Teacher Evaluation: NYS Legislature Returns Teacher Evaluation to Local Districts within Collective Bargaining and Decouples from Student Testing

The New York State legislature voted to return the teacher evaluation process to school districts,

This bill would amend the annual teacher and principal evaluation system to eliminate the mandatory use of state assessments to determine a teacher or principal’s effectiveness. 

This bill seeks to maintain the rigorous standards set for teacher and principal evaluations, while simultaneously addressing some of the concerns from parents and educators. Allowing school districts and teachers, who know their students best, the ability to negotiate whether they would like to use the standardized tests in teacher or principal evaluations will ensure that a more fair and effective evaluation system will be established. Furthermore, in order to ensure that schools are not negatively impacted as a result of their choice between retaining their current evaluation system and choosing a new one, this bill provides that school districts will not lose their state aid increases while a district is in the process of negotiating/entering into a successor collective bargaining plan. 

The original law requiring school districts to use standardized test results to assess teacher performance was widely criticized by teachers and parents, and, in response to the criticism a four-year moratorium was placed on the use of standardized test scores, this is the last year of the moratorium. During the moratorium districts have been using a combination of supervisory observations and “student learning objectives,” aka, “measurements of student learning” determined at the district level, called the “matrix .”

With over 700 school districts in New York State the law returns the question of teacher evaluation to the local level and to the collective bargaining process. Districts will have flexibility within the frameworks set by the new law.

The larger question was whether teacher evaluation should be set by the Commissioner and the Board of Regents, set by the legislative process or driven, within guidelines set in statute, at the local level by elected school boards and teacher unions: that question has been determined.

The law has nothing to do with the administration of grades 3-8 tests, all fifty states must give annual tests.

The anti-testing factions within the state have vigorously opposed the new law  arguing that any changes should specifically reject the use of any testing in teacher evaluation, basically returning to supervisory evaluations only.

On the supervisory observation side New York State requires school districts to choose from among a range of instructional practice frameworks to assess teachers. New York City uses the Danielson Frameworks; other districts use Marzano, Marshall and a few others. These frameworks were originally designed to be used in teacher preparation programs, not to assess teacher performance. Experienced supervisors and teachers can generally agree on what constitutes a “highly effective” or “ineffective lesson,” less agreement on differentiating “effective” from “developing;” more troubling is the use of observations as a retributive act. As the relationship between the teacher union and the former mayor deteriorated in New York City the number of “unsatisfactory” observations increased dramatically. The number of unsatisfactory observations remained at about the same level for decades, tripled under Bloomberg, and returned to prior levels under the current mayor.

The current system places supervisory observations on one side of the matrix and locally developed tools, Student Learning Objectives (SLO) or Measurements of Student Learning (MOSL) on the other side of the matrix. The collective bargain agreement in New York City allows for an appeal if the observations and SLO/MOSL scores show a wide disparity.

There is a fear the smaller districts with fewer resources will choose an “off the shelf” standardized test in addition to the state standardized tests, an additional test for students. Parents have options: they can opt out, or, lobby their elected school board. The Bureau of Cooperative Educational Services (BOCES), regional student education centers, can coordinate the creation of SLO/MOSL in regions across the state.

Why does the federal law require annual tests? Current federal law requires standardized tests in English and Mathematics in grades 3-8 because a coalition of civil rights organizations lobbied vigorously to include testing in the law. In the run-up to the passage of the new iteration of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, now called the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) the Democratic co-sponsor of the law supported required testing,

Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., stood on the Senate floor and called standardized testing a civil-rights issue. “We know that if we don’t have ways to measure students’ progress, and if we don’t hold our states accountable, the victims will invariably be the kids from poor neighborhoods, children of color, and students with disabilities,” she said. 

The NAACP and many other civil rights organizations support the annual student testing requirement,

Nineteen groups, including the NAACP and the Children’s Defense Fund, recently released a statement backing the law’s core testing requirement. “ESEA must continue to require high-quality, annual statewide assessments for students in grades 3-8 and at least once in high school,” Wade Henderson, head of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, said at a Senate hearing … 

The opt out parents, concentrated in New York State and Diane Ravitch’s Network for Public Education are vigorous opponents of annual student testing, and, in many cases, all student testing.

The NAACP president Derrick Johnson spoke at the Network for Public Education (NPE) conference in Indianapolis in October, the NAACP and NPE both oppose charter schools and the NAACP has called for a moratorium on the expansion of charter schools, a position taken a few years ago at their national convention; allies on one issue, opponents on another

New York State has a long history of testing. Regent examinations in New York State began in the late 19^th century;  4^th and 8^th grade testing prior to the NCLB  annual testing. For decades the NY Times published the results of grades 4 and 8 tests, by district in descending school order.  The opposition to testing is partially due to the Obama/Duncan decisions to tests to assess the performance of individual teachers, to use tests to punish schools, the complexity of the algorithm coupled with disastrous roll-out of the Common Core: diverse constituencies melded.

