NYC DOE Teachers!: Tune in to Hear the United For Change caucus leaders

NYC DOE Teachers!: Tune in to Hear the United For Change caucus leaders, today at 4:00 pm

You have an alternative to the Unity Caucus: a coalition of the opposition caucuses. Hear what the new leaders have to say.

https://www.mobilize.us/unitedforchange/event/434678/?fbclid=IwAR1JzfPj4rTnNeL6hFHY1PmWxS-pxGRyDn52n4zLmqqirXoNZ61AvFg-WGE

Dozens of U.S. Cities, No Dec. 23 School --Only Other Open Major NE School District--Philly, Just for P.D.

     *Big cities w/o Dec. 23 school listed    *MORE petition for making Monday Dec. 23 a vacation day
UFT President for Eternity, Michael Mulgrew, uses the excuse that the curious December 23, 2019 New York City school schedule is handed down from Albany.

QUESTION: Mulgrew has such clout in Albany? Then why can he not get accomplished democratic autonomy for New York City? We have no home rule. We are a petty fief of the state. Maybe Mulgrew and the UNITY clan like it this way: a little number of players can negotiate with each other in secret, unlike locales school districts that putting the decision on whether to open December 23 up an open public discussion. This fiasco shows the failure of having mayoral control where major decisions impacting the schools are addressed behind closed doors.

It will be pretty awkward and difficult leading classes and getting work accomplished, when all the news and other media will be mentioning vacations having begun over the weekend. Students exposed to this will be mighty jealous and embittered. Of all the days school will feel like confinement, this will be it.

Other big cities, unlike New York City, closed on December 23:
Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Phoenix (break begins on Dec. 20), San Antonio, San Diego.
Philadelphia will be open on Dec. 23 --only for professional development.

Other Northeast cities with populations over 100,000, closed on Dec. 23, these districts have already released their 2019-2020 school year calendars:
Washington, DC, Boston, Baltimore,
Worcester, Providence, Springfield (Dec. 20 is a p.d. day), Rochester, Yonkers,  Stamford, Allentown, Cambridge, Lowell (Dec. 20: 'Holiday Vacation Begins at the Close of Day'), Manchester, NH (Dec. 20: early release for elementary schools), Waterbury, CT, Lakewood, NJ.

And others:
New Bedford, MA ('from the close of school on Dec. 20'), Brockton, MA, Quincy, MA 

Exceptions:
Woodbridge, NJ (4 hour day, Dec. 23)

To be determined:
Newark, Jersey City, Buffalo, Syracuse, Paterson, Edison, Elizabeth,
Bridgeport, New Haven, Hartford

PLEASE CLICK TO SIGN THE PETITION TO CHANCELLOR CARRANZA TO REMOVE DECEMBER 23 FROM THE NEW YORK CITY DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION SCHOOLS SCHEDULE, AS NEARLY EVERY OTHER SCHOOL DISTRICT HAS DONE.

Mulgrew Gives 'Blame NY State' As Its Excuse for Dec. 23 School Day --So Why Do Other Cities Take Dec. 23 Off Their Calendars?

Michael Mulgrew's [Unity Caucus leadership] has negotiated away Monday December 23, 2019 as a functioning school day --in spite of the precedence of no school sessions for four previous instances of December 23 on Mondays.
President Mulgrew gave the excuse that the calendar constraints are dictated by New York State.

Yet, the districts in New York State that have so far released their 2019-2020 school calendars have all December 23 treated as part of Holiday Break.
So, NYC Is the only school system in New York yet to schedule 12/23/19 as a school day. In descending order of population. (Cities that have not issued their calendars are not listed.)
Since all known calendars exclude Dec. 23 why does NYC have school that day?

Yonkers: December 23 is off.
Clarkstown [Spring Valley is partly in the Clarkstown district]: December 23 is off. 
Long Beach: December 23 is off.
Harrison: December 23 is off.
Lindenhurst: December 23 is off.
Glen Cove: December 23 is off.
Rockville Centre: December 23 is off.
Garden City: December 23 is off.
West Hempstead: December 23 is off.
Lynbrook: December 23 is off.
Mamaroneck: December 23 is off.
Mineola: December 23 is off.
Scarsdale: December 23 is off.
Massapequa: December 23 is off.
Blind Brook-Rye: December 23 is off.
Babylon: December 23 is off.
Patchogue-Medford: December 23 is off.
Dobbs Ferry: December 23 is off.
Great Neck: December 23 is off.
Half Hollow Hills [Dix Hills, Melville, parts of Deer Park, East Farmingdale, West Hills]: December 23 is off.
Hastings-on-Hudson: December 23 is off.
Northport &  East Northport: December 23 is off.
East Williston: December 23 is off.
Pleasantville: December 23 is off.
New Paltz: December 23 is off.
Warwick Valley: December 23 is off.
Tuckahoe: December 23 is off.
Malone: December 23 is off.
Hilton: December 23 is off.
Elmsford: December 23 is off.
Ardsley: December 23 is off.
Gouverneur: December 23 is off.

SIGN THE PETITION: ASK NYC DOE CHANCELLOR RICHARD CARRANZA TO REMOVE DEC. 23 FROM THE 2019-2020 CALENDAR:

Make Monday, December 23rd a vacation day for NYC schools!

 

Apartment prices in Brooklyn Have Risen Over 6% - So, How Does a 2% Teachers Pay Raise Cut It?

The United Federation of Teachers is rushing through with approval of a new UFT-DOE contract. It released the details Friday afternoon and the delegates voted on it that night. It contains only a two percent raise when it would start in February 14, 2019. But teachers in New York City are facing costs increases far greater than that. Younger teachers, a large proportion of the teaching workforce are facing an even greater burden.

The contract contains increases after the first 2 percent increase of 2.5 percent, and then 3 percent. However, there are several months of no increase in pay. So, over the life of the contract, until Sept. 13, 2022, the increase is actually just 1.94 percent annually.

Housing costs have been increasing at far greater rates than the 2, 2.5, 3 percent increases. Curbed in summer of last year reported that rental prices in New York City, in the bottom fifth tier of rents, had increased 4.9 percent since 2010. Overall rents increased between December 2009 and June 2017 at an annual rate of 3.9 percent.

High rent rates are forcing renters to put increasing percentages of their income into rent, squeezing out payment to other essentials needed for a sound financial future.

“As New Yorkers—particularly the lowest earners—are forced to dedicate more of their monthly income toward rent, it becomes extremely difficult to save for necessities like healthcare and education, or a down payment on a home.” --StreetEasy senior economist Grant Long.

For those teachers actually able to enter the apartment buyers' market, increases are even steeper. Apartment prices in Brooklyn rose 68.1 percent from 2006 to 2016, an annual increase of 6.81 percent, more than three times the rate of inflation, the Brick site reported in February 2017. Prices for the same period for Manhattan apartments rose 63.8 percent, for an annual average of 6.38 percent.

Greater strain on millenial teachers

Newer teachers are paying back loans on tuition rates that have grown at higher percentages than an oft cited current 2.2 percent interest rate. Of course, rates vary from teacher to teacher, by which college they attended and by what the tuition was while they attended, but it is important to contrast that 2.2 figure against overall averages.

The DOE prefers to recruit its newer teachers from the more elite schools. The tuition increase at the top 50 private institutions for the 2017 to 2018 academic year was average of 3.6 percent.  As USA Today noted, several institutions increased their tuition (forming the higher end of that average) at even higher rates. Lehigh University raised tuition by five percent in that year. Cal Tech increased its rate by 4.94 percent.

In fact, across the board, college tuition rates rise at rates higher than the general inflation rate. One former administrator noted that colleges raise rates by measuring tuitions against Higher Education Price Index (HEPI). Tom Lindsey added, "Between 1985 and 2011, average tuition nationwide increased 498 percent—more than four times the rate of general inflation (114 percent) as measured by the Consumer Price Index (CPI)."

All in all, younger teachers are paying back college loans that are greater burdens --even adjusted for inflation-- than amounts paid by teachers entering the teaching profession ten or twenty years ago. Teachers need to demand more from the UFT and the DOE.

Why It Matters to Come to the Important Jan. 5 Meeting to Plan for a Pushback Against DeBlasio's Closure or Merging of 14 Renewal Schools

Come to the planning meeting of January 5, tomorrow at the City as School, 16 Clarkson Street in Greenwich Village, 4:30 to 6:30 pm with activists from the Movement of Rank and File Educators (MORE) caucus of the United Federation of Teachers (UFT).

This meeting is for planning how to respond to Bill De Blasio's plan to close many Renewal Schools. It is essential to prepare for the February 28 Panel for Educational Policy meeting at M.S. 131, at 100 Hester Street. As veterans and close observers of the New York City Department of Education under Bloomberg and DeBlasio know, teachers have been blamed as the sole factor for student performance, and a result, the city has pursued several flawed policies. It has broken comprehensive schools into several smaller schools in the same building and it has pressured teachers into leaving the system early.

Difference only in name; same flawed anti-teacher, anti-student policies

Here is how the latter pattern works: the DOE forces teachers to reapply for their jobs. This is disingenuous, as the experienced teachers draw higher salaries. Under "Fair Student Funding" schools have limited budgets for staffing and principals have strong incentives to hire less experienced teachers at lower salaries. Teachers lucky enough to find positions find themselves working in schools in which far fewer teachers have the institutional memory of how schools worked well in the past; they also have a fewer teachers with a memory of how teachers were treated with professional respect in the past. Most teachers from these broken up schools will go into the Absent Teacher Reserve pool, and will rotate between schools, sometimes working as substitutes, sometimes working as teachers with regular programs. All told, this demoralizes teachers. Hundreds of teachers from these schools will become ATRs.

The union, the United Federation of Teachers? They will calmly parrot the DOE line that teachers need to polish their resume if they want a regularly assigned position.

Experts know better. As Alan Singer, an education professor from Hofstra University and director of there recently wrote, De Blasio's school closing policy is a failed policy that does not consider the impact of social inequalities..

Additionally, as Singer noted, the record has demonstrated that the school closing policy does not produce the desired results. Lastly, as the Chaz School Daze blog has cited, the schools under De Blasio and Bloomberg just show improvement under fraudulent pretenses. Teachers are pressed to pass everyone. And the result is that students are quite ill-prepared for college or careers.

MORE/New Action Win HS Seats on UFT Executive Board; Jia Far Ahead of Francesco

BREAKING NEWS: The ICEUFT blog reported that the seven MORE/New Action candidates for the executive board exceeded the votes for all if the Unity Caucus candidates.

For the presidential race, these figures are available: Michael Mulgrew (Unity), 39,176; Jia Lee (MORE/New Action), 10,743; Francesco Portelos (Solidarity), 1,456. This was the first time that an opposition caucus presidential candidate had broken 10,000 since 2001. And Lee's vote was 7.4 times the vote for Portelos. This is testimony to the growth of a caucus that is building at the school level, district by district, and a group that mainly organizes via online projects.

