Teachers Comment on King Dictum

Great comments are rolling in to many of the blogs and to Ed Notes directly.

Jeff Kaufman
One of my favorite parts of the arbitration decision was commented on by the UFT official spin. When deciding how many arbitration slots should be added to the current 175 authorized by our CBA. King, in his decision, noted that this was one of the biggest stumbling blocks to an agreement. When the talks broke down in January the UFT asked for 250 additional expedited arbitrations. This is for over 75,000 teachers. At the hearing they asked for 1000. The DOE initially offered 150 but at the hearing offered zero. Guess what King decided?
What this demonstrates is that the Union never cared about protecting its members and only when there would be a record made of the demand decided to look like they cared.
Why not have a rally to allow Mulgrew to absorb all of the credit for this incredible sellout?
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Hi Norm,

I am very concerned for my colleagues with the onset of the imposed evaluation plan.  While reading many of the news articles and blogs, I remembered how principals at one time was pushing the SMART goal approach.

The more I read about the 20 points that are based on SLOs and how principals will ask teachers to set goals for each of their students (HS) and the percentage of student will pass the Regents, the more it sounds like the SMART goal that teachers detested because of the excessive paperwork.

I remember how the union fought against the SMART goal and told teachers to send a push-back email to their principal.  Here's the push-back email that the union encouraged teachers to send to their principals back in the fall of 2009.

Date

Principal’s Name
Bronx School
Bronx, NY

Dear Principal’s Name:

I have read your memo/letter/email of [date] in which you instruct me to input into the school’s database weekly, monthly and annual instructional goals or SMART goals (list items that you are instructed to do; this is a sample list)  for every student I teach.

As always, I will do my best to comply with your instructions.  However, to complete this task, I need to know:
1.     what time during the school day I should use to complete these tasks;
2.     where I will be able to access a computer connected to the school’s database during that time.

Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely yours,
Teacher's Name

I did a search on your blog and found this teacher's frustration posted regarding the SMART goal.  The dejavu is the part where is states that “By September 27, 2011, 100% of teachers will have MEMORIZED the names and proficiency scores of ALL students within the target proficiency ranges, along with each students proficiency score.”

http://ednotesonline.blogspot.com/2011/09/report-from-field-race-to-bottom.html

This reminds me of principals like Grismaldy Laboy-Wilson, who taught for ONLY two years, became a principal at the age of 24, and taught a social studies class as a principal, where she had a passing rate that was less than 70%, will be one of the principals to abuse the new evaluation plan. 

http://ednotesonline.blogspot.com/2010/11/whatever-it-takes-how-to-get-grad-rates.html#comment-form

I feel that these are the blogs that I would like for you to repost to remind everyone out there that the new evaluation plan may not be the best thing out there after all.