The Agony and the Agony: UFT Delegate Assembly Tackles Danielson

UPDATED: Monday, Oct. 24, 11:30PM

UFT hands the DOE a knife to put to the throats of teachers and claims they won't use it. Or if it is used it is by a "rogue" principal or DOE incompetence. Will UFT support for Danielson Framework of Teaching lead to end of tenure and LIFO? And in addition, teachers are told to spend their own money to buy the Danielson book - sort of like handing someone a shovel to dig their own grave.

Teachers compare Danielson mania to way Workshop model was implemented and misused years ago.

Mulgrew claims the DOE people don't have a clue as to what's going on in the schools. Actions in supporting Danielson Frameworks raise issue as to whether he has a clue.

The report came in from a chapter leader.

In September of 2011, Bloomberg began implementing yet another reform in the NYC public schools. Dennis Walcott, with Bloomberg’s encouragement, has directed principals to use the Charlotte Danielson Framework rubrics as a formative evaluation for teachers. For those who are unfamiliar with educational jargon, a rubric is a grading scale that can be used to give a rating to someone or something. In the current school year, this framework is to be used for support, next year it is to be used to provide evaluations.

As stated before, this is one of many changes that have taken place since Bloomberg began mayoral control of the New York City Public Schools. When Bloomberg first came to be head of the schools, he instituted the city wide use of the workshop model. The workshop model is a 45 minute long lesson set aside for a particular subject. Teachers are expected to execute a series of lessons in that hour, all related to that particular subject. This approach prescribes teacher controlled and rigidly timed short lessons sometimes aimed at the whole class, sometimes a small group. Teachers are expected to race through these workshop models daily, keeping the students under rigid and stifling control, while maintaining a specific and inflexible schedule of activities. Teachers are castigated for any deviation from the confines of the script and actions, letters are placed in teacher’s files, and teachers have been given unsatisfactory ratings, for not implementing every aspect of this top down model. Teachers have even been sent to the ‘rubber room’ for not following this model to its exact specification. For example, within a 45 minute framework, teachers must execute the following: a short ten minute skill lesson with the whole class, followed by another ten minute lesson with five or six students, followed by three five minute visits to individual students. This is to be done with note taking and individual mini lessons, all this while the remaining students are working independently. Finally a class meeting is held at the end of the workshop for another 5-10 minutes. Teachers are expected to create charts, take notes, complete checklists, and collect data about student performance during these workshops. This is done with 25-32 students in the room, and, most frequently, without any assistance.

Now we enter the age of Danielson in New York City. The Danielson model is to be implemented in a supportive, collaborative, non threatening environment of mutual trust. To be highly effective, Danielson states, a teacher should offer students choice in their pathways to learning. She also states that students should raise their own questions and show that they take initiative for their own learning. Danielson states that an observer of teachers should be trained and certified in this fine art, and Danielson says she can provide the training. To date, we are unaware of any NYC principals receiving this training. To initiate the process without these components already in place is to exchange one poor evaluation system for another in the very words of Ms. Danielson herself.

There is a clash between these two approaches. It will take principals with knowledge, experience, and expertise to make the two models work together. Unfortunately, Mr. Bloomberg has not sought out and appointed principals that have the experience, sensitive understanding and knowledge of the classroom to collaborate on the Danielson model. He has replaced many experienced principals with younger, corporate minded supervisors. The senior principals that have remained under Bloomberg have never openly challenged his ideas, and certainly have not been encouraged to bring their experience and expertise to Bloomberg’s table of reforms.

Given the present reality of the Bloomberg/Walcott regime, the Danielson rubrics have already failed in the New York City Public Schools. The prerequisite climate of trust, knowledge, and cooperation inherent to achieving the true goals of the Danielson framework does not exist, precluding any possibility of this transition. Principals are already using Danielson merely as a vehicle to give teachers unsatisfactory ratings, without implementing any of the positive ideas that Danielson has put forth. The focus continues to be on the usual pecking away at details, rather than on true teacher support and improvement. Therefore, the use of Danielson should be tabled at this time. Perhaps, instead, to move forward in the right direction, a rubric should be created for principals that would encourage them to work toward that climate of trust and respect that Danielson aspires to.

