New York State Teacher Evaluations Are Rigged

[Smarmie Doofus]

Danielson again. Classroom observations.

In the Westchester County leafy green of Scarsdale , no teachers are observed to be "highly effective," ( that would be *zero* teachers).... or 4 on a 1-4 point scale.

A few towns up and over, in Pleasantville, 99% of classroom teachers are observed to be "highly effective".

It's pre-arranged. "Policy", if you will.

Arne? Where are ya? This *is* what you wanted. No?

From Perdido Street blog:


>>>>
New York State Teacher Evaluations Are Rigged

Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy has a piece at LohHud on the absurdity of the New York State APPR teacher evaluation system, showing how the classroom observation component can be rigged by district leaders.

For instance, Scarsdale has decided that no teacher will be rated "highly effective" in the classroom observation component.

Pleasantville, on the other hand, gave out "highly effective" ratings to 99% of their teachers in the classroom observation component.

The Pleasantville superintendent defended that decision:

Pleasantville schools Superintendent Mary Fox-Alter defended her district's classroom observation scores, which use the Danielson model — saying the state's "flawed" model had forced districts to scale or bump up the scores so "effective" teachers don't end up with an overall rating of "developing."

"It is possible under the HEDI scoring band (which categorizes teachers as "highly effective," "effective," "developing" and "ineffective&quot to be rated effective in all three areas and yet end up as developing," Fox-Alter said, adding that she understood Danielson's concern.

the rest ( if you can stand it): http://perdidostreetschool.blogspot.com/2014/09/new-york-state-teacher-evaluations-are.html

[Hoppy]

1. This makes sense. Then Scarsdale don't have to give raises to the teachers. Scarsdale probably can't

afford raises.

[femmocrat]

2. If it is Danielson, the highest rating is "Distinguished."

Ours were rigged too. The young, cute principals' pets got "distinguished" and the old veterans were given "needs improvement"s. A few even got an "Unsatisfactory" and are now on an "improvement" plan. A couple of them retired. It is all a deliberate plan to get rid of higher-paid veterans so they can hire more malleable newbies.

And our state union (PSEA) just rolled over and let the governor (Corbutt) implement it without any opposition. It makes me sick.

[Smarmie Doofus]

3. The apparent collusion of the unions is becoming increasingly embarrassing.

And so blatant that the qualifier "apparent" is getting really very close to unnecessary.

You gave me an idea, though: it's as much a "labor" issue as it is an ed. issue, so I will cross-post it there. (i.e. in the Labor Forum)

Later tonite... when there's more traffic.

[LWolf]

4. We've been told

that no teacher is "distinguished" except for momentarily in any given area. Our admins have been trained to make sure that rating someone "distinguished" in any particular Danielson domain is very rare.

So is rating someone "basic," as a teacher has to be pretty damned weak to fit that part of the rubric. And, despite the perpetual public outcry against "bad teachers," very few are that weak. So the vast majority of teachers end up being rated "proficient" in most or all of the domains.

There's a hell of a lot of paperwork, check-lists, and teacher and admin time thrown into the process for predictable results.

Edited to add: Not NY, which is why our designations are different, even though we're using Danielson. We've got "unsatisfactory," "basic," "proficient," and "distinguished."