The high school vote was certainly a vindication for MORE-New Action over Solidarity. Coming into the vote, Solidarity looked ready to play the spoiler. It didn't field candidates for the at large executive board seats, but it did field many candidates at the high school level, creating the potential for a three-way split, helping Unity. Yet, MORE beat Unity and Solidarity across the board at the high school level.
In terms of turnout, perennially a problem for the UFT, which occurs by mail, instead of in the school (as happens in the Chicago Teachers Union), turnout improved for all the school division levels, including the functional sections. And compared to the last election, this time the number of active teachers voting exceeded the number of retirees voting, in contrast to what happened in 2013.

How You Should Cast Your Ballot and Why You Should Vote for the MORE and New Action slate

Here are images of how you should cast your ballot. First, here's the one page view, presenting how you should cast your ballot.

Here's how the process in a few practical steps. Find the envelope indicating that it contains the official UFT ballot. Check off the ballot box that is marked for the MORE/New Action slate. Put the ballot in the envelope, and then put that envelope into the final envelope.
Still needing guidance? Here are some FAQs from the MORE Caucus UFT website.

WHY YOU SHOULD VOTE FOR THE MORE/New Action SLATE
When you vote for Michael Mulgrew and the Unity slate you are voting for the evaluations based on high stakes and Value Added Modeling, or VAM (rebuked by a judge last week in the Shari Lederman case). Furthermore, remember that Mulgrew has consistently supported Gov. Andrew Cuomo and his ill-minded policies. (Mulgrew took his support so far that in 2014 he threatened to defund the Working Families Party if it endorsed Zephyr Teachout for governor over Cuomo).
A major negative development under Mulgrew's tenure has been the change to the new evaluation system used at the city level. The evaluations have increased in number and have followed the absurd Danielson model. Mulgrew endorsed every worsening step of the evaluation Advance Evaluation system. He even asked for the DOE to evaluate teachers along more areas than even the DOE first sought in the negotiations.

And remember that Cuomo has supported the regressive education reform forces that led New York State education: John King and Merryl Tisch. And remember that Cuomo failed to listen to parents and educators that Common Core was an inherently flawed set of standards. (See this analysis of how Mulgrew endorsed Cuomo's New York State-level evaluation dictates.) Yet, Mulgrew has aggressively supported the standards, at one union function, threatening violence to anyone who dared to take them away. Mulgrew perpetuated the fiction that teachers had a role in writing the standards, when the truth is that no K through 12 educator wrote them.

Locally, Mulgrew has continued the Unity tradition of liking for a friendly mayoral candidate, and then failing to criticize the mistakes of that politician's policies once they are in office. Witness his continued support for mayor Bill DeBlasio whose chancellor Carmen Farina has proven to be no better than Bloomberg's chancellors. He has not challenged the DOE administration to part from the Bloomberg ways, and he has ignored the continuing problem of charter school encroachment on community schools and other district schools. By contrast, Jia Lee and the MORE caucus have challenged the administration on this enduring problem.

NYC Eye Endorses Jia Lee and the MORE slate for UFT's election in May

Vote for MORE & New Action. Elect a new leadership for the UFT. Leadership that's actually working in the classroom.
https://morecaucusnyc.org/uft-elections-2016/
https://morecaucusnyc.org/2016/01/02/our-2016-platform/
Hear WBAI interview Jia Lee (Presidential candidate), Camille Eterni (Secretary) and Jonathan Halabi (High School seat on the Executive Board) on the issues facing New York City teacher. Tune in to the "Building Bridges" show, Monday, April 25, 7:00-8:00 pm at 99.5 FM. If you're out of the broadcast area, catch the live stream at www.wbai.org.

UFT Chapter Leaders Had to Go to Members For Dues? It Happened More Recently Than You Think

There is much nervous chatter that the United Federation of Teachers eventually will have to go to its members for dues.

Here is a link to a news report from three decades ago, on how the UFT had to do just that, albeit as a residual penalty for a five day strike seven years earlier.

By Damon Stetson, in the New York Times,May 23, 1982:

U.F.T. STARTS DRIVE TO GATHER ITS DUES

Myra Entenberg, a slim and energetic teacher at Public School 116 on East 33d Street, is playing an important role in keeping the United Federation of Teachers afloat financially. She is one of the union's 1,000 chapter chairmen working to assure the payment of dues following the union's loss of the right to deduct them automatically from paychecks.

''I've been talking to my group before class, during my prep period, at lunch and after school,'' she said. ''If support of the union is not solid, I've been telling them, they'll have no bargaining agent, no contract, no working conditions or benefits and no machinery for handling grievances. But most of the teachers and paraprofessionals here in P.S. 116 want to keep paying their dues because they've been getting service. And so far about 80 percent have agreed to make individual payments.''

The union's $15 million-a-year dues collection problem stems from a penalty imposed by the New York State Public Employment Relations Board for the illegal, five-day strike of the city's teachers in 1975. The penalty called for the suspension of the right to have dues automatically deducted from paychecks for up to two years.

The union went to court immediately to challenge the ruling. But the issue dragged through the courts for nearly seven years until last month, when the State Court of Appeals upheld the suspension order, forcing the union to begin direct collection of dues from its 70,000 members this month. 'Pretty Devastating' Loss

Albert Shanker, president of the union, said that implementation of the penalty could not have come at a worse time and that the loss of dues checkoff was ''pretty devastating'' financially. He said the union is now fighting budget cuts by the Reagan Administration that could mean the loss of $180 million for schools here and with it the jobs of thousands of teachers and paraprofessionals. The state-aid picture, he said, is unclear. And now, he added, the union has to devote a lot of time, energy and money to collect dues. Will the union be able to survive?

''That depends on the response of our members,'' Mr. Shanker said. ''If everybody pays, the union will survive and function on all cylinders. Even better, we will have shown those who'd like to destroy us that they can't.

''On the other hand, if any substantial numbers of our members don't pay their dues, we could go under - and very quickly.'' The union, he pointed out, does not have cash reserves. He said all dues money was spent on services to members: on negotiations, grievances and arbitration, on legal services and on lobbying at City Hall, in the Legislature and in Congress. Other money is spent, he said, on pension workshops, publications, curriculum guides, special courses for licensure, for help in the classroom, and for public relations. Union Makes Cutbacks

As a result of the loss of dues checkoff, the federation has let some staff members go, canceled plans for new hiring and stopped contributions to such causes as the American Cancer Society, museums, Boy Scouts and various foundations.

To counter the impact, the union has mounted an aggressive and sophisticated drive to collect dues and maintain services. By this week, the first in which dues have not been deducted from paychecks by the Board of Education, the union said it had received commitments from 28,573 members for payment of dues during the extended penalty period. At 40 schools, teachers and paraprofessionals are 100 percent pledged to continue their dues payments, according to the union.

For the full New York Times article, click here.

DeBlasio's Cell Phone Policy Threatens Community Business and Positive Educational Outcomes

*Bronx neighb mayhem out of control *Problems of cell phone use as a social justice issue 

Bill DeBlasio has placated parents' desire for their children to take cell phones to school. However, the new policy has several negative impacts on communities and on educational outcomes. All parties concerned with peaceful neighborhoods and positive educational outcomes should argue for the mayor and the New York City Department of Education to re-think the cellphone policy.

News outlets across the country, in the Los Angeles area ("Parents Concerned by Fist Fights Posted on Social Media"), to Georgia ("Social Media Poses Challenge for Schools as Student Fights Spread, Schools and the community dissect the troubling student fights that are gaining notoriety online, are reporting that school fights are being captured by students and are being shared on social media, such as Facebook and Instagram") are reporting youth mayhem that is fed by the wide availability of cell phones.

In the last two months, Bronx schools and neighborhoods are slipping into chaos. Unless DeBlasio steps in, these neighborhoods will slip further into a Clockwork Orange kind of disorder. First this happened in the Evander Childs campus. Yet, this is taking a worsening, escalating course in the Westchester Square area. And local authorities are seeing these fights as gang-related.

Just as the Bronx is experiencing a renaissance, cellphone-triggered chaos is jeopardizing that progress. Several news outlets are reporting that, as in other schools in the city (as had been reported to me by a school safety agent also), only weeks after DeBlasio and Chancellor Carmen Farina lifted the cellphone ban, students started to arrange fights, coordinated by using cellphones, within the school and by contacting individuals outside of the school. As reported this week and last week, city councilors in the Bronx are suspecting that students at the Lehman campus have started a routine of setting off fire alarms, then coordinating fights via cellphone. Additionally, students are documenting the fights with their cell phones, and then sending the fights viral, by social media sites.

These fights are now happening a few times a week, and students are extending the mayhem to commercial districts, such as Westchester Square. Merchants' shop windows are being broken. Stoked by the adrenaline of the disorder, students are harassing store owners with racial slurs. Some shopkeepers have said that if this continues they will be forced to close. The continuing mayhem hit the New York Post this weekend.

Will this change? Hardly likely. The major stakeholders, the mayor, the schools chancellor, the city teachers union president Michael Mulgrew are committed to a permissive cell phone policy. The absence of a popularly elected school board means that reversal of this policy will be quite slow.

The legacy of Michael Bloomberg's school policies are worsening matters. Bloomberg, cooperating the Bill Gates' small schools initiatives, broke up large high schools. Cooperating with the influence of Eli Broad, a new breed of principals, with limited school experience and little or no initial training as school assistant principals, have taken office. As the schools were broken up, the numbers of deans shrank or disappeared. Also, guidance counselor ranks shriveled up, as the DOE replaced their roles with those of classroom teachers, assigning the latter "advisory periods."

The outcome of these policies is that greater numbers of students now roam the halls, unchecked by deans conducting sweeps. The new principals lack the institutional memory of years of experience as teachers and assistant principals, years that would give them experience in the basics of managing schools. Places like Lehman campus are stuffed with schools led by neophyte principals. Leading a school is more than supervising teachers. While the Leadership Academy principals think that their role is just to supervise teachers, experience school leaders know that setting school tone is important.

The critical negative impact of cell phones and the fruits of cell phone bans

Research reported this year indicated that when schools implement cell phone bans test scores improve.  The gains are even greater in schools with lower income populations. Researchers, being out of the classroom as actual teachers are missing the terrible scale of distraction that phones and game players provide: means for taking pictures, shooting video, viewing pictures, watching videos, viewing pornography. It is disingenuous for all the parties promoting their introduction into the classroom. Only the well motivated students will commit themselves to keeping them out of site and out of use. To the distractable student, few topics can compete with messaging gossip, porno pictures or bloody games.


The United Kingdom researchers directly criticized DeBlasio and Farina's decision to lift the cell phone ban, as reported this year in the Guardian ("Schools that ban mobile phones see better academic results: Effect of ban on phones adds up to equivalent of extra week of classes over a pupil’s school year"):

However, some schools are starting to allow limited use of the devices. New York mayor Bill de Blasio has lifted a 10-year ban on phones on school premises, with the city’s chancellor of schools stating that it would reduce inequality.

This view is misguided, according to Beland and Murphy, who found that the ban produced improvements in test scores among students, with the lowest-achieving students gaining twice as much as average students. The ban had a greater positive impact on students with special education needs and those eligible for free school meals, while having no discernible effect on high achievers.

