9486 in the collection
Schools Chancellor Joel Klein wants nothing more than to release data on more than 12,000 teachers
Ohanian Comment: The corporate-politico data mantra: My data is never wrong. And Love my data or leave.
NOTE: Why did it take Leonie Haimson, director of Class Size Matters, 15 months to get a response to her Freedom of Information request?
Why wasn't the union on this? And the so-called professional organizations? Oh my. Will they ever get their heads out of the sand and think about what "value added" will do to professionalism? I am grateful for all the good work Class Size Matters, a parent organization does. I am outraged why teacher organizations remain so inert.
Reader Comment: Ever since the release of test scores, Klein and Bloomberg have stopped using the DOE for self-promotion and instead have joined the teacher bashing crowd in dialogue that has set education back ten years. Of course this is another opportunity for Klein to shift the spotlight away from himself. The people should start to ask exactly what Klein is responsible for in our schools. From the death of a student on a field trip to his failed 'Rubber Room' program to schools that are closed rather than fixed, Joel Klein always has somebody else to blame.
by Juan Gonzalez
Schools Chancellor Joel Klein wants the world to believe his attempt to make public more than 12,000 Teacher Data Reports was merely a response to an information request from the press.
Don't buy it.
Klein couldn't wait to release the names, along with his arcane rating system that claims to show how much "value" each teacher added to the reading and math scores of their pupils.
He didn't seem to care about unfairly tarnishing the reputations of city teachers like Doreen Crinnigan, a 25-year veteran of the school system who teaches at Public School 48 in Bensonhurst.
"We don't blame anyone for wanting to look at how they (teachers) are performing, and value-added data is a window into that," Klein spokeswoman Natalie Ravitz said.
This was before the teachers' union sued in Manhattan Supreme Court and Klein agreed to halt the release of the data, pending a Nov. 24 hearing.
Such a hearing will undoubtedly reveal that the very consultants who designed Klein's rating system warned it should not be used to judge teacher performance.
Their support of the "value added model," those consultants said in an Aug. 29, 2008, report, was "limited to the technical quality of the work" and to its potential to assist "in teaching and learning."
They specifically refused to endorse "any particular use [of the method] for accountability, promotion or tenure" of teachers.
"Test scores," they warned, "capture only one dimension of teacher effectiveness, and . . . are not intended as a summary measure of teacher performance."
The consultants' report was supplied to the Daily News by Leonie Haimson, director of Class Size Matters, who obtained it under a Freedom of Information Request that Klein's people took 15 months to answer.
The leader of the original design team, Columbia University Prof. Jonah Rockoff, told News reporter Rachel Monahan the union was right to challenge the data release.
"We do need someone with expertise in the right to privacy of public employees to make a careful decision about whether this should be released," Rockoff said.
Records of classroom observations of teachers by principals also go into a performance review, Rockoff noted, but they are not made public.
A half dozen teachers told The News yesterday they discovered errors in the raw student data used to calculate their scores, but were not allowed to see which students they were being judged on.
For example, Crinnigan got low ratings for the reading and math scores of her fifth-grade class.
"I didn't teach math that year," she said. "We had a departmental structure in the school, so I taught reading to all three fifth-grade classes. Another teacher taught all the students math, and a third taught them all writing."
One of the other classes Crinnigan taught had a 97% rating, but that score was assigned to another teacher.
Some general teachers say they taught joint classes with a special education teacher, known as a collaborative team teaching class, but only the general education teacher received a rating.
The value-added system, in short, is one dimensional, the raw data is unverified, and even the people who designed it warned against using it as a sole barometer of teacher performance.
— Juan Gonzales
New York Daily News
2010-10-22
http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/education/2010/10/22/2010-10-22_schools_chancellor_joel_klein_wants_nothing_more_than_to_release_data_on_more_th.h
INDEX OF OUTRAGES
Pages: 380
[1] 2 3 4 5 6 Next >> Last >>
