Thursday, December 8, 2016

What Chalkbeat Leaves Out in Thomas Fordham Inst. Report on Firing Teachers in NYC

Gates funded indeed - comment from Ed Notes reader on Chalkbeat report.
It takes two years of consecutive “ineffective” ratings to dismiss [a tenured teacher] in New York City, roughly a third of the time it can take in Los Angeles, in some cases. (In response to the report, New York City education officials said teachers can be removed for incompetence, even without two ineffective ratings.)   ... Chalkbeat
New York City is among the hardest places to fire a low-performing teacher, report claims, screams the headline from Chalkbeat reporter Alex Zimmerman.

Peter Lamphere, as top level a math teacher as you can find, received 2 U ratings in a row at Bronx HS of Science due to chapter leader activities and was going to be given a 3rd U which would have cost him his job before the UFT helped parachute him out of the school. Now, once he was safe they should have made him the poster boy for why we need tenure and to show that even tenure won't protect you from political vendettas. If Chalkbeat were honest journalists they would have pointed to the issue of the retaliation of the oh too many vicious principals and even site the Lamphere story --- read all about it here -

Peter Lamphere on Rosemarie Jahoda: What Does It Take To Get Promoted to Principal in NYC?

The irony is that Rosemarie Jahoda persecuted the entire math dept - including exhibiting racism against black teachers ---and is now being rewarded with the principalship of top school Townshend Harris. A petition to protest this act is being circulated:

STOP Rosemarie Jahoda from being appointed the PERMANENT principal of Townsend Harris HS


http://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/ny/2016/12/08/new-york-city-is-among-the-hardest-places-to-fire-a-low-performing-teacher-report-claims/
Despite changes in state law and several attempts at overhauling teacher evaluations, New York City remains one of the most difficult places in the country to fire an ineffective teacher. That’s according to a report released Thursday by the conservative-leaning Thomas Fordham Institute, which ranked New York City fourth out of 25 large, geographically diverse school districts in terms of how hard it is to fire low-performing teachers.
The findings offer another piece of evidence that the national effort to remove ineffective teachers through harsher evaluation systems — which have already been significantly rolled back in New York state — has not taken hold locally. 
 Conservative leaning? Do they even try to explain what that means? Why not say a clearly biased report from anti-tenure ed deformers?

And you can read more about what Jahoda and principal Valerie Reidy did at ed notes achives:

Apr 27, 2010 ... The fact finder, Carol Wittenberg, concluded that Ms. Jahoda and UFT Chapter Chair Peter Lamphere should transfer out of the school, that the ...
ednotesonline.blogspot.com
Jan 8, 2009 ... Math teachers in particular blame a new administrator - Assistant Principal Rosemarie Jahoda - for verbal abuse, claiming they are ...
ednotesonline.blogspot.com
Sep 18, 2011 ... At that time, 20 of the school's 22 math teachers accused Rosemarie Jahoda, the math assistant principal, of harassing and intimidating new ...
ednotesonline.blogspot.com


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

This story is exactly why the UFT needs to step up right now in regard to our new evaluation. NYS law says that only 2 observations are required by law. (One by principal and one by an "outside evaluator) One of these observations must be announced. We would all benefit from one, announced observation by our supervisor instead of the 4-6 drive by unannounced observations that are taking place right now. Observations are literally what makes or breaks the majority of teachers in NYC. Although we may never go back to fair "S" and "U" days, having 2 observations per year is the most sane way to proceed. UFT, are you listening???