The Political Underbelly of Ed Deform: Enormous Money Wasted on Teacher Monitoring

UPDATED: Nov. 3, 2011, 11:40PM

On National Test, New York Declines in Math
Ohanian Comment: I had resolved to skip all stories about NAEP. After all, Gerald Bracey pointed out how corrupt the NAEP setup was from the get-go. And it certainly hasn't changed.[Don't miss this classic Bracey takedown.] And I studied the reading passages and questions carefully--and read the bizarre rationales the scorers gave for the scores they assigned. But I stumbled across this Merryl Tisch quote, and ohmygod, have to post it for posterity. It is so arrogantly incomprehensible that I'll post it twice, once here, and once in the article: 

"We cannot be diddling around with courts and lawyers while children and teachers in this state are going hungry for an evaluation. We need to get to a place in New York State where curriculum and instruction drive assets, and not the assets that drive the curriculum and instruction."--Merryl Tisch 

What IS she talking about? She is a prime diddler. 

I added the above since Susan grabbed the same Tisch asshole quote I did below.

First the ed deformers sell the idea that the teacher is the most important element in a child's education.
Then the witch hunts begin.

In my debate last week at Hofstra with Michael Regnier from the NYC Charter Center where ed deform reigns, he was asked for solutions and basically came up with better training for teachers, better method of teaching. That triggered my only heated moment of the evening where I categorically rejected the key idea of the ed deformers that all we need are better lesson plans. I'm glad that Yelena Siwinski, CL of PS 193K who accompanied me, asked Regnier if he ever taught- which he didn't - which led to his heated moment - he refused to accept the idea that you have to teach to discuss education policy. Sure, Michael, go discuss to your heart's content - but you are getting paid as part of the ed deform industry that has sprung up to move public policy. I stole the button from Pissed Off Teacher but there is another that reads - THOSE WHO CANNOT (teach) WANT TO MAKE ED POLICY. I just love those people on the ed deform dole who say they care about children but won't go near the highest level of showing how much you care - go teach those children you care so much about.

Oh, so simple. Just spend billions on measuring teacher effectiveness and get rid of the ineffective teachers who can't improve (hint: some have figured out a way to cheat on the tests).

The sad thing is that our unions - the AFT and UFT - often jumped in with glee to declare how important the teacher is while downplaying the factors that we know have the real impact.

At least Mulgrew jumped in to respond to this outrage by Tisch who placed the blame for the low NAEP's squarely on the teachers:

Merryl Tisch, the chancellor of the state Board of Regents, said the test results reinforce her argument that the state needs a strong teacher evaluation process.
“We cannot be diddling around with courts and lawyers while children and teachers in this state are going hungry for an evaluation,” Ms. Tisch said. “We need to get to a place in New York State where curriculum and instruction drive assets, and not the assets that drive the curriculum and instruction.”

And in the same Times article, another slug said:

Ms. Libfeld also blamed budget cuts and lack of money for teacher training. “It’s an issue all over that we need to focus on,” she said. “Money needs to be focused on professional development for teachers and that’s the bottom line.”

Sure, that's the bottom line. The reality is that we will always have a bunch of teachers who are problematic and even if you ended LIFO right now and allowed principals to fire every teacher they wanted to - we know that a whole bunch of these would be fired for nothing to do with their performance as teachers so so-called "good" teachers would be let go. But let's say they get rid of all the people they consider bad. Now they have to find replacements. Does anyone think that a whole batch of these replacements - who in most cases would be totally inexperienced - wouldn't also be problematic?

But this is where an enormous amount of money is going. Why test kindergarten kids? So they can get a baseline for their teachers. Insanity.

You can see ed deform at work every single day. Just this week we found out that NY State made no progress on the NAEP scores. Now as an opponent of using tests to measure everything I hate to jump on the necks of Merryl Tisch and her neighbor Bloomberg - no, I really don't hate to do it - they lived by the sword and should die by the sword. Even before the NAEP's were released I predicted that NYC would do a penny better than the rest of the state and even though last in the nation would declare victory. You know why? Because we have the least experienced corps of principals with so many coming from the Leadership Academy and many of them are at least competent in figuring out how to cheat - like going so far as to threaten teachers with their jobs if they don't. And of course with the witch hunts on to measure and fire teachers who don't perform, I can't blame them.

So there were lots of articles in the NY Times this week on what may look like separate issues but they are all connected.

Leonie Haimson linked these issues at the NYC Parent blog:

Today's scorecard on our schools: the news ain't pretty & the diagnosis bizarre

We have had nine long years during which NY state and city education officials have relentlessly focused on  high stakes testing, with school closings, grade retention, and teacher bonuses all linked to test scores.  So according to data released today, what have been the results?

• Test score tampering allegations are way up;

• So are suspensions;

• So are class sizes;

•  Meanwhile, our test scores on the most reliable national assessments are flat or declining.

So what do we need, according to NY education officials ?  Better tests.  Read it and weep.

Leonie Haimson tracks another waste of money by the Tweedies.

Many new positions to be  hired in “Teacher Effectiveness Support”; incl. two jobs at six figure salaries. meanwhile class sizes growing out of control and no money for classroom supplies. What does Support mean?  More rigid evaluation systems. Read the list below the fold. Title	Company	Location	Date Posted
Administrative Assistant, Teacher Effectiveness Support	Nyc Department of Education	New York, NY	Wednesday, November 2
from NYC Department of Education - $35,285+
Senior Advisor To The Deputy Chancellor For Talent, Labor and Innovation $103,000+	Nyc Department of Education	New York, NY	Wednesday, November 2
from NYC Department of Education - Save Job
Operations Coordinator, Teacher Effectiveness Support	Nyc Department of Education	New York, NY	Wednesday, November 2
from NYC Department of Education - Save Job $56,911+
Supervisor of Speech Improvement - 7900/su42	Nyc Department of Education	New York, NY	Wednesday, November 2
from NYC Department of Education - Save Job
Operations Manager, Teacher Effectiveness Program Support $70,000+	Nyc Department of Education	New York, NY	Wednesday, November 2
from NYC Department of Education - Save Job
Education Administrator - Senior Educational Research, Evaluation & Program Planning Specialist, Liv-Ea40	Nyc Department of Education	New York, NY	Wednesday, November 2
from NYC Department of Education - $106,201

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