“We found that not only did student achievement improve, but also that low-achieving and low-income students gained the most. We found the impact of banning phones for these students was equivalent to an additional hour a week in school, or to increasing the school year by five days.

“Therefore, de Blasio’s lifting of the ban on mobile phones with a stated intention of reducing inequalities may in fact lead to the opposite. Allowing phones into schools will harm the lowest-achieving and low-income students the most.”

Thus, DeBlasio's cell phone policy hurts the lower income and special education students.

So, we can safely call the situation: DeBlasio and Mulgrew vs. students, and teachers, whose positive evaluations hinge on positive test scores.

Cell phones threaten educational process and they threaten

Brooklyn event on NYC school segregation, 9/16: Why New York? Our Segregated Schools Epidemic

New York City schools remain highly segregated nationally, in terms of race and class, as indicated in this UCLA study last year. Both mayor Bill de Blasio and schools chancellor Carmen Farina have failed to adequately address the issue.

A forum at the Brooklyn Historical Society tomorrow addresses the issue. (128 Pierrepont Street, Brooklyn, NY)

Why New York? Our Segregated Schools Epidemic

Click here to register for the free tickets. 

Of course, the UFT, with its eternal mode of cozying to leaders, has failed to recognize or struggle on the issue publicly. It stood quiet while this segregation escalated in the Bloomberg years.

The Narrow, Myopic Vision of the Solidarity Caucus

7/14 postscript on doublethink below.
A novice United Federation of Teachers (UFT) caucus, Solidarity, is making a premature run for the 2016 union election. Much attention has been given to related personal controversies. This article takes the opportunity to look at the caucus, its origins and its campaign program or platform.

The caucus had in its genesis an intense opposition to both the MORE Caucus and the Unity Caucus statements of empathy for Eric Garner, who was killed in a chokehold by New York Police Department officers. In the nearly one year since, deadly police brutality, particularly against people of color, has become the civil rights issue of the nation. People from across the political spectrum were shocked and quite disappointed when a grand jury issued no indictment against any of the officials involved in killing Garner. This is important to recall when considering the character and principles of the caucus.

In its founding it insisted on staying narrowly focusing on teacher issues and on eschewing any attention to any other concerns beyond teachers' issues. Yet, while it appropriates the images of Albert Shanker, Unity Caucus leader of the UFT, it ignores that more largely, the labor union movement has taken stances of solidarity with civil rights activists and anti-war activists. It ignores that in 1957 the American Federation of Teachers dismissed locals that refused to desegregate. It ignores that the United Auto Workers, the AFT and other unions marched in solidarity in the 1963 Civil Rights March on Washington.  It ignores that strikes have had their greatest popularity when they had reached out to the community. Witness the work that the Lawrence 1912 Bread and Roses textile strikers did in reaching out to the community prior to their strike. Witness the parallel work that the Chicago Teachers Union has done when it took a year of community outreach in preparing for its 2012 strike. The CTU won widespread parent support after making sure to have a two-way dialog to understand the concerns of parents and students, instead of simply pursuing an employee-centered contract and strike campaign. Teacher-community partnership continues to this day in other examples such as St. Paul, Minnesota

Hypocritically, in the quest for allies for its caucus once it had an election in mind, it opportunistically parted from the caucus' founding principle to eschew larger issues or the community and solicited support from a community anti-high-stakes testing group, Change the Stakes.

Now, let us look at the Solidarity Caucus' platform and what is missing

While it gives attention to the special needs of Absent Teacher Reserve teachers (ATRs) where others are silent, this is almost where its issue attention ends. It does not look to the experiences of the regularly assigned teachers. One wonders if the authors even consulted regular classroom teachers. There is no specific discussion about the Danielson Framework, the New York State-dictated Measures of Student Learning (MOSLs) or other aspects of New York City's Advance teacher evaluation system. There is no attention to structural dynamics such as mayoral control, which determine the parameters of what the City Department of Education can do. There is no attention to the Common Core State Standards, which are alienating teachers from their profession and are alienating students from learning. There is no attention to the parent-student solidarity movement which is so essential for teachers who are suffering under the over-testing regimen, the opt-out movement. 

The caucus platform includes complaints about the use of tests in value-added metrics to evaluate teachers. However, the platform does not recognize how the testing emphasis is directly linked to other larger issues, some of which are issues that lead directly to the excessing of teachers into the ATR category: the DOE's testing focus narrows the latitude of what teachers can do in the classroom, the testing focus on core academic subjects crowds out attention to non-core subjects such as foreign language, the arts or physical education. Moreover, the platform studiously ignores larger social-economic-political realities. It ignores that there is a corporatist campaign by politicians in both major parties and an economic privatization campaign by privatizers that capitalize by the test-based stack ranking (rank ordering) of teachers and students and overall privatization of curricula, tests and schools.

Additionally, the caucus program's focus on the teacher involves an ignoring of the effect of the high-stakes tests on students themselves. It ignores the emotional stresses upon students and the attendant alienation from the schooling process in this overall climate of high-stakes testing and driving non-tested subjects out of the curriculum. Just as a decent doctor would care about a patient personally and their living and working conditions and how those impacted the person's health, one would hope that teachers would care about their student charges and the factors that impacted on their life. Just as one commenter on a blog in reaction to the formation of the caucus by saying that he cared about the living conditions of the students, I would echo those points. Teachers are choking under the attacks by corporatist politicians and by privatizatizers, and more rank and file teachers are recognizing this. Yet, Solidarity has made a big conceptual error to ignore this larger context in their program. In this sense, it is mirroring the conceptual errors that conventional, mainstream unions or caucuses, that Michael Mulgrew and the Unity Caucus makes.

Teachers ought to consider the larger social conditions impacting on students. As emphasized previously on this blog, income disparities are extreme in this nation and within the nation, income inequality is more extreme in New York city and state. (See this posting re inequality in the city; and regarding poverty impact on learning see introductory comments at this blog posting.) The stresses of race and class inequality impact on students' lives and negatively impact their educational performance. From issues of police mistreatment of youths of color to profound personal emotional stresses of poverty, these experiences inform the lived reality of the children that we teach in our classrooms. If we wish our students to have the best educational experience, we as teachers should not only attend to our own craft, our own performance, but we should also be concerned with recognizing the social inequality; we should work to change that inequality. This is why I am a social justice education unionist.

POSTSCRIPT:
There are many aspects about the organizing tactics of the key personalities in the caucus that are at once deceptive and deeply disturbing.  Most recently, a social media page connected with the group has been created. A Solidarity page headline boasts an army of 10,000. It turns out that the organizers of the page snatched up 10,000 names and made them --unwittingly, mind you-- into "supporters." This is putschist organizing at its basest.
New exploitative techniques in political deception on Facebook:
Just when you thought it could not get worse. The leader of Solidarity has taken the names of a few dozen well-known opponents of Michael Mulgrew and posted their names in Facebook postings. The risk is that the uninitiated would think that these persons endorse the Solidarity cult.
Doublethink alert:
The Solidarity leader ignores that the New Action caucus supports Michael Mulgrew in every election in NAC's quid pro quo for executive board seats, and he cries foul when Mulgrew and Unity opponents challenge his desire to ally with NAC, questioning whether they are truly an opposition caucus. Yet, Solidarity claims to oppose Mulgrew and Unity. Thus, this is a classic example of doublethink: the ability to hold two contradictory beliefs at the same time, especially used in political indoctrination. If you cannot be clear how Solidarity leaders think, can you be clear where their true convictions lie?

Cuomo in Quid Pro Quo with Hedge Funders in His School Bill

[UPDATE, From the HedgeClipper blog's HedgePapers No. 15: "Cuomo’s Latest Scheme: Tax Refunds for Billionaires Who Donate to Elite Private Schools and Privatized Charter Schools"]

Don't let the group name fool you: Cuomo's 1%er friends are getting a payback.

*Resist the Trojan Horse hype: Don't let Cuomo's bill's enticement of tax credit for teacher out-of-pocket spending for classroom supplies keep you from seeing what this bill is: a massive shifting of public money to private schools. This is a distraction. The state government ought to provide adequate money for classroom supplies within the schools. Teachers should not be obliged to pay to pay for the supplies.

The real education progressives can keep on waiting for U.S. District Attorney Preet Bharara to put New York Governor Andrew Cuomo in cuffs for the perp walk. In his boldest pay-back to his hedge fund patrons, he has pushed a new education bill that serves their interests.  Yet, in this age of the U.S. Supreme Court Citizens United decision Cuomo can probably get away with this as there are no restraints on political donations to candidates. Short of finding a recording of Cuomo and hedge funders in an explicit "I'll do this if you do this for me" conversation, Cuomo will be able to get away with this brazen give away to his hedge fund patrons.

The United Federation of Teachers (UFT) reported on their website (a day after "The New York Times" beat them to the punch in "Cuomo Promotes Tax Credits for Families of Students at Private Schools") that Cuomo in his new tax credit bill "Parental Choice in Education Act" will lower the taxes of large donors to private schools. Read also this UFT site on his pay-back/kick-back to his political contributors.

Quid pro Cuomo; somebody else is always to blame.

To dispel any doubt that Cuomo has benefited handsomely from the largesse of hedge funders, read, "Andrew Cuomo Has Taken Nearly $5 Million In Contributions From Hedge Funds: Report" from "The International Business Times," March 4, 2015.

On a closely related issue, read Juan Gonzalez' column, "Hedge fund executives give 'til it hurts to politicians, especially Cuomo, to get more charter schools," New York "Daily News", March 11, 2015.

To the UFT's credit it noted that Cuomo's proposal is a blatant give-away to elite donors.
The program allows for dollar for dollar write-off of donations to private schools.  For instance, someone donating a million dollars to a private school would have his or her taxes reduced by $1 million.

In his public pitch for the tax credit program in television ads, Cuomo is pitching this with social justice language, "giving every child an opportunity to excel" and similar rhetoric. Of  course the actual details are not in the ads. Yet, the actual intended beneficiaries of the program are private schools, for in order for the schools to receive the funds they must have foundations. Also, public schools can only get up to $20 million in tax credits, and tax credits to private schools can total $70 million.
As the UFT noted, this stands in irony, as the state owes more than $5 billion to schools, according to the Campaign for Fiscal Equity lawsuit settlement. The governor has balked at paying this money, yet in the meantime he has found the funds to give $150 million per year to underwrite the private schools and Cuomo's donors.

The UFT closed its article with the following criticism. [It is all valid, but it is disingenuous, as the Unity caucus-dominated UFT was solidly allied with Cuomo up through the challenge that he faced last year from upstart Zephyr Teachout: recall that the UFT (i.e., Michael Mulgrew and company) and other major state unions threatened to dissolve the Working Families if they would shift their allegiance from Cuomo to Teachout. Furthermore, Mulgrew's proxy Andy Pallotta paid $10,000 for a table a year ago at Cuomo's birthday fundraiser.]

Most telling is that Cuomo’s proposed tax credit bill bears striking resemblance to model legislation by the American Legislative Exchange Council, a right-wing group that wants to destroy public education and whose funders include the Koch family.

Our governor is in step with ALEC’s right-wing ideology against public schools. But he is far out of step with New York State residents, as recent polls show.

