Joel Klein Pushes For Controversial NY Teacher Ratings To Be Released

The battle over teacher effectiveness data rages on in New York City, where the United Federation of Teachers is currently embroiled in a court battle with the city over the release of teacher effectiveness rankings.

As HuffPost Education reported last week, the teachers union is suing to prohibit the release of data about 12,000 New York teachers that was requested by several city newspapers under the Freedom of Information Act.

NYC Schools Chancellor Joel Klein has come out in support of the release of the teachers' scores, a belief he defends in a recent Op Ed in the New York Post. Klein says that the ratings give an indication of teacher performance and the public has a right to the information.

Responding to critics who argue that the data is not enough to evaluate a teacher, Klein writes,

No one believes value-added data tell the whole story of a teacher. But it provides a valuable window into teacher effectiveness, which is why we have used and will continue to use the data when we determine whether to award lifetime tenure.

Klein followed up his Op Ed by reaching out directly to New York City educators on Monday, NY Daily News reports.

In a letter to teachers and principals, Klein reminded readers that the ratings were not set to be released by the Department of Education, but that newspapers had requested the information. According to NY Daily News, Klein also asserted his belief that the teacher ratings would be helpful to parents.

Parent reaction is exactly one of the reasons sited by the teachers unions that the rankings should not be released. According to Yahoo News, the lawsuit filed by the United Federation of Teachers claims parental harassment could be a consequence of teacher ratings in the hands of the public.

Comments

[Charles Tyler]

06:06 PM on 10/29/2010

posting the scores in a newspaper is beneficial to no one. The scores should be posted on a school or district website, with the full names of individual teachers withheld. These newspapers arent trying to hold teachers accountable but are trying to embarrass and harass them. Why dont we also report the success rates of all doctors and surgeons in NYC? Dont patients have the right to know?
If you want full accountability why not post the names of the teachers and their scores and then the names of their students with their test scores. But that is ridiculous.

[JTMNY]

01:54 PM on 10/28/2010

I always read about the need for teachers to better perform, to do more, take more responsibility. I don't read that parents should be expected to be more active in the lives of their children, or take responsibility for making sure their children work hard in school. Children have to want to learn, and that desire has to be fostered beyond 8:30 - 3:30 in the school buildings.

It is sad that Mr. Klein has decided the only way to improve the NYC school system is to punish its teachers and blame the teachers for all of the problems.

[Kimiko Austin-Rijs]

09:20 AM on 10/28/2010

There is a lot of attention given to "producing the best and brightest" and just do not get it. The cold hard fact is most students are average. They are not Einstein,Curie nor will they be the next Frost and to believe otherwise is deceptive. I am not stating that we should not encourage students to be the best that they can be; but, the best that MOST students can ever be is average. We have average doctors, attorneys, accountants,secretaries, teachers and a whole host of professionals. There is to much emphasis placed on high scoring and not enough placed on comprehension. There are a many a student that pass test with flying colors that have no real comprehension of the subject itself. I remember being a C student in math. There were some students that had a better grasp of mathematical concepts than I. I am OK with that.The most important thing is that I had clear comprehension of the material. We are to quick to assign failure where there is none and not quick enough to give up on broken models that have never worked.

[Kimiko Austin-Rijs]

08:38 AM on 10/28/2010

So these are the same flawed scores that Mr. Klein and Bloomberg manipulated for political gain that they want to release? Most parents will not understand that this is not an indictment against what those scores would render as an inefficient teacher. Nope this man is a fool and I hope that the courts do not allow for the release of faulty scores that only result in more confusion than called for.

[teacher39years]

06:50 PM on 10/27/2010

I've been posting a lot about basketball players telling teachers how to teach. I wouldn't try to tell them how to play basketball, and I would appreciate them not telling me how to teach.

[Josh Premo]

03:40 PM on 10/28/2010

Without classroom expirience, a person would have a hard time understanding the vast amount of work it is. Teaching isn't a 9-5 job you leave when you go home for the night or weekend.

[teacher39years]

06:42 PM on 10/27/2010

Michelle Rhee's fiance used to play basketball in the NBA. He's really good at basketball. He ran Americorps, a "volunteer " agency that had quite a few business dealings with DC schools. There is some controversy and allegations around him.

[cjaco]

06:38 PM on 10/27/2010

Are these the same scores that Klein and Bloomberg manipulated to keep them in office? And now they want to use it against teachers?

[teacher39years]

06:43 PM on 10/27/2010

Yes. They were also proved to be invalid and unreliable, but that didn't stop them either.

[teacher39years]

06:34 PM on 10/27/2010

Actually, Obama considered Klein to become Secretary of Education, but I guess he wan't that good at basketball.

[teacher39years]

06:22 PM on 10/27/2010

Arne Duncan has a Bachelor's degree in Sociology and played semi-pro basketball in Australia. He was appointed by Mayor Daley to be the CEO of Chicago Public Schools, where he played basketball with Obama during their leisure time. Obama actually sent him to Chicago to "campaign" for Democrats in the Midterm elections.

