever. What to do?

The city doesn't want to come off looking like the bad guys. They need the UFT to support them in releasing this data. So sometime between now and the court date in November, look for the DOE and the UFT to come to some sort of new "agreement". It will probably entail releasing the data some time down the road, perhaps in 2011 when the new evaluations are set to take place. The UFT will agree to release the TDR data as part of some "teacher report card" that includes the TDRs, plus evaluation data, etc. The UFT will claim that this system is fairer because it will give a "big picture" view of a teacher's performance rather than just the narrow TDR view.

By doing this, the UFT can continue to look like a friend of reform while still claiming to be protecting teachers. They'll be able to claim victory even as the reports come out.

Don't think this can happen? Think back to the many things the UFT has signed on to and claimed as a 'victory'. The 2005 contract. Loss of seniority. Changes in tenure evaluations. Race to the Top. The added 37.5 minutes in each school day. ALL of those were claimed as wins for the UFT while they were losses for the members.

Don't say I didn't warn you. TDRs, and along with them your privacy, are the next great compromise.

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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A Rant Against the DOE

I was going to post a long, angry rant against the DOE for their decision to trash hard working teachers by releasing the flawed Teacher Data Reports to the media. As readers of this blog may recall, I got a crappy score despite the hard work and care I put into my teaching. I'm sure I'm not alone.

What will the release of this data mean? Not much, other than a bunch of unhappy teachers and parents. It will do zero to improve education. It will create confusion and bad will in schools, which is precisely what Bloomberg and Klein want. Their only goal is the dismantling of public education and unionism as we know it. Bloomberg and Gates and Oprah and all their billionaire pals care nothing about education or teachers; their only concern is that they don't want their billions to help pay the cost of teacher salaries and pensions.

Not enough bad things can happen to these people, who think nothing of trying to wreck the lives and reputations of those who've dedicated their lives to educating children. They are reprehensible slugs and if they perished from the face of the earth tomorrow, the world would be a better place. Unfortunately, due to the complicity of Randi and Mulgrew, who could have ousted Bloomberg in the last election when they had the chance, the only way we'll be rid of them is if they all fall off a cliff. Given the likelihood of that happening, I guess all we have to look forward to is the next Machiavellian scheme to destroy teachers that these bastards can devise.

I guess I wrote that rant after all.

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Comparing Apples and Rutabagas

If you haven't heard, the 2010 ELA and math scores were released today. You can look your up on ARIS. I looked mine up, and predicably, most students went down. It wasn't as disastrous as I'd feared, but it was pretty upsetting nonetheless.

It shouldn't be upsetting, though. The state toughened standards, so the number of students rated proficient nosedived citywide. The percentage that my own students fell was less than the citywide average, so I figure I must have done OK by some measure.

The problem is that ARIS, that wonderfully expensive boondoggle of a computer system into which the city poured untold millions, only lists three numbers: the 2009 score, the 2010 score, and the '09-'10 progress. That last progress column is what looks so awful, as most students went down. A student who scored a 3.25 in 2009 and a 2.75 in 2010 has a progress score of -.50, so it appears that child lost half a year's progress. But did they?

Let's not forget that the state raised the cut score this year. So in everyone's ARIS report, it compares last year's results obtained with a bullshit cut score to this year's results with a more realistic (but possibly still bullshit) cut score.

My eighth graders, for example, may have gotten 23 of 45 questions right and scored a 2. But last year they may have gotten 19 of 45 questions right and scored a 3. ARIS will show such students as making negative progress even though they got more questions right this year than last. It's insane.

At the very least, ARIS could have added another column comparing the number of questions a student got right last year to the number they got right this year. That might be an apples to oranges comparison, but it's not the apples to rutabagas comparison we're getting now. But what do you want for an 80 million dollar computer system? Meaningful data? Pshaw.

What it boils down to is that all of us will get teacher data reports this year that rate us on data that everyone involved, from the state education commissioner on down, admits is bullshit.

And starting next year, thanks to the idiocy of Michael Mulgrew, our annual performance will hinge on data like this. Just like in Washington, DC, where Michelle Rhee fired 6% of her staff.

God help us all.