The state Legislature must reject this destructive proposal.

Michelle Rhee's group's link and legalized corruption
Former Washington, D.C. schools chancellor Michelle Rhee has moved on from her post-D.C. schools stint, StudentsFirst. Yet, the organization lives on. It is ever so active, in alignment with Cuomo and the Eva Moskowitz orbit of Democratic politics and "reform" education policies. Teachout last year excoriated the hedge-funders' influence as "legal corruption." From "A guide to what the big Cuomo donors want in 2015," Capital New York, December 8, 2014:

New Yorkers for a Balanced Albany, an independent expenditure committee formed by the pro-charter organization Students First NY, spent $4.2 million this past election cycle to help Republicans re-gain control of the Senate.

The bulk of that cash came in the final weeks of the campaign and was given by a dozen donors, most of them current or retired hedge fund managers like Paul Singer, Dan Loeb, Julian H. Robertson Jr., and Paul Tudor Jones II.

The alarm about this sector’s given has been sounded most aggressively by Zephyr Teachout, Cuomo’s Democratic primary opponent, who has now mended fences with the labor-backed Working Families Party (which first floated her as a candidate but ultimately endorsed the governor) to take on wealthy charter school backers.

According to Teachout, these donors are trying to undermine public education in New York by buying support for charters. In her mind, this is tantamount to “legal corruption.”

Newsday Front Page: NYSUT's Magee: Parents Should Opt Out Their Children

So on the March 31, 2015 editions of Newsday we read that NYSUT's Karen Magee advised: Parents Should Opt Out Their Children.

So why not New York City's President Michael Mulgrew?

Because he has always sung the reformer-friendly refrain, that all that is needed is better tests --that the testing regime itself is not onerous, it's just the implementation that is bad.

And maybe this is also reflecting how just a year ago Mulgrew was engineering a coup de etat of the New York State United Teachers (NYSUT) assembly at their convention at the home base of New York City. (Hmm, when do you suppose NYSUT will have its convention in a more mutual location, such as Utica?)

The irony is that among his handpicked NYSUT teachers, the leader is taking some bold positions such as her opposition to the high stakes tests. And such talk would get people remembering that Mulgrew just a year ago had bought a thousands dollars table at a Cuomo reelection fundraiser.

Update: NYSUT Vote on King: Iannuzzi - 1, Mulgrew - 0 / King/Tisch Declare War on ELA Students

Update: King and Tisch have moved the high-stakes test war on children up a notch. This makes the struggle against King/Cuomo and against Mulgrew all the more urgent. Scroll down for the analysis.

Yeah, OK, so the vote reports nowhere say this is Iannuzzi v. Mulgrew. However, inescapably, the vote represents a repudiation of what New York City teachers union United Federation of Teachers president Michael Mulgrew represents. This is a hopeful hint of shifting winds to come, in the coming battle between Mulgrew and Iannuzzi.

To remind readers, perhaps lost amidst other stories, there were reports of a major event this weekend, the NYSUT board of directors vote on president Iannuzzi's vote of no confidence against New York State Education Department Commissioner John King, as reported in EdNotes and in Valerie Strauss' Answer Sheet column at the Washington Post.

King Jeani XIV, "I am the State Education Department"

The vote set out a vote of no confidence against John King. We can recall no instance of Mulgrew point-blank criticizing King. Rather, the nearest we see is a tepid whine that teachers' Common Core problems will be solved by a beefed up curriculum.

Teachers in New York City and New York State must recognize that there are profound flaws in Michael Mulgrew that are vociferous defenses for the indefensible policies of John King. Perdido Street did some extremely important compilations of old posts that quintessentially capture the nightmarish betrayals that Mulgrew committed against the teachers of New York City. NYS teachers and their representatives would do well to study those missteps with the most exacting attention. See "Oldie But Goodie: Mulgrew "Frightened" By Opposition To Common Core," "Another Oldie But Goodie: Michael Mulgrew On Why John King Was A Great Figure To Impose A NYC Teacher Evaluation System," "And Yet Three More Oldies But Goodies: Michael Mulgrew Defends John King's APPR Teacher Evaluation System."

Update: for an excellent analysis of the behind the facades significance of this battle, see the analysis at the ICEUFT blog, MAKING SOME SENSE OF THE NYSUT LEADERSHIP SPLIT.

Why should NYS teachers and representatives care about what Michael Mulgrew or his proxy Andy Pallotta say or think? Pay close attention to what Mulgrew said for months last year: apologies for some of the worst policies that are destroying teachers' working conditions and their spirits. Reading Mulgrew's words, aren't you unsettled by what Mulgrew did in New York City? Would you for a minute risk his disastrous policies' being shoved over to the rest of New York State?

Heed the words of teachers that quit the profession or write poetry over the destruction of the teaching profession that they once loved. From this blog, last June: "Surveys: teacher morale at record lows; when the profession "no longer exists"; 2013-2014 for NYC teachers under new evaluations"

Given the pressures, is it any wonder that we are seeing plaintive "I Quit" postings on the Internet and on videos going viral? --video resignations like that of history teacher Jerry Conti of Westhill High School (see at right, and see his letter republished at Huffington Post about how testing and number crunching means that the teaching profession "no longer exists"), and the western New York state teacher that penned the "I am a teacher and I am tired" poem, published at the NYSUT blog site. Even principals are quitting over the over-emphasis on tests.

And which teachers union leader clearly has been the figure that has been committed great damage to the teaching profession in New York State? Hmm. Make no mistake, Saturday's NYSUT board vote was not just a repudiation of Comm. King but also a repudiation of Mulgrew who has not stood up to John King in his worsening of teacher working conditions.
Never forget: Mulgrew supports Cuomo. This is a major political point of political dispute between Mulgrew and Iannuzzi. Read on the political urgency to stop Cuomo: The Prime Directive: Stop Cuomo in this post.

 * * *
Postscript:
The prospect of a Michael Mulgrew takeover of NYSUT is ominous for another reason: the fundamentally undemocratic essence of his caucus, the Unity Caucus, which has dominated the UFT for the last 50 years. How can there be democracy in a union body dominated by the Unity caucus, considering the second clause of the Unity caucus' infamous loyalty oath? (Thanks to NYC Educator blog for publishing the oath.):
The Unity caucus loyal oath:

To express criticism of caucus policies within the Caucus;

To support the decisions of Caucus / Union leadership in public or Union forums;

To support in Union elections only those individuals who are endorsed by the Caucus, and to actively campaign for his / her election;

To run for Union office only with the support of the caucus;

To serve, if elected to Union office, in a manner consistent with Union / Caucus policies
and to give full and faithful service in that office; 

Imagine this caucus controlling the state union. It is bad enough already that they control the city union.
 * * *
Postscript:
You know the scene in "The Pianist" when the Germans are in Warsaw, with tanks relentlessly pounding apartment blocks? One blast right after another.

I could not help but think that this is what King and Tisch did with the ELA exam this week. I don't have time to summarize. The story is excellently discussed at NYC Educator here and at Perdido Street here and here.

The ELA Regents test was brutal --a brutal blast. The percentage of students passing will be a record low. What on earth is going on in the minds of King/Tisch? Have they no conscience? Thousands of students will not get their diploma because of this. You can envision that many will get demoralized and not bother to try try again in future ELA Regents.

Think of the state tests last spring and their results. A merciless tank blast at students. Think of the students engaging in self-injury.

Make no mistake: the Regents are declaring war on New York State's schoolchildren.
It might take a few years to replace the Regents and the Common Core. But New York teachers have a moral duty to go against this madness at every opportunity.

Mulgrew has said NOTHING directly critical of King/Tisch. By contrast, we are seeing growing discontent from Iannuzzi and his allies. The coming stand off between the two is a battle with high moral stakes. Teachers are duty-bound to support the Iannuzzi side to reverse this sick trend in education. Parents, citizens, support those teachers and teacher locals that are backing Iannuzzi and opposing Mulgrew. This time it's personal. Your children are at stake.

Additionally, the episode of this week's ELA Regents is a shining example of what is going on in high stakes testing. New York City teachers, parents, concerned citizens, there is an important forum this Saturday on the upper west side on the issue of high stakes testing, More Than a Score: Talking Back to Testing, co-sponsored by the MORE UFT caucus and Change the Stakes. (February 1, 2014 at 11:00 am – 3:00 pm Edward A. Reynolds Westside High School. 140 W 102 St., New York , New York 10025) Attend the conference, get informed, get active.

The children are at stake.

Will the UFT Get Some Spine and Address the Shadow Constitutional Mandate of Playing Coy with Snow Day Announcements?

Let's get real. This is an obvious pattern: New York City mayors don't announce snow school closures 'til the last possible minute; Bill de Blasio did it again with a closure that went announced only at 5:00.

De Blasio has shown himself to be same as de Blasio: wait til last minute to tell people that there's no school.

Look at all the factors that make outer boro folks get up and out EARLY:

*Long Island Expressway ENTIRELY closed east to the Queens/Nassau boundary, until 8 AM.
*Rail and MTA on a Saturday schedule.

*This non-Manhattan location: 14 degrees F, feels like -4 degrees. Overnight the windchill put the temperature 10 degrees colder with 30 mph winds.
*News folks telling people to stay in, unless you are an emergency worker.

*Newark, Hoboken and Jersey City, just over the river, announced their closures hours earlier

So, why the general move to not close, or to hold off to last possible minute? Why is Gov. Cuomo's travel ban/state of emergency non-applicable in NYC?

Here's the conspiratorial view: employers don't want too many parents to be absent, tending their little ones. Ergo, they put the heat on the mayors: don't close NYC schools unless the roads and transit commutes are REALLY horrendous. BTW, if the school system really cared about kids and parents it would put an immediate moratorium on the Common Core test prep madness.

So the coy wait-til-last-minute game goes on. Us non-Manhattan folks had to wake up extra early to get ready for extra 45 minutes added to the commute, and BDB in his decisiveness waits until 5:00 AM to break the word. Great. And the UFT bigs, with their cushy, don't-show-up-to-boro-offices-til-10:00 jobs don't understand what preparations regular working Janes and Joes have to take. They won't speak up; they don't don't know what the real commuting, working conditions are.

For those expecting real change with this administration, this was not a good omen.

UFT's Casey, Moment of VAM Realization Before Duncanism's Onset

 *Leo Casey, pre-the education Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of our time
Truly, the education field is stuffed with blind loyalty to one program of action or one line of thought, then with no acknowledgement of previously professed commitment, a lurch in another direction.
Witness in New York City, the developmental lesson was, king, then it was the workshop model. (And never mind that God Lucy Calkins said it was for elementary grades in English, it was transposed with dogmatic force to the secondary level in other disciplines.) And now, have you noticed that the mini-lesson is entirely discarded? It is supposed to be subsumed within the body of the motivation.
No matter, administrators told us that blue is now fuschia, and we followed in line; and this cycle repeats with nary an instance of critical thinking.