When Sam Lazarus (a member of ICE), Chapter Leader of Bryant HS, one of the 30 or so target schools trying out the Danielson system of teacher evaluation, spoke out at the October 19 Delegate Assembly against the resolution being promoted by the UFT leadership I thought I was watching a horror film akin to the Chernobyl disaster, embellished by zombie administrators looking to use what some people consider a potentially useful tool to chew on the livers of living teachers.

Sam, following Academic HS VP Leo Casey's urging the "brudders and sistas" to support the UFT Administration sponsored reso - which affirmed support for Danielson system while admonishing the DOE to stick to what was agreed to - to only use the system in Transformation and Restart schools THIS year - yes it is coming to a school near you soon.

Sam laid out what is happening at Bryant in such graphic terms, some people could be seen wretching in the halls - OK - just a little hyperbole - it was probably the rotten bananas. He told of how the DF could be used to rate teachers poorly and fire them without hearings - an end to LIFO and tenure.  Pretty shocking and something that should call for a looooong discussion within the union.

Of course, in the spirit of UFT democracy, this reso was gotten to with about 2 minutes left in the meeting. After Leo and Sam spoke, Mulgrew, using his seating chart to call on the pre-planned Unity Caucus speakers who would support the reso, got 2 affirmatives before hitting the "call the question" to close debate guy.

Sure it so assuring for the reso to say that the UFT will "defend the integrity of the Danielson Framework of Teaching using all contractual, legal and other means [please tell us some of these] at our disposal to stop its misuse in schools where supervisors are engaged in rogue [see, it's not good guys at the DOE executing a plan] evaluations that violate our members' rights."

So I know you are enjoying a good laugh at how tough the UFT administration will be with the DOE in defending your rights. At the DA a Unity Caucus member who has some knowledge of U-rating hearings told me disgustedly, "Even the hearing officers are asking why the UFT is so weak in defending people."

The reso has lots of whereas' defining all sorts of background. But you can read it for yourself here.
But we do know about the lack of support at the school level when it comes to psycho principals (which we have been reporting on). Imagine giving this tool to one of them, especially when we know that Tweed will support even serial killer grads of the Leadership Academy.

UFT chapter leaders are disgusted and some are resigning, claiming collusion between UFT district reps and their principals against the teachers. Here is an email I received today:

Just wanted to let you know that I will be resigning as Chapter leader of my school shortly due to negligence of the DR by not supporting her chapter leaders. This has been endemic for several years. I could write a book on the grievances the school has but the DR does not want to touch them while also communicating to the principal, exposing confidential matters between myself and members. Several other chapter leaders are just plain fed up. This is the cancer bloggers talk about at the UFT. All major issues are skirted or totally avoided!

So how will/can the UFT protect people from misuse of Danielson? The disconnect between the leadership and At the Sept Chapter Leader meeting Mulgrew was slobbering all over how wonderful Danielson is and selling it to the members and now, this week, Mendel is publically complaining about the principals using it when they are not yet empowered to do so and this has become a point of contention w/ UFT leadership and DOE (even though Mulgrew, Walcott and CSA pres sent out a joint letter telling principals they are not to be using it).

Given what I am hearing from the schools, the UFT Administration may have as little knowledge of what is occurring as the Tweedies. Or a better explanation is that they know exactly what is going on and are choosing to ignore the pleas of the members just as Tweed also knows full well what is going on with so-called rogue administrators and are actually encouraging them.

In her own words: Charlotte Danielson interview:

Let me give you a story of when it’s not done well. I was contacted early on by a large urban district in New Jersey that…had a horrible evaluation system. It was top-down and arbitrary and punitive and sort of “gotcha.” And they developed a new one based on my book, and it was top-down and arbitrary, and punitive. All they did was exchange one set of evaluative criteria for another. They did nothing to change the culture surrounding evaluation. It was very much something done to teachers, an inspection, used to penalize or punish teachers whom the principal didn’t like…[and] I discovered that if I didn’t do something here, my name would get associated with things people hate. So I thought about what it would take to do teacher evaluation well. And I discovered that doing it well means respecting what we know about teacher learning, which has to do with self-assessment, reflection on practice, and professional conversation. 

http://educationnext.org/straight-up-conversation-teacher-eval-guru-charlotte-danielson/

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