Congratulations on my Retirement!!!

Yes, it's true. I've been receiving tons of congratulations from my colleagues lately on my coming retirement. Which is normal, I suppose, except for one thing.

I'm not retiring. I'm not old enough and I don't
have enough years in.

So you may be wondering why people have been congratulating me. I'll give you a hint--it all started when I returned to school Monday.

Yep. I've been getting pats on the back all week because of the new evaluation system, because while I am not retiring, I will be eligible to retire well before the end of the 2015 school year, which is when the new system will start lopping the heads off any teachers rated ineffective two years in a row. So even if they hoist me into the tumbril and cart me off the the guillotine, I can narrowly escape and head off into the sunset at Boca Raton.

To be clear, I have no intention of retiring for quite a few years, because I love teaching and I still think my best work is yet to come. And besides, where would I get material for this blog?

My point is that it just goes to show you the extent to which people are afraid of this new evaluation system, and I think justifiably so. The fact that people are congratulating me on retirement years in advance shows me how much those people believe they will not make it, as I have.

They may well be right. A teacher with 10 years in will have to go at least another 17 without getting two consecutive ineffective ratings. If you're brand new, you'll have to survive a full 27 years of junk science VAM evaluations, and you'll have to survive a number of principals (I have survived six, so far) and admins who may not think you're the cat's pajamas (jeez, I am old).

Unless things change, you can expect that this evaluation plan will mean that before long, no one will reach retirement (and after all, isn't that what Bloomberg wants, anyway?). Once geezers like me are gone, we'll have to think of new things to celebrate, such as one consecutive year without an ineffective rating. Teacher who get vested should receive a gold watch.

A lot of the folks who congratulated me also told me that they are working on their resumes, or looking for other careers. That, of course, is the other thing Bloomberg wanted--a transient, temporary work force that will be young enough not to need many benefits and too inexperienced to climb up the pay scale.

Me, I'm just basking in the glow of all the congratulations. I may go out this weekend to buy a straw hat, some Bermuda shorts, and some sandals to go with my knee length black socks as I contemplate getting out of this system and heading to Florida. I hope to see you there one day. But I'm not banking on it. It'll probably be just me and Mulgrew.

Email From Mulgrew Regarding APPR Decision

My fellow UFTers,

I'm delighted to tell you of the total victory we emerged with today by wisely allowing John King, whose cup of coffee as a teacher gives him wide ranging knowledge of education, to decide the fate of the 75,000 teachers we threw under the bus represent.

There will, of course, be plenty of time for you to get to know the details of this plan as you stand on the unemployment line, but here are some highlights:

• You will be judged on all 22 elements of the Danielson Framework. The city tried to cheat us and evaluate us on only 21 of them, but we insisted. Win!
• You will be observed from 4-6 times per year, as opposed to the previous two. Obviously, we wanted more observations because teachers asked for them. In a recent poll of teacher preferences conducted by New York Teacher, 52% of teachers said "I want to be observed three times as often." None of the other choices, such as "I want my scrotum stapled to a moving roller coaster" garnered even half as much support.
• If you teach ELA or math, only 20% of your score will be based on value-added measurements (VAM, aka junk science). Or 25% if the Regents changes its mind. Oh, and if your kids don't do well, it will count for 100%. But it'll only be 20% as long as you don't have to teach any kids with learning disabilities, limited English, or behavior problems, which, as we know, is reflective of the majority of classes in NYC.
• If you teach science or social studies, we have even better news! We know that many of you have been bemoaning the fact that you don't get to teach to high stakes state tests like other core subjects, but those days are over! 20% (or 25%, or 100%) of your evaluation will come from a new set of tests designed just for the city! No siree, we didn't forget you in this system!
• As a bonus, you will also have the unheard of opportunity to be evaluated by your students. Yes, student surveys will now contribute to your overall score. If you thought being evaluated by an admin with only 3 years of teaching experience was fun, imagine how you'll love being graded by children who've only been in school for three years! Many of them still eat library paste!
• Mayor Bloomberg wanted an evaluation system that would never sunset, or run for a million bajillion years, whichever comes first. We, of course, wouldn't stand for that. In a stunning victory, we made sure that the law would sunset in FOUR years! True, the rest of the state will sunset in two, and we got four, but you have to admit that's not even close to a million bajillion! If that's not a victory, we don't know what is (no, really, we don't).
• The DOE wanted to ability to fire any teacher rated ineffective two years in a row. To be honest, they did get that, but hey, you'll get up to a full four hours to prove that you are competent before you are fired. What more could you ask for? To make it even sweeter,  13% of teachers will actually get a semblance of a real hearing instead of a kangaroo court. So if you're a chapter leader loyal to Unity, or willing to sleep with a chapter leader loyal to Unity, you may just end up being one of the lucky few.
• For those of you worried about getting tenure, we have something for you, as well. Now that teachers can be fired for two years of ineffective ratings, tenure no longer matters anyway! All teachers will enjoy exactly the same protections, or lack thereof.