Leo Casey, vintage 2008, fights the good fight versus VAM Let us take a step back to the heady days of 2008. The United Federation of Teachers was for Hilary Clinton, who then openly professed criticism of No Child Left Behind and promised to take action. Alas, this was all before Barack Obama nudged her out of the way, beat I-can-see-Russia and her partner, Russert's Meet the Press BFF; Obama, who less than a half-year into the presidency, launched Race to the Top and the rest is history.

Just as the CPUSA had wild switches and swings in its line, especially in the mid-20th Century, the brook-no-public-dissent Unity caucus of the UFT (see for example here and here) has had its wild swings in its line on data and its use.
In 2008, before activists and terrified teachers had nightmares about VAM, APPR and IPCs --before we knew or even cared, then [Unity] UFT VP, Leo Casey had the right line on VAM. (See here and here if you still need some clarification on these terms and their significance for your career.) Could you imagine, that the Bush II years would be the golden years by comparison? The person that knew or talked about that sort of wonky stuff back in the mid-2000s was the dull nudge at school; now everyone with any concern for their careers knows. Why, I'd bet that many teachers' own children would realize that such terms are enough to make their parents grind their teeth.

Note the UFT's Casey's admittedly wise words on January 21, 2008, "Tweed's 'Value-Added' Project: Ideology Trumps Education." Back then this Unity chieftain of the UFT was on the right track with his words on VAM, not yet erased from the record, on the UFT's EdWize blog, bolded emphasis, mine:

The DoE’s “value added” project is a fundamentally flawed exercise which can not possibly deliver what it promises. It is being pursued, with the full knowledge of its flaws, because technocratic ideology trumps sound educational practice at Tweed. Moving forward with such a flawed project is extraordinarily irresponsible because “value added” — the idea that one should measure how much academic progress students have made, rather than just their absolute academic standing — holds promise as an useful tool in the repertoire of schools and educators. But the way in which it is being recklessly pursued by Tweed will cast discredit on the entire enterprise.

The DoE has no contractual or legal authority to use test score data in the evaluation of teachers, and the UFT will oppose it with all the means at our disposal. This is a line in the sand for the UFT.

Furthermore, note that Casey terms this reasoning as intellectually dishonest.

To understand just how intellectually dishonest this exercise is, consider the following. This pilot project is based on student scores on the annual New York State ELA and Math standardized exams, grades 4 through 8. [The initial year of testing, grade 3, provides a baseline, leaving only grades 4 through 8 -- the years in which the exam is given on an annual basis -- for the measurement of progress.] This means that the pilot can only be applied to the teachers of grades 4 and 5 in an elementary school, and to ELA and Math teachers of grades 6 through 8 in a middle school, a small fraction of all teachers. More importantly, since the ELA and Math exams are given in January, the students will have had at least two different teachers in the interval between exams — one in the spring term of one school year and the other in the fall term of the next school year. Even assuming that the exams are an accurate and complete measure of student learning — and there is ample evidence that they are not — a student’s progress from one exam to the next is thus dependent upon at least two teachers. In some instances, a student would have another two teachers for Academic Intervention Services in the 37.5 minute tutoring, and a fifth teacher if he attended a summer program. How could one possibly isolate an individual teacher’s contribution to a student’s progress using this method?

2013 UFT, about-face, applauding the same VAM principles
So now, we have the UFT reversing itself from Casey's 2008 line in the sand declarations.  A la the 1939-1941 CP period that included the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, we have the UFT making a grand about-face, now claiming that metrics are fair, a just reform over past practices. Akin to intellectually dishonest, can we say that the UFT is politically disingenous? The UFT in 2013 is repeatedly praising the new Advance (APPR) teacher evaluation system in principle, only adding the comment that the system has a few issues that need tweaking. President Barack Obama's and ED Secretary Arne Duncan's 2009 Race to the Top with its emphasis on test-linked evaluations paved the way for the changes New York is enduring. The UFT under Michael Mulgrew, in 2010 enthusiastically endorsed New York State's RTTT application, establishing these evaluation requirements in New York State, which provided the legal authority which Casey challenged, read here and here. 2013's Mulgrew deems the evaluation system, "clear in its intent to support the work teachers do inside the classroom." Where's Casey today? --safely insulated from NYC, assisting president Randi Weingarten in the American Federation of Teachers.

Come to MORE's next general meeting, 10/10/13

Nevertheless, the overall Unity line is that the state-imposed evaluation system is a wonderful improvement, including its reliance on the Danielson Frameworks (which assume that all kids will be attentive, intellectually precocious and cooperative), its central incorporation of value added modeling use of standardized test scores (the very kind of quantitative analysis that Casey faulted as the objectionable line in the sand that the UFT would fight with every means at its disposal), which mean that even the stellar teacher acing the qualitative Danielson sections could fail overall if the high-stakes test scores were inadequate, "40%=100%"-- along with the Student Learning Objectives, or SLOs, (in New York City, Measures of Student Learning, MOSL). The last point takes test-score ranking one step further on the absurdity scale, for example, in some schools, measuring physical education teachers on students' performance on tests in the science department. Such farcical, non-sequitor accountability measures stoked teacher outrage and a federal lawsuit in purple state Florida. Read, "Teachers in Florida sue state claiming job evaluation system is unfair." This Washington Post article begins, "Teachers in Florida filed a lawsuit in federal court Tuesday, claiming the state’s new teacher evaluation system is unfair because it partly rates their job performance on test scores of students they don’t know and subjects they don’t teach." 

This is the institutional madness that has hijacked the city's educational policies. This is what the UFT's MORE caucus will be protesting this Wednesday, October 9 at the union's headquarters at 52 Broadway, Manhattan, on the occasion of the Delegates Assembly ("DA"). (Rector, 1, R; Wall, 4, 5; Broad, J, Z trains)

Minneapolis union consider test opt out campaign; CT Gov. rethinks tests; while NYS intensifies test push, & UFT OKs High-Stakes Tests

Minneapolis Teachers Ponder Opt-out campaign, St. Paul teachers ask to pull out of tests entirely - Conn. Gov. advocates loosening link between test scores and teacher evaluations - UFT? It endorses test-based evaluations as fair

The St. Paul Pioneer Press (Minnesota) reported June 30, 2013 that the Minneapolis teachers' union has considered starting a public campaign advocating that parents opt their children out of high-stakes tests.

In contract negotiations, the teachers unions in St. Paul and Minneapolis have called on their districts to scale back standardized tests. The Minneapolis Federation of Teachers and a statewide parent advocacy group have separately weighed campaigns to enlist parents to opt out of them. A small number of parent such as Lamm are already letting their children sit out the exams.
The Pioneer Press began its front page and page 9 coverage, spotlighting Minneapolis parent, Sarah Lamm. We see early on the effect of union and parent groups' work:

Sarah Lamm had a "revelation" this spring, courtesy of teachers and other parents at Clara Barton Open School in Minneapolis She could opt her children out of the state's standardized tests.
Lamm followed a high-profile test boycott in Seattle, read up on research and asked her kids for their take on testing. She then let her school know her children would skip the test next year.
. . .
As contract negotiations ramp up in St. Paul, the teachers union has called on the district to pull out of the MCAs [Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments]-- an unprecedented proposal the district said will get it in hot water with the state. The St. Paul Federation of Teachers also is asking the district to give educators more leeway in designing their own assessments.
Mary Cathryn Ricker, the federation's president, says the pressure to perform on the MCAs has spawned more testing and narrower, more scripted curricula.

The pushback got attention earlier in the spring:
Will Minnesota Say Goodbye to Standardized Tests? The requirements for getting a diploma may change in Minnesota.

“You need some testing and accountability,” Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton said. “But send third graders home thinking they’ve failed life because they failed some test—it’s just the wrong way to get kids to want to learn.”
Dayton told local reporters this week that he has been in talks with the state’s education commissioner “to figure out how we can reduce this excess of testing.”

* * *
In Connecticut, state officials faced growing opposition from school teachers, parents and others who view linking students' standardized test scores to teacher evaluations as unfair. In the last 48 hours Governor Dan Malloy, mindful of the need to retain popular support for the 2014 election announced that he would reduce the number of standardized tests and he would allow the state's schools the option to not use student test scores to evaluate teachers. For detailed coverage, read Johanna Summers in "The Day," "Malloy would spare students a standardized test double-whammy."
* * *
This all stands in contrast to business as usual in New York City. Note that Minneapolis area teachers' consideration of a union-wide campaign to promote opt-out among parents stands in stark contrast to UFT president Michael Mulgrew's failure to side with the test resistance movement or the anti-Common Core movement. (Note that amidst Common Core-based tests and June's release of test scores all that Mulgrew could say was that teachers needed a better Common Core curriculum. Never mind that the tests prompted numbers of students to leave classrooms with fits of nausea.)

And in Buffalo, the Teachers Federation has talked lawsuit to protect APPR side agreements with their school district not to link evaluations to teacher termination. (See Buffalo Teachers Fed.'s Evaluations Suit - MOU Too Embarrassing for Mulgrew to Let NYC Teachers See) And yet, here in New York City, United Federation of Teachers (UFT) president Michael Mulgrew agreed to a plan with a quota to terminate seven percent of teachers yearly, even before John King imposed the plan on the city. Contrast that with "Buff. Teachers Fed. Motion Slams APPR Toxic Stew of SLOs, LMAs, Overwork." Other countries? Linking students tests scores to teacher evaluation, advancement or punishment is RARE. See my post from late June, "International Studies of Teacher Evaluation: Student Tests Seldom Cited, Portfolios Carry More Weight." And statistics show, time and again, between districts of different levels of poverty in the United States, and between the United States and other countries, that student test scores rise and fall with levels of income.

International Studies of Teacher Evaluation: Student Tests Seldom Cited, Portfolios Carry More Weight

Big News: U.S. student test performance emphasis in teacher evaluations is a global anomaly. This is a devastating retort to the edureform/privatizing industry, their media supporters, their political supporters and acquiescing teacher trade unions.

A number of comparative internationally studies have been available in the last five years, delving into the different ways that other countries handle teacher evaluation. Diverse qualitative measures abound in these surveys; student test scores are rarely used for teacher advancement or termination conditions.

ch (International comparisons references: Laura Figazzalo, "THE USE AND MISUSE OF TEACHER APPRAISAL: An overview of cases in the developed world," Education International [the international federation of teachers' unions], 2013; Marlène Isoré, Teacher Evaluation: Current Practices in OECD Countries and a Literature Review, OECD Working Paper, 2009; Tim Walker, "How Do High-Performing Nations Evaluate Teachers?," NEA Today, March 25, 2013. Link for Isoré is difficult. You may access the initial page [http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/education/teacher-evaluation-current-practices-in-oecd-countries-and-a-literature-review_223283631428] and the pdf link: http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/download/5ksf76jc5phd.pdf?expires=1372295146&id=id&accname=guest&checksum=4C3FAA149C84B4E2B2FC0000C187934F)

The UFT, the AFT and the larger ramifications of these studies
These studies --and the conclusion that high-performing countries do perform well in spite of no test-score link-in on teacher promotion or firing-- indicate that this country's teacher unions, by and large have not performed their job in looking beyond our borders at other countries at how they evaluate teachers. For all the current talk of international benchmarks and keeping up with the Finnish or Singaporeans, facts and logic indicate that unions have done a terrible job of researching or of doing some serious self-analysis or comparison. Worse, in the face of all the teacher bashing Michael Mulgrew's United Federation of Teachers (UFT) or Randi Weingarten's American Federation of Teachers (AFT) have not taken the opportunity to refute the line of the reformers that teachers can be held exclusively responsible for test results, they have cooperated with evaluation schemes that rest on reference to test scores. They have the resources to research these matters. The Chicago Teachers Union, to their credit, referenced Isoré's 2009 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) study in one of their statements on teacher evaluation, "Teacher Evaluation or Teacher Collaboration?" Incredibly, the UFT's Mulgrew is promoting the state-imposed teacher evaluation system as a long-needed model of reform.