A few days ago the state announced the latest round of schools requiring interventions, 

The State Education Department today announced district and school accountability determinations as required by the federal Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) and New York’s ESSA plan. State Education Commissioner MaryEllen Elia identified 106 school districts as Target Districts, 245 schools for Comprehensive Support and Improvement and 125 schools for Targeted Support and Improvement.

 I suspect some of these schools were identified due to scores in subgroups: Title 1 eligible, English language learners and students with disabilities, one of the prime goals of the law. I do not know the impact of opt outs on the computation to determine a school’s accountability status. The law requires a 95% participation rate in schools, and, if schools fall below the required participation rate states must develop plans to increase the rate; Optout is only an issue in New York, Colorado and Washington.

It is highly unlikely that we will see any changes in the federal requirements in the near future. New York State receives $1.6 billion annually in federal dollars; the state is not going to take any actions that might jeopardize federal dollars.

If you are interesting in pursuing the methods by which the state determines accountability status click on the link(s) below.

Elementary School Sample PowerPoint Template: Explaining the New Accountability System

High School Sample PowerPoint Template: Explaining the New Accountability System

Understanding the New York State Accountability System Under ESSA

This document provides answers to questions about the New York State Accountability System under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). Answers to questions are based upon the 2018-19 accountability determinations, which were made using the 2017-18 school year results

Diane Ravitch’s Network for Public Education Conference: A Report and Reflections

I spent the weekend in Indianapolis at the fifth annual Network for Public Education Conference, both uplifting and disturbing.

Hundreds of teachers, parents, activists, elected officials, all dedicated supporters of public education sharing stories, both uplifting stories of how small groups of dedicated, caring sophisticated teams of teacher unions, parents and community activists can make a difference and begin to turn the tide, and, in other locations, how the forces of privatization, charter schools, “portfolio” models are unrelenting in their assault on public education.

The weekend alternated between speakers and workshops.

Pasi Sahlberg, a Finnish educator described the worldwide attack on public education, Pasi has dubbed the movement GERM – the Global Education Reform Movement.

Finland should be a model for our nation, at least for states within our nation. The education system in Finland: no standardized tests, local autonomy, well-paid teachers and students at the top of the list on international lists. Yes, Finland is small, 5.5 million in a nation the size of Montana, very few immigrants, income equality, teachers selected from the top 10% of college graduates, free public education from pre-K through your PhD. .

The United States suffers from among the highest rates of childhood poverty and sharp income inequality.

I digress,  we have a very long way to go to emulate Finland; however, Pasi was presenting how the worldwide assault on public education, in nation after nation, attempts to privatize education are waning. We still have a long uphill struggle; we are beginning to turn the corner.

Diane, in her keynote speech, described the theme of her new book, due on bookshelves next year, watch Diane’s remarks here. Diane is an optimist, she sees us beginning to win the war on public education. In her inimitable writing style she will skewer the despoilers with facts and logic.

Derrick Johnson, the new president of the NAACP, a dynamic speaker urged the audience to participate, to vote, to organize, and to realize, in the words of Frederick Douglas,

“If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground … This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”

 After forums around the nation the NAACP called for a moratorium on the opening of new charter schools until charter school information is totally transparent. and a wide range of other school initiatives are achieved.  Read NAACP report here.

In addition to the keynote speakers there were dozens of workshops and panels, some truly inspirational and other troubling.

The Indianapolis Public Schools Community Coalition  is struggling against a tsunami of privatization of public schools, Teachers, parents, faith-based leaders and activists are fighting against richly funded privateers, and the future of public schools in Indianapolis is in danger.

In Kansas City (Missouri) the superintendent, Dr. Mark Bedell is leading a coalition to reinvigorate public schools. KC  is one of many cities with declining populations, declining industry, increasing unemployment, and increasing numbers of charter schools; the KC school population has declined precipitously, currently 26,000 students 14,00 in public schools in 12,000 in charter schools. The public schools coalition and a public school dominated school board are advocating at the state level, they were impressive, well-organized and a model for “fighting back.”

In a facilitated discussion of urban school districts we listened to an officer of the Los Angeles teacher union, on the verge of a strike. The LA elected school board hired a businessman with no education experience as superintendent who is pushing for a citywide portfolio model pushing to weaken the union, in a city currently overrun with charter schools.

Chicago continues to fight school closings and attacks on teacher rights. To say the least, it was troubling.