That's What She Said

I was doing my normal test prep with one of my 8th grade classes. We were working on the Reading/Writing part, in which students read two passages and answer some short answer questions and then write an essay. I decided to give my students two brief biographies to compare--Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart.

They were somewhat challenging passages, as biographies often are. I was teaching my lower functioning class, but they seemed to be making progress. Until Michael raised his hand.

"What is it, Michael?"

"This Ameria Earhart," said Michael, with a puzzled look on his face. "Is he a man or a woman?"

I expected the rest of the class to laugh at him, because the passage clearly referred to Amelia as "she" approximately 4,639 times. Instead, they all looked at me, as if to say "Yeah...that's a good question!!!"

I referred Michael and his curious peers back to the story and pointed out the pronoun references. Michael eyed me suspiciously. "So that means she's a girl, right?"

I have no idea how a child can get to the 8th grade and still be so anatomically incorrect, so to speak. All I could think of at that moment was how my Teacher Data Report would be tied to Michael and his peers. Every year I am surprised by what kids don't know. You can't teach everything. It's impossible to get it all in.

That what she said.

Seniority Means Always Having to Say You're Sorry

I've noticed something strange. Whenever the discussion turns to layoffs, tenured senior teachers seem to want to apologize for having job security. "Sure, there are some bad senior teachers out there," we say, almost whimpering, "but most of us work just as hard as the newbies!"

Well, I'm sick of it. There are lousy doctors, lawyers, accupuncturists, and envelope stuffers out there, but you never hear the good ones making excuses for the bad ones. In other professions, it is assumed that the good ones far outnumber the few rotten apples. In teaching, we constantly apologize for the very few crappy senior teachers despite the fact that most of us with a few streaks of white in our hair are damn good educators. I think it's high time we stopped apologizing for the failures of a few and started demanding recognition for the fine work the vast majority of us do.

The myth of the great teacher persists in our society, but the myth of the do-nothing, feet-on-the-desk, waiting-to-collect-a-pension teacher has become almost as pervasive. They are just myths. There are only a few Mr. Chips out there, and probably just as few Buffalo Chips. The vast majority are neither great nor awful--we are just hard working, dedicated people doing a difficult job to the best of our ability.

The idea that senior teachers should be laid off is gaining traction as well. Yet, you almost never hear new teachers apologize the way senior teachers do. And the real, rarely spoken truth is that senior teachers are almost always better than new teachers. I was a new teacher once, and I was lousy in my first year. I was so bad that I didn't even know how much I sucked. By my third year, I had some idea of what I was doing. It wasn't until about my 8th year or so that I knew I belonged and that I could handle just about anything. Most teachers will tell you just about the same story. It took time for us to become the teachers we are today.

BloomKlein would gladly throw us on the dung heap if they could under the guise of keeping the "best" teachers. In my view, the best teachers in any school are the veterans. Many of the newbies will one day become fine teachers but that day isn't today. This is even acknowledged by the city itself in their Teacher Data Reports, in which new teachers are compared to each other and not to veterans. (Pardon me for using the reports for anything other than spare toilet paper. It shan't happen again).

Layoffs aren't about weeding out the few incompetents. Layoffs, when they truly have to occur, should be about keeping the workforce stable and making sure that those who have dedicated their lives to the profession aren't shafted. Those new to the profession, if they are truly dedicated, will return when the fiscal crisis ends.

In any case, I believe the current threats of layoffs are little more than Mayor4Life employing the Shock Doctrine. He runs arounds in a Chicken Little-esque manner, claiming that the educational sky is falling due to the recession. In the ensuing panic, he hopes to realize the mayoral wet dream of being given the authority to fire high priced teachers and all but end that nasty practice of having to actually pay pensions. I really believe when Bloomberg sees that we will not give in to him and he will have to lay off new teachers, he will suddenly find a way to avert most, if not all, the layoffs. Witness Washington D.C., where Michelle Rhee miraculously found a 34 million dollar suplus AFTER she managed to lay off 266 teachers. This layoff threat is just a Rhee-play on a grander scale.