Major takeaways

I) High-stakes tests and student performance.
A common current among these studies: reference to test scores are made in some countries, but not the top flying countries in global comparisons. Finland has no national standardized test; and Singapore does not use test scores to measure teacher performance. The report authors cited few specific countries, China, the U.K. and the U.S. being exceptions, that use student test scores.
Indeed, Figazzolo's study indicates that the consistently top-performing nations on international tests do not evaluate teachers on the basis of test scores. High flyers, no test incorporation: The following countries are countries that are consistently higher performing in the PISA and TIMSS international comparative tests of students, yet, their teacher evaluation systems do not cite test scores: Austria, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Finland, Japan, Korea, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Slovakia, Sweden, Switzerland. (References: PISA test result rankings, and TIMSS test result rankings, Laura Figazzolo's 2013 study.)
Marlene Isoré's OECD survey provides a number of reasons why test score reliance is avoided. (See summation paragraph, no. 65, and component paragraphs, 60 to 64.)

II) Student portfolios
Student class portfolios carry greater weight than they do in the U.S. (Isoré)
It is interesting: in New York City it is the alternative school where we often find student portfolios as traditionally trumping the state-wide standardized test. In several countries in Isore's OECD student student portfolios carry greater weight in teacher assessment than in the U.S.

III) Evaluations by staff other than school principals
In many countries peers (other teachers) are evaluators. The evaluations are meant in a supportive, rather than competitive manner. (Figazzolo; Isoré)

IV) The overall climate is less hostile and more professional

The tenor in public discourse is hostile to teachers. The working conditions, worsening by the year, are making the job status less professional and marked by deskilling.

Linda Darling-Hammond has noted the greater respect the high-performing nations afford their instructors.

They enter a well-paid profession – in Singapore earning as much as beginning doctors -- where they are supported by mentor teachers and have 15 or more hours a week to work and learn together – engaging in shared planning, action research, lesson study, and observations in each other’s classrooms.

VI) More qualitative assessment

This comes with reports of greater Charlotte Danielson reach than we realized. Isoré reports that Danielson or Danielson-influenced evaluation schemes are used in Chile and in Quebec, Canada.

* * *

Laura Figazzalo, "THE USE AND MISUSE OF TEACHER APPRAISAL: An overview of cases in the developed world," Education International [the international federation of teachers' unions], 2013

A review of the technical evidence leads Baker et al (2010) and other sources (Burris, 2012; Strauss, 2012) to conclude that, although standardised test scores of students are one tool school leaders can use to make judgments about teacher effectiveness, such scores can only be a part of an overall comprehensive evaluation. Any sound evaluation has to necessarily involve a balancing of all relevant factors in order to provide a more accurate view of what teachers do in the classroom and their contribution to student learning. In addition, binding teacher evaluation and sanctions to test score results can discourage teachers from wanting to work in schools with the neediest students, while the large, unpredictable variation in the results and their perceived unfairness can undermine teacher morale (Baker et al, 2010). For instance, teachers show lower gains when they have large numbers of new English-learners and students with disabilities than when they teach other students. This is true even when statistical methods are used to “control” for student characteristics (Darling-Hammond, 2012). Surveys have found that teacher attrition and demoralisation have been associated with test-based accountability efforts, particularly in high-need schools.
The use of VAMS is also associated with a narrowing of the curriculum; a de facto curriculum whose subject matter is defined by what is tested. Teachers who rate highest on the low-level multiple-choice tests currently in use are often not those who raise higher scores in assessments of more-challenging learning (Darling-Hammond, 2012). Some believe that the pressure to teach “fill-in-the-bubble tests” will further reduce the focus on research, writing, and complex problem-solving; areas which students will need competence in to compete with their peers in high-achieving countries (Darling-Hammond, 2012). Finally, as far as merit-pay systems are concerned, tying teacher evaluation and remuneration to test results is problematic on numerous levels, not least because it reinforces a competitive spirit that undermines teacher collegiality and teamwork (Froese-Germain, 2011).

2009 OECD Working Paper, Teacher Evaluation: Current Practices in OECD Countries and a Literature Review
By Marlène Isoré

65. As a consequence, despite the attractiveness of the idea, there are numerous caveats against the use of student scores to evaluate teachers. In particular, there is a wide consensus in the literature around two specific directions: student outcomes should not be used as the sole measurement of teacher performance, and student outcomes should not be naively used for career decisions concerning the teacher, including the link to pay, because this incorporates a substantial risk to punish or reward teachers for results beyond their control (Kane and Staiger, 2002; Kupermintz, 2002; McCaffrey et al., 2003; CAESL, 2004; Raudenbush, 2004; Braun, 2005; Ingvarson, Kleinhenz and Wilkinson, 2007; Rowley and Ingvarson, 2007). These rejections from teachers and scholars have materialized, for instance, in the New York State’s legislature decision to ban the use of test scores in evaluating teachers in April 2008.

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DELVING FURTHER INTO REASONS WHY USING STUDENT TEST SCORE ACHIEVEMENT IS A DUBIOUS MEASURES:
60. Student learning outcomes is an appealing measure to assess teaching performance, since the ultimate goal of teaching is to improve student learning. Not surprisingly, much research has focused on the use of student achievement as measured by standardised tests to evaluate teachers. For instance, Leigh (2007) recently examined the test scores in literacy and numeracy of three cohorts of students, and concluded that the changes in the relative positions of classes of students provided a basis for the identification of effective and ineffective teachers. Braun (2005) argues that considering student scores is a promising approach for two reasons: first, it moves the discussion about teacher quality towards student learning as the primary goal of teaching, and second, it introduces a quantitative – and thus, objective and fair – measurement of teacher performance. In this respect, the development of “value-added” models represents significant progress relative to methods based on the absolute proportion of students meeting a given achievement level. “Value-added” models are designed to control for the individual students’ previous test scores, and therefore have the potential to identify the contribution an individual teacher made to students’ achievement.

61. In Florida, the “Special Teachers are Rewarded” (STAR) scheme links salary or bonus awards for individual teachers to value-added measures of st udent learning (Ingvarson, Kleinhenz and Wilkinson, 2007). Nevertheless, this type of link between a direct measure of performance and pay remains extremely rare, given the numerous statistical and theoretical challenges associated with the use of these methods. Indeed, Braun (2005) emphasises the marked contrast between the enthusiasm of those who would like to use such measurements, mainly policymakers, and the reservations expressed by the researchers who have studied their technical characteristics.

62. Using student achievement on standardised tests to evaluate teacher performance presents numerous statistical challenges. Most authors (L ockwood, Louis and McCaffrey, 2002; Kupermintz, 2003; Braun, 2005; Aaronson, Barrow and Sander, 2007; Goe, 2007) are not convinced that the current generation of value-added models is sufficiently valid and reliable to be used for fairly evaluating individual teachers’ effectiveness. Statistical limitations first refer to the noticeable lack of reliable data, mainly due to the fact that individual students rarely take annual standardised tests. Rowley and Ingvarson (2007) criticise Leigh (2007)’s methodology, which consists of creating a hypothetic test score in the missing data year at the midpoint of two available test results, arguing that it does not allow to fairly attribute the students’ success to the different teachers involved. Second, when data are available, sampling variations can cause imprecision in test score measures; this problem is particularly striking in elementary EDU/WKP(2009)2 schools, where the limited number of students per classroom creates large idiosyncrasies of the particular sample of students being tested (Kane and Staiger, 2002).

63. Broader methodological criticisms stress that value-added models, whatever their degree of sophistication, can neither fully integrate all factors influencing student achievement scores – qualitative by nature – nor reflect all student learning outcomes. Family background and support, school attendance, peer and classroom climate, school policies, availability of adequate materials, and children effects influence student learning (CAESL, 2004; Ingvarson, Kleinhenz and Wilkinson, 2007; Goe, 2007, Weingarten, 2007). Specific factors at the time of the test – “a dog barking in the playground, a severe flu season, a disruptive student in a class” – can also affect one student’s results independently from his teacher’s contribution (Kane and Staiger, 2002). Moreover, good teachers are likely to have an impact on children’s achievement during several years after having taught to them; and conversely, after several years of ineffective teachers, students may never be able to catch up academically. These teacher ‘cumulative effects’ cannot be accurately measured at discrete points in time (Hanushek, 1986; Sanders and Rivers, 1996; CAESL, 2004). Finally, teaching impact on students is not restricted to areas assessed through student standardised tests, – generally limited to reading and numeracy –, but also include transfer of psychological, civic and lifelong learning skills (Margo et al., 2008). While Xin, Xu and Tatsuoka (2004) tried to decompose single test scores into several categories of cognitive abilities in four countries (Japan, Korea, the Netherlands and the United States), they found that teachers’ attributes used in pay decisions have no consistent positive impact on any type of cognitive skills, despite their attention to controlling for individual and family background. These are sources of skepticism for using such statistical methods.

64. Theoretical limitations also need to be considered. First, a statistical correlation is not a causal relationship: the fact that teachers matter for student learning does not necessarily indicate that student learning is the result of good teaching. Second, the standardised tests used to differentiate students are not specifically designed for the purpose of assessing teachers. Following Popham (1997), Goe (2007) argues that they were not engineered to be particularly sensitive to small variations in instruction or to sort out teacher contributions to student learning. Thus they do not provide a solid basis on which to hold teachers accountable for their performance. Third, using student tests scores to evaluate teachers may induce unexpected distortions and constrictions in teacher behaviour towards the sole achievement on standardised tests. High-stakes incentive schemes based on standardised tests can incite teachers to concentrate exclusively on teaching areas assessed in the tests – therefore reducing the curriculum to the basic skills generally tested – (Jacob and Lefgren, 2005, Weingarten, 2007), incite teachers to concentrate on the specific students who are close to passing mark at the expense of children who are behind or ahead (Weingarten, 2007), and even provoke serious cases of teacher cheating on standardised tests (Jacob and Levitt, 2003; Jacob, 2005). Furthermore, test results may identify teachers who are ineffective or should professionally develop but do neither permit to fairly discriminate between the wide range of effective teachers nor identify which professional development activities should be established in order to improve their performance (Braun, 2005). Finally, it may lead to holding teachers responsible for the whole student performance whereas one should instead recognise that successful teaching is a shared responsibility between governments, schools and the teaching profession (Ingvarson et al., 2007).