We just wanted to get the word out to you ourselves, before the press and the DOE get their spin on it. Remember, if you have any questions about the new APPR, don't forget to contact your DOE representative. You can be sure that he or she will always be there to answer your questions, because they are not subject to this evaluation plan and therefore can't be fired.

Yours in appeasement,

Michael Mulgrew

Fighting the Wrong Battle on Teacher Evaluations

Let's start with the obvious: Agreeing to allow value-added scores (VAM) to be part of the teacher evaluation system was a mistake. VAM is wildly unreliable as an indicator of teacher quality; as I have frequently pointed out on this blog, I went from being one of the worst teachers in NYC one year to being one of the best the next year if you go my my TDA rating, which is based on VAM. There were no consequences to my initial low score, as the new evaluation system was not in place at that time.

Had it been in place, my low single digit TDA score would have placed a target on my back. Admins simply can't (or more accurately, won't) ignore it when teachers are poorly rated no matter how good the teacher is, because they know a second poor score will lead to a 3020a hearing for that teacher. Worse still, it's likely that the new evaluation system will make it mandatory for teachers with low VAM scores to be rated ineffective.

And that's all bad. But it's not really THAT bad.

You see, admins have always had the ability to give you a crappy evaluation if they wanted to. I've seen many fine teachers rated U for consecutive years and sent off to incompetence hearings. Usually it happened because the teacher was involved in union activity, or went against the administration in some way. I have seen teachers falsely accused of sexual or verbal abuse because admins wanted them removed from the classroom (I know of one case where the admins coached a child to lie about a teacher. The teacher was found not guilty, but nothing happened to the admins).

So teachers have often been targeted, and the new evaluation system won't change that. What's really wrong with the new system is that it will likely allow for a teacher to be removed after two consecutive ineffective ratings regardless of the validity of the charges.

According to the new system, if a teacher is rated ineffective two years in a row, whether due to VAM or politics or because the principal doesn't like the fact that you wear jeans on Fridays, the onus will fall on that teacher to prove he or she is not ineffective. And good luck with that, considering your principal will have two years of phony data or trumped up evaluations to show that you stink.

Imagine our criminal justice system working this way. Instead of the current due process system in which the accused must be proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, let's instead assume a teacher-evaluation model system in which anyone arrested two times would be automatically found guilty unless he could establish his innocence beyond a reasonable doubt.

Burden of proof is the real issues in teacher evaluations, but it's one that the union isn't even bothering to fight for. We have already conceded. The right to a fair hearing with due process is the entire point behind tenure; without that, tenure is meaningless and all of us are one rogue admin away from losing our jobs.

Why isn't the union fighting to retain meaningful tenure and due process rights? A clue lies in one of the other proposed provisions in the new evaluation system--that 13% of cases chosen by the union will be heard by a more independent tribunal. The union will almost certainly choose to protect its own--i.e., chapter leaders loyal to Unity. The rest of us can whistle.

Why would the union choose to protect only 13% of its members and not the other 87%? Well, just follow the money. It costs the union money to defend teachers under attack. This system will give them the ability to throw most teachers to the wolves while protecting their own, and save money to boot. They will spotlight a few high profile cases in New York Teacher and claim they are fighting the system, but the truth is most accused teachers will lose their jobs with no meaningful representation. They will be replaced by other teachers who pay the same amount in union dues every year. The union loses nothing.

Don't expect the UFT to engage the city on this--the real battle we should be fighting. Instead, they will blame VAM or Danielson or Bloomberg for teachers getting fired in droves. They will not blame themselves for agreeing to an evaluation system that eviscerates the tenure system that currently protects teachers from vindictive principals. No one at UFT headquarters will be adversely affected by this and the dues will keep rolling in.

Jimmy Kimmel Nails It

Watch for yourself:

Another Privileged Teacher Advocates Larger Class Sizes for OTHER People's Children

Here we go again. The New York Times has seen fit to publish yet another opinion piece advocating larger class sizes, this time by one Sara Mosle. And surprise! Ms. Mosle turns out to be a hypocrite.

In her piece, she claims there is only one study showing that class size matters, which sounds like the NYT fact checker must have been on vacation. Beyond that, she argues that teachers should compromise and allow larger class sizes in exchange for more money blah blah blah reformer blather here.

A quick check on Ms. Mosle reveals a few things. First, she received $850,000 dollars for a book proposal some years back. She is a Princeton grad so one can assume that she most likely did not attend an overcrowded public school herself. She is also one of the original members of TFA. These facts do not bode well for her objectivity on class size.