Before someone demands an apology for anything I've said here, let me head them off at the pass. The answer is no. I'm not sorry for wanting to keep and protect my job. I'm not sorry for having learned my profession through years of hard fought experience. I'm not sorry for sticking up for the "last in, first out" method of layoffs, because I believe that to be a lynchpin of unionism that newbies will appreciate themselves one day.

The only thing I'm sorry for is that we all have to work under a mayor and chancellor who think that educational policy means wielding an axe and a machete.

A Challenge for Charters

It's obvious that with the second round of RttT awards looming, New York is going to try to burnish its application a bit. The initial response from Klein was predictable: the unions cost us the money. Today, we got the news that at least some of the blame needs to go to the state itself, because they filled their application with a bunch of outlandish suggestions on how they would spend the money, such as buying desks for bureacrats that cost $3000 each, or exactly what 20 teachers currently receive in Teacher's Choice money. Nevertheless, the media will forget about that faux pas quickly and refocus on unions.

It's being said that we hindered the application on two main counts: The charter school cap and using test scores to evaluate teachers for tenure. Considering what a fiasco the recent Teacher Data Reports were, I think that should be off the table. But perhaps the union should reconsider its opposition to lifting the charter school cap--on one condition.

As things now stand, charters generally cream the top students from a neighborhood which automatically gives them a leg up. In addition, parents who apply to charters tend to be the most engaged parents in some of the worst schools--that's why they try to get their kids into one of the Cadillac charters run by Eva Moskowitz rather than leave them in a public school that will be robbed of many of its top students. And even with all these advantages, charters haven't performed as well as traditional public schools overall.

Still, I'm willing to compromise. Moskowitz and her ilk claim that charters are the way to go. If that's so, here's my challenge: Instead of creaming the top students from neighborhoods, charters should agree to take on a different population. I mean the lowest performing students, the special ed students, the ESL kids, and the most disruptive behavior problems. After all, if charters are so great, they should be able to turn around the very same kids they say the public schools are failing. Without that pesky union, they can hire whomever they please, choose their own curriculum, lengthen the school day and year, etc.

So let's issue them that challenge. Let them take on the most difficult kids--you know, the ones they currently reject--and prove that they can do a better job than public schools. If they can, the UFT should remove their objections to lifting the charter school cap. If, as I suspect, they fall flat on their faces, perhaps we can all go back to the business of making the NYC public schools the best they can be.

What do you say, Eva? Are you up to the challenge?

The Accountabilty Mayor Plays the Blame Game

Mayor4Life Bloomberg has written a nasty letter to the Obama administration, all but blaming the president for the proliferation of illegal guns. Of course, the Mayor-Eternal has always been for gun control, but he has generally reserved his criticisms for states that allow gun shows, not the federal government. Which is odd when you consider that GWB's presidency lifted not a finger to help. So why is the mayor all atwitter right at this moment?

The answer is pretty simple, in my opinion. Now that the murder rate in NYC has spiked, Bloomy is looking for someone to blame. You see, there is no way this mayor is going to take the rap for the 22% increase in killings so far this year. He only takes the credit when crime drops, not the blame when it increases. He has already claimed that the reduction in police might be to blame, and the economy, and now the president is in the crosshairs.

Is it fair to blame the mayor for the spike in murders? It could be the fault of the economy, but Bloomberg has been in charge of NYC's economy for the last 8 years. He can blame the reduction in the police force, but he is in charge of the police force as well. If one wanted to be ultra fair, one could say that despite nearly a decade in office, Bloomberg wasn't directly in charge of the economy, and that the reduction in police is due to the dive in the economy. Some of these factors may be beyond the mayor's control. He's not the only responsible party, so why should he take full responsibility?

Of course, teachers aren't the only ones in charge of students. If a teacher's passing rate for the ELA or math tests plunged 22% the way the mayor's murder rate has risen 22%, would Bloomberg be as fair in his determination of who gets the lion's share of the blame? No, he'd issue a Teacher Data Report that excoriated the teacher in question. If he has his way, such a teacher would be fired on the spot. It wouldn't matter whether there were factors outside the teacher's control. I mean, someone has to be held accountable, right?

Unless you're a billionaire mayor, of course.

But the Data Says I Suck!