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84. Measuring the effect of teacher evaluation faces a number of challenges. First, it needs to control for the broad set of qualitative variables which are likely to influence student learning. These variables encompass teacher characteristics (e.g. age, gender), teacher education and experience, students’ family factors (e.g. parents’ background, parents’ support), school factors (e.g. school policies, school incentives, peer and classroom effects) and student factors (e.g. motivation, cognitive abilities, cumulative experience). The complex realities of education prevent researchers from accurately assimilating these factors as traditional inputs into production functions (Hanushek, 1986). Second, because of its qualitative and heterogeneous nature, the output itself – student learning – is not a traditionally measurable ‘end product’, and this makes the decomposition between different factor contributions even more difficult (Hanushek, 1986; Ingvarson et al., 2007). This does not mean that doing any quantitative study in education is vain but rather than it requires particular attention to analytical issues or potential misinterpretations of the results. A particular focus should be placed on the fact that each factor omission or measurement problem – including lack of data – creates a potential quantitative bias in the estimated relationship between teacher quality and student achievement (Xin, Xu and Tatsuoka, 2004).

85. As a consequence, the empirical literature that primarily indicated that teacher evaluation may have an important role in student learning came from a process of elimination. By contradicting or restricting the respective roles of individual teachers’ apparent features (whether characteristics, education, experience, or financial incentives), numerous studies concluded that it was teacher practices – and, by extrapolation, evaluation of these practices – that indeed matter. The first influential contribution was Hanushek’s distinction between observable aspects of teachers, such as teacher background, gender, or race, and teachers’ unquantifiable “skills” (Hanushek, 1986, 1992). According to Hanushek, if the previous literature has found no significant impact of teacher quality on student achievement, it was because it concentrated on observable attributes of teachers – teacher’s holding of a master degree for example – while teacher quality was instead related to their “skills” or “idiosyncratic choices of teaching and methods” (such as classroom management, methods of presenting abstract ideas, communication skills, and so forth), i.e. their practice.

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A UNITED STATES EVALUATION SAMPLE, ALONG WITH SOME GLOBAL EXAMPLES OF TEACHER EVALUATION:

ANNEX 2: EXAMPLES OF TEACHER EVALUATION SYSTEMS IN OECD COUNTRIES
1. Teacher evaluation for summative purposes with links to pay: The US District of Cincinnati [Milanowski, 2004]
Context: Cincinnati is a large urban district with 48,000 students and 3,000 teachers in more than 70 schools and programmes. Its average level of student achievement is low compared to the surrounding suburban districts. Cincinnati has also had a history of school reform activity, including the introduction of new whole-school designs, school-based budgeting, and teams to run schools and deliver instruction. The union-management relationship has generally been positive. Like many other urban districts, state accountability programmes and public expectations have put pressure on the district to raise student outcomes.

Implementation: In response to the obsolescence of the existing teacher performance evaluation system, and ambitious goals for improving student achievement, the District designed a knowledge- and skill-based pay system and a new teacher evaluation system during the 1998-1999 school year. The assessment system was piloted in the 1999-2000 school year and is used for teacher evaluation district wide since the 2000-01 school year.

Criteria: The assessment system is based on a set of teaching standards derived from the Framework for Teaching (Danielson, 1996). Seventeen performance standards are grouped into four domains: (i) planning and preparation; (ii) creating an environment for learning; (iii) teaching for learning; and (iv) professionalism. For each standard, a set of behaviourally anchored rating scales called rubrics describe four levels of performance: unsatisfactory, basic, proficient, and distinguished. Instruments: Teachers are evaluated using the rubrics based on two major sources of evidence: six classroom observations and a portfolio prepared by the teacher. The portfolio includes artifacts such as lesson and unit plans, attendance records, student work, family contact logs, and documentation of professional development activities.

Evaluators: Four classroom observations are made by a teacher evaluator hired from the ranks of the teaching force and released from classroom teaching for three years. Principals and assistant principals do the other two observations.

Aggregation of scores: Based on summaries of the six observations, teacher evaluators make a final summative rating on each of the standards in domains (ii) and (iii), whereas principals and assistant principals rate teachers on the standards in domains (i) and (v), primarily based on the teacher portfolio. Standards-level ratings are then aggregated to a domain-level score for each of the four domains. Scope and frequency of the evaluation: The full assessment system is used for a comprehensive evaluation of teachers in their first and third years and every five years thereafter. A less intensive assessment is done in all other years, conducted only by principals and assistant principals and based on more limited evidence. The annual assessment is intended to be both an opportunity for teacher professional development and an evaluation for accountability purposes. EDU/WKP(2009)2

Training on the evaluation process: Both teachers and evaluators receive considerable training on the new system. Evaluators are trained using a calibration process that involves rating taped lessons using the rubrics and then comparing ratings with expert judges and discussing differences. To ensure consistency among evaluators, the district eventually requires that all evaluators, including principals, meet a standard of agreement with a set of references or expert evaluators in rating videotaped lessons. Since the 2001-02 school year, only those who meet the standards are allowed to evaluate. Direct consequences: For beginning teachers (those evaluated in their first and third years), the consequence of a poor comprehensive evaluation could be the termination of the contract. For tenured teachers, consequences of a positive evaluation could include eligibility to become a lead teacher. A poor evaluation could lead to placement in the peer assistance programme and to the eventual termination of the contract.

Link to pay: The performance evaluation system was designed in part to provide the foundation for the knowledge- and skill-based pay system. This system defines career levels for teachers with pay differentiated by level. The new pay system was originally scheduled to come into effect in the 2002-03 school year, resulting in relatively high stakes evaluations for the district’s teachers. However, the link between the evaluation system and pay was rejected by teachers in a special election held in May 2002.

2. Teacher evaluation for formative purposes and as part of broader school policies
2a. Finland [UNESCO, 2007]
Context: In Finland, school teachers have positions comparable to national or municipal public servants. However, school leaders are in charge of teacher selection – once the required license is obtained – and in charge of all the policies that are considered as necessary to the enhancement of teaching quality, among which teacher evaluation. Finland is a paradigmatic case where the former system of ‘teachers and schools inspection and supervision’ was removed in 1990 but not replaced by another similar external system. As a consequence, teacher evaluation currently goes hand in hand with other policies within each particular school.

Methods / Evaluators: The Finnish scheme of teacher evaluation is characterised by the very high level of confidence placed in school and teacher competencies and professionalism as a basis to improve teaching quality. Thus, teacher self-evaluation is considered as a prime means of professional optimisation. School leaders also have a crucial role in engaging teachers in self-reflection about their own practice, and in developing a culture of evaluation alongside ambitious goals, according to the school context and challenges. The majority of schools have implemented annual discussions between school leaders and teachers to evaluate the fulfillment of the personal objectives set up during the previous year and to establish further personal objectives that correspond both to the analysis of the teacher and the needs of the school.
2b. England [Ofsted, 2006; TDA, 2007]
Context: The English system was originally designed with summative purposes, aiming at evaluating teachers’ performance, and providing them with opportunities to access a higher career stage and the corresponding pay scale. However, numerous concerns about the fairness of the process and the potential perverse impacts of the procedure on teacher performance itself were addressed (Kleinhenz and Ingvarson, 2004). Hence, the recent developments of the system – including new professional standards from September 2007 – indicate an increased formative approach, embodied by a willingness to reinforce the link between the teacher appraisal system and teacher professional development needs relative to the EDU/WKP(2009)2 school goals. More generally, the system, completed within a wider framework for the whole school workforce, aims to improve school leadership and to be an integral part of the school’s broader policies. Scope/Methods: The evaluation is differentiated according to the career stage of the teacher being evaluated. Five professional stages are identified: (i) the award of the Qualified Teacher Status (Q); (ii) teachers on the main scale (Core) (C); (iii) teachers on the upper pay scale (Post Threshold Teachers) (P); (iv) Excellent Teachers (E); and (v) Advanced skills Teachers (A).

Criteria: At each stage, teaching professional standards encompass three domains. The first one refers to the teacher’s professional attributes, including relationships with children and young people; attitude vis-à- vis the framework and the implementation of new school policies; communicating and working with others; and professional development activities. The second domain is composed of the teacher’s professional knowledge and understanding, including knowledge on teaching and learning; understanding of assessing and monitoring; subjects and curriculum knowledge; literacy, numeracy and ICT skills; understanding the factors affecting the achievement of diversified student groups; and knowledge on student health and well-being. The last domain refers to the teacher’s professional skills, including planning, teaching, assessing, monitoring, giving feedback competencies; ability to review and adapt teaching and learning; ability to create a learning environment; capacities to develop team working and collaboration. All of these standards are statements of good teaching which do not replace the professional duties and responsibilities of teachers.

Consequences on teacher professional growth and links to school expectations and policies: The standards support teachers in identifying their professional development needs. Where teachers wish to progress to the next career stage, the next level of the framework provides a reference point for all teachers when considering future development. Whilst not all teachers necessarily want to move to the next career stage, the standards also support teachers in identifying ways to broaden and deepen their expertise within their current career stages. These frameworks are a basis for professional responsibility and contractual engagement to engage all teachers in effective, sustained and relevant professional development throughout their careers. They provide a continuum of expectations about the level of engagement in professional development that provides clarity and appropriate differentiation for each career stage. They also set expectations about the contribution teachers make to others, taking account of their levels of skills, expertise and experience, their role within the school, and reflecting on their use of up-to-date subject knowledge and pedagogy. In all these cases, performance management is the key process that provides the context for regular discussions about teachers’ career aspirations and their future development, within or beyond their current career stage.

For further information:
• Training and Development Agency for Schools (TDA): http://www.tda.gov.uk/teachers/professionalstandards.aspx and http://www.tda.gov.uk/teachers/continuingprofessionaldevelopment.aspx
• Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted): http://www.ofsted.gov.uk
3. Conciliating the summative and formative purposes in a comprehensive approach: Chile [Avalos and Assael, 2006]
Context: The historical context of the Chilean educational system has doubtlessly played a critical role in understanding the necessity for a comprehensive and conciliating teacher evaluation scheme. In 1980, the military government [1973-1990] transferred the management of schools to the municipal authorities, which also implied a change of status of teachers from public servants to salaries employees of EDU/WKP(2009)2
municipalities. At the end of the dictatorial regime, a major concern was that teachers’ conditions did not evolve in line with those for public servants, which had an enormous impact on how teachers perceived and valued themselves, as well as on public opinion. In the 1990s the teaching profession suffered from a dramatic deterioration of the quality of applicants to teaching and from worsened working conditions. At the same time, evidence of unsatisfactory student learning results put a strong pressure on the government to include a clause in the new Teacher Statute (1991) that required a yearly evaluation of teachers. But while teachers continued to make their case for improved salaries and working conditions, they rejected the implementation of the evaluation system. This was followed by a long period of discussions and negotiations on the teacher evaluation model to be implemented.
Design and implementation of the system: The system was enacted by law in August 2004, that is, some seven years after the initial discussions. The system is directed toward the improvement of teaching and learning outcomes. It is designed to stimulate teachers to further their own improvement through the learning of their strengths and weaknesses. It is based on explicit criteria of what is evaluated, but without prescribing a model of teaching. It rests on the articulation of its different elements: criteria sanctioned by the teaching workforce, an independent management structure, especially prepared evaluators, and a coordinated set of procedures to gather the evidence required by the criteria.
Key actors in the system: The Centre for In-service Training located in the Ministry of Education (Centro de Perfeccionamiento, Experimentación e Investigación Pedagógica) manages the system. A consultative committee composed of academics and representatives from the Teachers’ Union, the Chilean Association of Municipalities and the Ministry of Education, monitors and provides advice on the process. A university centre is contracted to implement the process: production and revision of instruments, selection and preparation of evaluators and scorers, and analysis of evidence gathered from each evaluation process. The application process itself is decentralised so that in every district there is a committee that is directly responsible for organising the evaluation procedures. The evidence gathered is processed at the district level and sent to the central processing unit at the university, together with contextual information that can help interpret results. This central form of processing the evidence follows a request by teachers with the purpose of greater objectiveness.