I met leader of  a Nova Scotia (Canada) teacher union; Nova Scotia is poor, and getting poorer and faced with closing schools, inadequate funding and a ripe climate for charter schools, only Alberta currently have charter schools. Among the poorest sectors are Afro-Canadians, whose ancestors were loyalists, slaves freed by the British during the revolutionary war who fled to Canada. The union president feared that his province was ripe for charter schools.

I spoke with brave teachers from Oklahoma, who risked their jobs to strike, the salary, benefits and schools in Oklahoma are abysmal, with decision-making dominated by the wealthiest. In state after state anti-public school forces influence legislative decisions, in too many states dominate state legislatures.

New York City is a bubble, a favorable mayor, a powerful union, a new contract with many teacher empowering sections, proof that all politics is local and elections have consequences.

I left Indianapolis impressed with the brave people, teachers, parents and community folk, who are fighting the good fight.

For me, teacher unions are the core of the battle, listen to Billy Bragg,

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rs5_gB582IM

And a wonderful updated version from a friend, it’s really good, give it s listen

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?tab=wm#inbox/FMfcgxvzLNVJQXnLVwZgrWDBhNXcqjNq

Are Reducing Suspension Rates and Safe Schools Antithetical? Finding a Balance Between Safety, Respect and Trust in a Turbulent World

In the week after the mayoral election the incoming de Blasio administration set up a transition tent on Canal Street and posted the events of the day, panels and workshops on a wide range of topics. I showed up for the education panel – the NAACP, ACLU, a minister (now running for Congress) from a Harlem church and a few others discussing an assortment of school issues. The panelists were outraged by the number and severity of school suspensions.

The 32-page NYC School Discipline Code (revised 2013) has been scrutinized and revised every few years, the Code describes unacceptable conduct in detail and lists the levels of discipline. Unacceptable conduct begins with “uncooperative behavior” and moves up the ladder to “disorderly” to “disruptive” to “aggressive or injurious” to “seriously dangerous or violent.” The Code recommends “restorative approaches” with children and at each step there is an appeal avenue. Suspensions range from a few days in school to movement to an off-site suspension center and in rare cases to expulsion.

All “incidents” must be entered into the Online Reporting Student Suspension (ORSS) system with substantial backup information. The data is monitored by the superintendent as well as the borough safety team.

I spoke with an experienced department administrator:

1. The suspensions are actually shorter in duration; the time the student is out of the school prior to the hearing is counted as time served.
2. Arrests require an infraction – not the whim of a department employee.
3. Most suspensions take place because the parent doesn’t respond when called or show up for the hearing. Too often the parental response is “I have no control over my child” – the only option is a suspension.

In 2011 the NYC chapter of the ACLU issued a report sharply critical of suspension policies under the Bloomberg administration,

Interrupted: The Growing Use of Suspension in New York City Schools, a report by the New York Civil Liberties Union demonstrating a drastic spike in student suspensions under Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s watch. The report, based on an analysis of a decade of previously undisclosed suspension data, finds that New York City schools suspend nearly twice as many students as they did a decade ago and the lengths of suspensions are becoming longer — a trend that disproportionately affects black students and students with special needs.

The overuse of suspensions denies children their right to a public education. It’s pushing students from the classroom into the criminal justice system. A study of secondary school students, published in the Journal of School Psychology, showed that students who were suspended were 26 percent more likely to be involved with the legal system than their peers.

The ACLU and other civil rights organizations call suspension policies a “school to prison pipeline,”

The School to Prison Pipeline operates directly and indirectly. Schools directly send students into the pipeline through zero tolerance policies that involve the police in minor incidents and often lead to arrests, juvenile detention referrals, and even criminal charges and incarceration. Schools indirectly push students towards the criminal justice system by excluding them from school through suspension, expulsion, discouragement and high stakes testing requirements.

School discipline-suspension policies are high on the de Blasio-Farina agenda. Chancellor Farina, in her 100-Day speech referenced student suspensions,

A school culture in which students feel safe, valued, and respected is critical to our success. That includes rethinking how we respond to student misconduct. An over-reliance on suspension is not the answer. I have worked to change the tone towards our schools, and now I will try to improve the tone within them.

I believe that we need more supportive approaches to student discipline, and we’re developing them; for example, by helping schools embrace and deepen their work around social emotional learning, and building a positive school culture and climate. By embedding the social emotional competencies into the curriculum. And by engaging the whole community in solutions.

I have been inspired by the work of one particular network that is focusing on studying ways to “suspend suspensions,” and has brought some great minds to the table around this topic.

Schools are parts of communities and the pathologies of the communities impact the schools. When kids cross the threshold of the school building they do not leave their home and street experiences behind..