[Frustrated in PA]

08:45 PM on 10/27/2010

I wish I could re-fan you.....so I will fave. You speak the absolute truth about Duncan. That man gets on my nerves more than Glenn Beck, yes I SAID IT! He is a charlatan to me, a glorified basketball player, who never played in the pros, judging people with more degrees and experience in education than he will ever have.

[Josh Premo]

03:45 PM on 10/28/2010

Great post! Duncan does not have nearly the credentials he should have to be in such a high office. It makes me sick that he has so much power, without the technical knowledge to use it wisely.

[The Educator]

04:56 PM on 10/27/2010

Where is the accountability for Joel Klein, Michelle Rhee and Arne Duncan, all non-educators who believe that the assessment of teaching is quantifiable and who use the "test and punish" approach to education reform.? Isn't it time that we view education through different lenses and have educators provide the educational leadership in this country ? Why does Mayor Bloomberg choose someone with appropriate credentials to head the NYC Police Department and why does President Obama choose a lawyer to head the Justice Department while choosing a non-educator to provide leadership in education ?There is something wrong with this scenario and until we have properly credentialed educational leaders, there will never be improvement in public education in this country.

[maninal]

05:23 PM on 10/27/2010

Ask classroom teachers who runs their schools... their districts. Are they run by former teachers? Rarely if at all. Adopting a business model for teaching has proven to be an abject failure. So now it's the teacher's fault. Just like it's the unionized floor sweeper who destroyed GM.

[traceydouglas]

06:39 PM on 10/27/2010

Brilliantly stated!!!

[Christopher Bowen]

03:48 PM on 10/27/2010

I think this one is a potential Pandora's Box for a number of reasons. First, off hand, I can't think of another profession where performance evaluations are made public. Secondly, this could easily lead to teachers leaving schools where they are most needed to find work in schools that typically test better. The teachers may start to follow the testers. The poor will get poorer under that model. Having said that, real accountability should play a vital role in education reform. Just not this test. There are multiple measures many teachers use to track improvement in their classrooms. We need to rely on a more complete picture of what's going on in our classrooms. Let's have a more comprehensive model of measured achievement first, before we start to publicly evaluate teachers.

Also, it would be interesting to see how parents might respond to these public evaluations. I've read what I thought were some interesting and telling stats about teacher firings. Teachers in the non union school districts fire even fewer teachers than the unions do. Parents tend to stick by teachers they like, despite data. Schools failing, according to No Child Left Behind, are required to send out a notice offering to have their kids bused to a school that is not failing based on those same standards. Rarely, do parents choose to move those kids. So, who knows how parents might respond to the evaluations.

Chris Bowen
Author of "Our Kids: Building Relationships in the Classroom"

[akinca]

07:00 PM on 10/27/2010

Not only will the poor get poorer, but even teachers who stay in their schools will abandon teaching the kids who struggle with learning disabilities or who are behind in grade level reading. We designed an elective class for students and their parents to choose to take which follows the grade level curriculum, but at a pace designed to address learning disability gaps. I was asked by the students, administrators and special ed department to teach the class, because I "compassionately challenge them." Should I now say no to teaching that class next year because maybe they won't all make as many strides as I hope/work for and my professional reputation will be dragged through the local paper? I should really use my seniority to demand all of the Honors kids... I would never do that - but it's where this kind of policy will go.

[mrnormalpants]

12:37 AM on 10/28/2010

the system is a value added measure and kids that have done extremely well will be expected to continue to perform at a high level. On the other hand, if you go into a poor area and improve outcomes a little bit for students that were scoring in a very low percentile and regressing further, then you'd actually look pretty good on this evaluation. It tries to take past achievement and ability of your classes into account and has nothing to do with the absolute scores your kids put up on the tests.

[Sharkcellar]

03:36 PM on 10/27/2010

Great, demonize our teachers even more as our country is overrun by the teabagging intellectually incurious.

[Lake Saganaga]

11:38 PM on 10/27/2010

Rick Ayers pointed out in an interview that the male hedge funders & billionaire boys are out to take out the feminine profession of teaching. There are crossovers - the macho Rhee and male teachers , just to clarify.

[oldschooldemocrat]

02:54 PM on 10/27/2010

As a professor for almost 40 years and the daughter of a public school teacher, I think I can speak with some confidence about the value of having access to information about student results over time. No teacher should be judged based on the performance of an individual student or even a single class. Too many variables are present. On the other hand, data can actually show whether, over time, a particular teacher's students gain ground in her classroom or fail to thrive in her classroom when compared to other teachers' students' performances in the same school and at the same grade level. If most of a teacher's students make progress in his classroom as demonstrated by standardized criteria semester after semester, year after year, it's probably safe to assume he's a good teacher if not a great one. If most students don't make progress at all or actually start to lose ground semester after semester, year after year, the teacher probably sucks (to use the professional jargon). If we are going to put so much emphasis on standardized testing, let's at least use it to have sound, non-political justification for eliminating teachers that everyone in the school (students, administrators and other teachers) already knows to be sub-par. I'm a union member. I believe in unions. I don't believe unions are meant to protect disgraces to my profession.