Criteria: The Ministry of Education took the lead in defining the assessment criteria, producing a set of standards based on the work done earlier for the initial teacher education standards and on Danielson’s Framework for Teaching. The result is a framework for competent teaching formulated in four teaching domains (planning, learning environment, professionalism and teaching strategies for the learning of all students) and twenty criteria/standards. The framework was the subject of wide consultations among teachers until an agreement was reached. The criteria are linked to four levels of quality/performance: ‘unsatisfactory’, ‘basic’, ‘competent’ and ‘excellent’.

Instruments: The evidence used to evaluate the teachers, structured around the Framework, includes four sources: (i) a portfolio with samples of teachers’ work and a video of one of their lessons; (ii) a structured self-evaluation form; (iii) a structured interview with a peer evaluator; and (iv) a report from the school management and pedagogic authorities. The evaluation takes place every four years. Training of evaluators: The peer evaluators are specifically prepared for their task and must pass a test to be accredited. Although they should be familiar with the context in which the evaluated teacher is based (e.g. socio-economic and working conditions) they may not be teachers in the same school.
Consequences of the evaluation: One of the main challenges that needed to be addressed during the negotiation process referred to the potential implications for the individual teacher evaluated. It was agreed that teachers rated as being at a ‘basic’ level are provided with specific professional development opportunities in order to improve. Teachers rated as performing ‘unsatisfactorily’ are also provided with EDU/WKP(2009)2
professional development opportunities, but are evaluated again one year later; if the teacher fails to perform satisfactorily in two consecutive evaluations, he or she is dismissed. By contrast, teachers assessed as ‘competent’ or ‘exceptionally competent’ are given priority in promotion opportunities and in professional development activities of their interest. They may also apply for a salary bonus provided that they take a test on curricular and pedagogical knowledge. The system has both summative and formative elements instead of being primarily dedicated to one of the purposes, which is the result of the negotiation process which had taken the multiple stakeholders’ interests into account. For instance, the summative elements neither include a link between teacher’s performance and student results (something the union strongly opposed) nor a link to the career ladder. The link to professional development is emphasised and differentiated on the basis of the teacher’s level of performance.
For further information: Chile’s laws on the Teaching Statute: Ley N°3.500; Ley N°19.070; Ley N° 19.933; Ley N° 19.961.

4. Teacher evaluation stemming from bureaucratic procedures: France [Haut Conseil de l’évaluation de l’école, 2003; Pochard, 2008] Context: French teachers are classified in three distinct categories according to their education and initial certification: primary education teachers (professeurs des écoles), secondary education teachers with a regular certification (enseignants certifiés), and secondary education teachers with a higher level of certification (enseignants agrégés). All teachers are public servants but are placed in one of these three career tracks. These differ in terms of conditions and hours of work, administrative pay scale, and teaching practice (multitask primary education teachers vs. subject-specialised secondary education teachers). France does not generally suffer from teacher shortages and examinations to enter the profession continue to be selective. However, France has concerns regarding the societal status of teaching, and the skills necessary to respond to school needs. The current teacher evaluation system is often described as ‘not very fair’, ‘not very efficient’, and ‘generating malaise and sometimes suffering’ for both evaluated teachers and evaluators, because it is based on administrative procedures rather than a comprehensive scheme with a clear improvement purpose.
Periodicity of evaluation/evaluators: Teacher evaluation is supposed to be undertaken on a regular basis, as an integral part of the work and duties of the teacher. Primary education teachers are evaluated by a teaching inspector (inspecteur), while secondary level teachers are evaluated by a panel composed of an inspector – who defines 60 % of the final score – and the school principal – responsible for the other 40 %. However, the intended frequent evaluations often fall short of expectations. First, the frequency of evaluations is not legally fixed, and is arbitrarily determined by the inspectors’ availability. This is a cause for concern regarding the fairness of the system – because teachers working under the same rules receive feedback at diverse intervals – as well as regarding its efficacy – the average interval between two evaluations being 3-4 years in primary education and 6-7 years in secondary education, deemed much too long. Moreover, the workload is such that concerns might be raised regarding the value of the feedback. An inspector takes responsibility for between 350 and 400 teachers, which is excessive for the feedback to be effective in improving teachers’ practices. As a consequence, the inspectors themselves report malaise and frustration associated with the evaluation process, mainly because they feel that they have little impact on teaching practices and cannot develop their competences and skills for teaching enhancement. Their role is sometimes de facto restricted to control the abuses within the profession.
Instruments: Evidence on the teacher’s practice is gathered through the observation of a teaching session, followed by an interview with the teacher. Criticisms of this approach include: (i) the fact that a single classroom observation might not be enough to forge a fair and accurate view of the teacher’s abilities and knowledge; and (ii) in the interview teachers focus on reacting to the inspectors’ criticisms instead of EDU/WKP(2009)2 discussing their particular needs for improvement. The whole procedure does not seem to give much room for self-evaluation and teachers’ reflection on their own practice and performance.
Criteria: Both ‘pedagogical’ and ‘administrative’ aspects are observed and rated but with no reference to a framework which defines what ‘good’ teaching is. Concerns are numerous. The nature of the different ‘pedagogical’ skills assessed, as well as their weight in the overall appreciation of the teacher, remains largely at the discretion of each inspector. This reinforces subjective appraisals, unpredictable and random results, at the expense of fairness and accuracy in the process. Teachers report not knowing how and on what criteria they are evaluated. The most objective and understood criteria used to evaluate teachers are the ‘administrative’ ones such as punctuality and attendance. As a result, the rating obtained by a teacher often remains primarily determined by their certification rating (i.e. result of entrance examination). Consequences: The consequences of the teacher’s evaluation on the career are limited, except in cases of serious misconduct. Teachers’ salaries are determined by a single salary scale in which progression depends on years of service and the initial qualifications and entrance examination. Commitment to work is rarely recognised and valued, as well as merit, outstanding performance, or initiatives seeking to improve student learning. In addition, there is no link to professional development activities, the latter being very limited and disconnected from teachers’ identified weaknesses. The evaluation process does not provide opportunities for self-reflection on teaching practices or for peer mutual learning, and entails little advice and coaching.

For further information:
• Haut Conseil de l’évaluation de l’école (2003): http://cisad.adc.education.fr/hcee/ documents/rapport_annuel_2003.pdf
• Rapport des inspections générales: http://lesrapports.ladocumentationfrancaise.fr/BRP/054004446/0000.pdf
• Ministry of Education: http://www.education.gouv.fr/cid263/l-evaluation-des-personnels.html
About other teacher evaluation systems:
• The Canadian Province of Alberta: http://www.education.alberta.ca/department/policy/k12manual/section2/teacher.aspx • The US State of Iowa: http://www.iowa.gov/educate/content/view/1450/1617

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Figazzolo's critique of value-added modeling and the use of standardized tests:

Value-added evaluation methods, where teacher effectiveness and compensation are increasingly being tied to student scores on standardised tests, have raised concerns among teachers, unions and practitioners in general. As Froese-Germain (2011) puts it, these methods originate from a highly charged climate of data-driven accountability, and are increasingly common across the US. For example, the Los Angeles Unified School District is among a growing number of US school districts using the results of standardised tests to determine the “value-added” outcomes produced by the teacher (the value-added measure of teacher performance is related to gains in test scores in the teacher’s class over time)5. Other stories are reported from Chicago, where some reformers, such as Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, want as much as half of a teacher’s evaluation to be linked to student test scores6 (Strauss, 2012).
Rather than placing student results in context, these methods issue a comprehensive judgment purely based on data developed through standardised calculations. However, as Baker et al (2010) highlight, VAM estimates have proven to be unstable across statistical models, years, and teaching classes. Studies quoted in Baker et al (2010) prove in fact that a teacher who appears to be ineffective in one year may achieve dramatically different results the following year. VAM’s instability can result from differences in the characteristics of students assigned to given teachers in a particular year and from specific evaluation measures. Such factors include: small samples of students (made even less representative in schools serving disadvantaged students and which have high rates of student mobility), other influences on student learning both inside and outside school, and tests which are poorly lined up with the curriculum teachers are expected to cover, or which do not measure the full range of achievement of students in the class.
A number of non-teacher factors have been found to have strong influences on student learning gains. These include the influence of other teachers, tutors or instructional specialists; school conditions — such as the quality of curriculum materials, specialist or tutoring supports, class size, resources, learning environment; and other factors that affect learning.
A review of the technical evidence leads Baker et al (2010) and other sources (Burris, 2012; Strauss, 2012) to conclude that, although standardised test scores of students are one tool school leaders can use to make judgments about teacher effectiveness, such scores can only be a part of an overall comprehensive evaluation. Any sound evaluation has to necessarily involve a balancing of all relevant factors in order to provide a more accurate view of what teachers do in the classroom and their contribution to student learning.
In addition, binding teacher evaluation and sanctions to test score results can discourage teachers from wanting to work in schools with the neediest students, while the large, unpredictable variation in the results and their perceived unfairness can undermine teacher morale (Baker et al, 2010). For instance, teachers show lower gains when they have large numbers of new English-learners and students with disabilities than when they teach other students. This is true even when statistical methods are used to “control” for student characteristics (Darling-Hammond, 2012). Surveys have found that teacher attrition and demoralisation have been associated with test-based accountability efforts, particularly in high-need schools.
The use of VAMS is also associated with a narrowing of the curriculum; a de facto curriculum whose subject matter is defined by what is tested. Teachers who rate highest on the low-level multiple-choice tests currently in use are often not those who raise higher scores in assessments of more-challenging learning (Darling-Hammond, 2012). Some believe that the pressure to teach “fill-in-the-bubble tests” will further reduce the focus on research, writing, and complex problem-solving; areas which students will need competence in to compete with their peers in high-achieving countries (Darling-Hammond, 2012).
Finally, as far as merit-pay systems are concerned, tying teacher evaluation and remuneration to test results is problematic on numerous levels, not least because it reinforces a competitive spirit that undermines teacher collegiality and teamwork (Froese-Germain, 2011).

POSTSCRIPT: On a related note to the last point, one Nashville, Tennessee, U.S. study has concluded that merit pay alone does not raise student performance: Melanie Moran, "Vanderbilt News," September 21, 2010, "Teacher performance pay alone does not raise student test scores."