Carol Beck was the highly regarded principal of Thomas Jefferson High School in East New York, a school plagued by violence located in the police precinct with one of the highest homicide – hand gun violence rates in the city. When the board designated 21 schools for metal detectors for the 91-92 school year Principal Beck angrily and vehemently argued against the placement in her school – her kids were not criminals and should not be treated as criminals. The day of a visit to the school by the new Mayor, David Dinkins,

Two teen-agers were shot to death at point-blank range in the hallway of a Brooklyn high school yesterday morning, little more than an hour before Mayor David N. Dinkins was to visit the troubled school to tell students they had the power to break free of the world of violence and drugs.

“You have got to learn from this,” Mr. Dinkins, his voice tense, implored several hundred students who were packed into the two-tiered auditorium when he arrived to speak about 70 minutes after the 8:40 A.M. shooting. “You must learn from this. So please help me. Help your principal. Help yourselves.” The youths sat shaken, many holding their heads down in their hands.

The killings came just three months after another student was cut down by gunfire and a teacher critically wounded in the same East New York high school, a brick structure whose immaculate pink halls contrast with the near-desolate landscape of project housing and empty, litter-strewn lots

Since then, students have been screened with metal detectors about once a week in spot security checks intended to weed out the hidden knives and guns that the youths say they carry to protect themselves from street violence — and now violence in the school. Their grim neighborhood, which they described as a terrifying turf of night gun fire and drug deals, had the second-highest homicide rate in the city in 1990.

There were no metal detectors in use yesterday, despite the Mayor’s impending arrival. The detectors were to have been used Tuesday, the original date for the Mayor’s appearance. But the principal, Carol A. Burt-Beck, had asked that the security check be postponed because it would set the wrong mood, school officials said.

Standing up for her kids, not allowing metal detectors stigmatize her kids led to the death of three of her students.

Almost twenty-five years later in the same police precinct homicide – handgun violence rates lead the city.

Our first obligation is to keep kids safe and to create an environment that fosters learning, an environment that is frequently at variance with the environment in the streets surrounding the school.

I was meeting with a group of principals in a co-located building and the conversation turned to kids wandering the halls and fights. For a few of the principals the answer was to suspend more kids, I asked,

“Do you talk to the gang leaders?”

One of the principals, hostilely, “Why would I do that?”

I blurted, “Because they run the building.”

Gangs are a reality, when I hear a principal say s/he’s going to rid the building of gangs I figure they’ll be as successful as we were in ridding Afghanistan of the Taliban. Kids belong to gangs, their older siblings belong to gangs and their parents belonged to gangs.

A principal in school in the same neighborhood tells me, “I chat with my gang kids every day, glean the gossip, what’s going on, they tell me what happened outside of school and I know which kids to approach at the beginning of the day, and when to alert the precinct. My kids know there is no excuse for misbehaving in school and bad conduct has consequences.”

An arm over a kid’s shoulder, a stern look, a harsh reprimand, a phone call home, and, sometimes, a suspension, or, a call to the precinct, some principals have the skill to use the right intervention for each situation, and, others, don’t, and, may never have the skills.

As I entered a middle school the first thing I noticed was the number of kids wandering the halls, never a good sign. The principal, who had gone through a Restorative Justice training program, stopped two kids who were especially boisterous, engaged them in a lengthy conversation, she asked why they were in the halls, how they were feeling, suggested they speak with the counselor, and sent them on the way. I noticed a school aide standing in the hall. I asked her whether this the principal’s approach worked, she scoffed, “The kids eat her up alive.”

Grades on standardized tests determine student, teacher, principal and school success or failure. It was not surprising that the ATR pool was stuffed with over 200 guidance counselors; inexperienced principals used dollars for extended school days or Saturday tutoring programs ignoring the socio-emotional needs of kids. Schools are complex cultures, raging hormones in middle schools, proto-adults in high schools and elementary school kids often too hungry to do schoolwork or shuffled from house to house or simply plopped in front of a TV screen for hours every day or cared for by a sibling only a few years older.

Streets are dangerous places, the wrong comment, the wrong glance, the wrong “he said, she said,” can easily lead to retribution – your protection – your gang brothers and sisters.

It would be wonderful for a school to have psychologists, social workers, guidance counselors and nurses to work with kids and families, it would be wonderful to have principals who set and enforce rules across an entire school. Reducing suspensions is meaningless without other means of creating a culture of order and discipline. Kids are really, really smart, they have been manipulating the system for years: the cop, the social worker, the guidance counselor and the teacher. Some schools, some school leaders have the skills to change the game – to begin to turn kids’ lives around; unfortunately too few school leaders have the skills.

I worry that in the name of progress we will reduce suspensions, reduce the use of scanning and revisit the death of students at Thomas Jefferson.

The road to you know where is paved with good intentions.