This is sort of in response to Miss Eyre's post on the NYC Educator blog. I admire Miss Eyre for many reasons, and most recently because she took a dim view of the new teacher data reports despite a score that put her at the head of the class, if you will. Me, I take a dim view because the score I got earned me a dunce cap. That is, if you believe that data, which I don't.

When I first opened that email, my heart sank. I thought maybe they had emailed me the square root of my actual number by mistake.

Now, I've been teaching a long time, and I have a long track record of excellent results, so this number was a real shocker. I know how hard I work, and I know that my administration holds me in pretty high regard, so it just didn't make any sense. But there it was.

I went to work the next day hoping that no one would ask my results. As I slunk past friends' classrooms, I felt as if a large neon sign with my pathetic number and the words "You Suck!" was blinking above my head. But an odd thing happened. No one asked me my number, and no one told me theirs. I thought maybe word of my diminutive digits had leaked somehow and my colleagues were just being tactful. I mustered the courage to tell a good friend what I'd gotten, and I was shocked when he told me his. It was even worse.

Now, this guy is a good teacher. I sure didn't believe his number could be real. As the day passed, I spoke with a few other colleagues, and it turned out that I was far from the bottom performer in my school. By the time the day ended, I felt like Mr. Chips.

Here's the rub. If you believe the data, almost everyone in my school is a bum and a slacker. But the truth is I work at one of this highest rated schools in the city according to the state test results. And it has been one of the best schools for many years. So how did a bunch of rubes like us, the sum of whose teacher data numbers total up to a single decent teacher, manage to produce some of the best results in the city?

The answer is simple. The numbers are worthless.

As it turns out, we have such high scoring students that it was nearly impossible to move them up. How do you add value to students who already have perfect or near perfect scores? You can't. And I'll bet that the same is true of working with students at the bottom--they are at the bottom because they have reading difficulties, and moving them up a year or more when they are already several grade levels behind must be damn near impossible.

The DOE took a test that the state knows is invalid--and that can be passed just by guessing--and then came up with a bunch of complicated formulas to derive a number that tells a lot of good, hardworking teachers that they suck. In the same vein, there are surely some lousy teachers out there who feel like they can coast now because their numbers were better than expected.

The only bad result that came of my lousy number was that it made me feel awful for a day or so. I felt bad because I care about my students and I take my teaching seriously--that's what makes me (and most of you) a good teacher. I am over it now, because I know it is horse shit and I know it can't be used to evaluate me. Yet. I do wonder how this mess will affect those teachers who are up for tenure this year, and who can be evaluated by that score. How many dedicated and hard working teachers will be refused tenure because their number isn't high enough for the DOE?

And where is the UFT on this one?

Mad Scientists at Tweed

Let's say you're a scientist. You've got a great hypothesis on how to end world hunger and global warming at the same time by using carbon emissions to fetilize crops. You go to the chalkboard and work out all the calculations. The data are flawless! It will work! You'll go on to win the Nobel prize! And then, when you show your data to the other scientists to gain their support, they point out to you that every time you were supposed to divide by three, you divided by eight instead, and all that your calculations prove is that it's bad to inhale too much chalk dust. What should you do? If you're an ethical scientist, you admit your error, and go back to the drawing board.

Which is the exact opposite of what the DOE does.

The DOE collected scads of data on student and teacher performance from the NYS ELA tests. Then they discovered that...oops!...the tests were far too easy. So easy, in fact, that a child could pass them by filling out random bubbles. An ethical DOE would throw out that data, admit that it doesn't really mean anything, and go back to the drawing board to try to find some more meaningful metric.

Instead, the DOE has created Teacher Data Reports. If you haven't seen them, they are meant to tell teachers how they measure up against other teachers. The problem, of course, is that the data are meaningless, which pretty much means that any conclusions drawn from that data are horse puckey.

So how it works is this: The DOE gives a test to kids in one grade. The test is fatally flawed. Then, the DOE gives another fatally flawed test the following year. They create something called "value added", which shows how much a teacher helped a child progress had the tests been valid, which they were not. These reports will be used to determine tenure, and, coming soon to a school near you, they will be used to evaluate all teachers.

On the positive side, these reports are great for fertilizing crops. I don't think they'll end world hunger, though.