Most damning of all, as it turns out, Ms. Mosle, in addition to her writing ability, is also a teacher. That seems great, until you learn that she is teaching at the Philips Academy, a charter school. While there's nothing wrong with that in and of itself, it turns out that this particular charter caps its class sizes at 21.

I don't even know why I'm blogging about this. It's pretty typical, when you think about it. A privileged, Ivy Leage TFA alum makes a bundle and teaches in a plum school while advocating worse conditions for the rest of us. It's pretty much par for the course for the Times and ed deformers.

What's troubling to me is the gullibility of the Times and other news outlets. They spew this garbage as gospel and it eventually becomes the truth. I've never heard a single teacher with a class size of 35 in a disadvantaged school advocate for larger class sizes. Yet if the media is to be believed, most of us are clamoring to have even more children stuffed into our classrooms in exchange for a few bucks. It's a disgrace, and I'm sick of it.

Ms. Mosle should be ashamed, but as long as the Times posts her garbage and publishing houses write her exorbitant checks, there's nothing to stop her.

Just How Much Instruction Is Lost Due To Testing?

It's been a grueling two weeks for teachers across the state, as we administered farcically long state tests to children who were unnecessarily spooked by all the warnings that their grades would plummet. There is no question, I think, that these were two lost weeks--weeks that could be been dedicated to real instruction, but were sacrificed to the billionaires who believe that testing is more important than learning.

Losing two weeks of instruction is bad enough, but it's not the whole story. Many, if not most, ELA and math teachers will be gone for a week or longer to help grade these tests. That's at least another week where our students will be sitting around, doing worksheets or puzzles or whatever the subs can cajole them into doing in our absence. So now we've lost three weeks of math and ELA instruction.

Add in the test prep that almost all of us are required to do. I spent comparatively little time on test prep myself, mostly because I believe it to be a waste of time and the amount of prep I do has zero correlation to the evaluation I receive (staunch readers will recall that I was at the very bottom on my TDAs one year and at the very top the next, so I have that all important "data" to back up the fact that test prep is bullshit). Even so, I spent about two weeks doing little else besides prep, and I imagine most of my colleagues did the same. So now, we are up to five weeks of instruction lost.

There are variables that are difficult to quantify, as well. For example, so much of the school year is dedicated to these tests that students (perhaps rightly) feel that not much else matters, especially now that the tests are history. It's inevitable that students will slack off a bit now, for the remaining two months of the year. How much they'll slack off depends on their usual dedication to learning, their teachers dedication, and the school culture, but even in the best case it is hard to imagine that students will be working as hard in the final eight weeks as they did in the first thirty two. Let's be generous and say that this slacking off will only be the equivalent of losing one week of the remaining eight.

In total, that's six weeks worth of instruction lost to testing, at a minimum. The mind boggles at the thought of how much more learning will evaporate once the new evaluation system is in place and students are tested in every subject, in every grade. (And you can assume that when that happens, teachers will be spending a LOT more time on test prep knowing their jobs may be on the line.)

But let's be generous once again, and assume that we will only lose the six weeks we currently lose. That means that a child starting in NYC public schools next year in first grade and graduating from a NYC high school can expect to lose--wait for it--a whopping SEVENTY-TWO weeks to testing mania.

Seventy two weeks. And remember, that's assuming that things don't get worse when we start testing every subject.

Given that there are 40 school weeks in a year, that totals nearly two years of instruction lost to testing. Is it any wonder our students are continuing to fall behind? Rather than teaching them things, we are testing them on things that we simply don't have enough time to teach.

Of course, the reformers will say we need to be accountable. To which I reply, why aren't the reformers accountable for all the instructional time they are stealing from our kids?

Mr. Talk Returns

It's been a while since I have posted. There are reasons, none of which are earth-shattering, but I have been feeling too busy and overwhelmed to do much blogging. I hope neither of my readers missed me. (In truth, when I checked my blog stats today, it actually appears that my readership has grown significantly since my last posting over a month ago, so either people are checking in to see whether I am still alive or some people prefer to read my blog when I haven't written anything.)

Some of you know I was writing for MORE and doing some other stuff for them, but lately I fell down on that job as well, for which I apologize to those people. I don't know what the results of today's election will be, but I can honestly say that I was honored to work with the people from MORE, and I would have been proud to see them snatch a victory here. As unlikely as that is, I think we made a real dent in this election, at least to the point where people are talking about how the UFT does things. And that is all to the good. A democratic union can only work where there is a legitimate opposition, and I truly believe that MORE has established itself as a major player in this union, regardless of the outcome.

That's all I really wanted to say. Hopefully, I can get myself back to some kind of regular posting schedule as I have much to belly ache about.