[Frustrated in PA]

03:21 PM on 10/27/2010

I agree with everything you said. And I am also an "old school Dem" who teaches at the college level (adjunct only).

I think the real issue is that data is useful but the question what is the data based on and should it be made public? I have worked in many public sector jobs and NEVER had an individual evaluation made public. I also question the evaluations as I have worked with school districts and many of the evals are not based on things such as actual performance monitoring and observation. It has to be more than just based on student testing...too many arbitrary factors can skew that such as parent involvement, student homework and student special needs. Then there are the obvious problems such as overcrowding not to mention the intense social problems that surround many districts. The eval must be truly individualized, sit in on the classroom, look at lesson plans, teacher development etc. Unfortunately, in the districts I have worked with, only 1/2 are actually implementing these type of evals.

Quite frankly, the NCLB model of standardized testing has sucked the creativity out of our students, relying on memorization and spoon feeding material because we have tied funding to testing. In PA, students prepare for the PSSA's for 2 whole weeks, nothing but PSSA testing and drills. It is not learning, it is cramming.

[Mimi Carter]

10:50 PM on 10/27/2010

I think it is not necessary to publicize the teachers' scores. The district should use the scores in combination with observations and evaluations, to either exit the teacher out or retain them, or retain them with professional development if the scores are mixed. I think it is a wasted opportunity to not use these scores to make choices on where to place and how to support teachers best.

[SangZe]

02:50 PM on 10/27/2010

Sell all the publ;ic schools to the highest bidder. Perhaps the Chinese would be interested.

[Lake Saganaga]

11:40 PM on 10/27/2010

You might be upto something real here.

http://www.google.com/search?q=atlantic+chicago+meters&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

Today it is parking meters, highways. Tomorrow it will be schools. Read the Matt Taibbi book excerpt in RS - be forewarned though - might make you throw up.

[payneok]

02:40 PM on 10/27/2010

I thought so before but after seeing the movie "Waiting on Superman" I have been more convinced than ever that we have to make it easier to get bad teachers out of the classrooms or get kids out of their classroom (ie vouchers). I had to pull my son out of our local school system years ago because he had a couple of terrible teachers (he's an honor student now BTW). I think the Chancellor is just playing a game of "tit for tat" with the Teachers unions. What we need to do is stop blaming parents - unless we want the government taking even MORE kids from parents and raising them in Foster care or orphanages and work on what Gov't can fix which is removing poor performing teachers, paying top performers more, and testing kids to ensure they meet standards. Clearly the problem with schools has to do with Parents AND teachers...we can only fix one of these. BTW Go see the movie Waiting for Superman - if you don't cry at the end you're a tougher man than I am.

[Skoobs]

02:43 PM on 10/27/2010

That's what propaganda in film looks like. If it doesn't make you cry and shout "witch" then they've failed to "convince" you.

[payneok]

03:24 PM on 10/27/2010

So what part was the Propaganda? The thousands of students in lotteries for a better public school educations? The more than 600 NYC teachers being paid to sit for months and in some cases years while schools were cutting budgets and going broke? Maybe it was stack of red tape for what a superintendent had to do to get rid of a bad teachers? Everything is propaganda my friend. The trick is not to be cynical and look for hints of truth and focus on what can be fixed. Teaching children is a PRIVILEGE and a good education a RIGHT in America. Lets get the best and brightest in teaching positions and the remove the ones that shouldn't be there. If we dont' want to do that lets try a Voucher system and let people take their kids to schools where the teachers are held to standards.

[MarcEdward]

08:08 PM on 10/27/2010

"What we need to do is stop blaming parents"

ROTFLOL
As a parent I heartily disagree. I see the difference in how my sons behave (never in trouble, always do their homework, good grades) and other kids. By and large, good parents produce kids who are ready for school and do well.
I disagree that the schools "blaming the parents" would have to do more. It's just time to recognize the "law of diminishing returns" - you cannot keep forever using the public schools to provide ever expanding non-educational services. Sure, free breakfast and lunch - that makes sense - but after a certain point we have to recognize that some kids are not interested in getting an education, and some parent's don't give a rat's read end. Free Public Education is a massive opportunity for just about every kid out there. You cannot make them learn if they refuse to do it.

[sydneymoon]

07:29 AM on 10/28/2010

"As a parent I heartily disagree. I see the difference in how my sons behave (never in trouble, always do their homework, good grades) and other kids. By and large, good parents produce kids who are ready for school and do well."

I tell some of my students, " If my own three children are not allowed to treat me disrespectfully, what make you think I would allow YOU to treat me disrepectfully?"

I told me own children that school was their job and they all rose to the occasion. If they had a complaint about a teacher, I listened. Sometimes the complaint had merit, other times I asked my son or daughters needling questions as to what they may have done to warrent "unfair" treatment. A confession usually followed such as, "Well, maybe I was talking" or "I handed my work in late".
It taught them to take ownership of their education.