By Lisa Fleisher
(From The Wall Street Journal, September 9, 2012)
New York state’s first system to grade teachers using students’ standardized test scores is turning out to be anything but standardized.
More than two years after a new law required a complete overhaul of teacher and principal evaluations, the state Education Department has begun approving dozens of agreements hammered out between local districts and unions.
Of the state’s roughly 700 school districts, 75 had plans approved as of Friday. New York City and its teachers union, which accounts for by far the largest portion of the state’s educators and students, have not reached a deal.
A review of the first approved plans shows a hodgepodge of methods for determining which teachers deserve to stay and which don’t. While the law outlined a broad framework for the job-performance reviews—40% based on tests or other gauges of student learning, and 60% based on principals’ observations and other subjective measures—the details were left to the local districts and unions.
Teachers unions are pleased that they retained collective-bargaining power over the negotiations, which means the evaluation systems cannot be imposed without union consent.
“These teacher and principal evaluations honor local control and the ability of local communities to decide what’s best for their teachers,” said Carl Korn, spokesman for New York State United Teachers.
In places such as Schenectady, state math and English tests will count for 40% of a fourth-grade teacher’s final rating, but they’ll only count for 20% in Binghamton. Teachers in upstate Odessa will be visited seven times by administrators for classroom observations, which will count for a full 60% of their final rating. But in nearby Newfield, principals will observe teachers just twice a year, and those visits will make up 35% of their ratings. In Syracuse, 6% of teachers’ evaluations are up to students, who will fill out surveys.
That means teachers could receive very different grades than if they were teaching the same students in the same school setting in a different district. Some fear there will be little way to distinguish effective teaching across the state.
“The potential here is for the entire idea of recognizing great teaching in New York state to be watered down to the idea that it’s meaningless,” said Joe Williams, executive director of Democrats for Education Reform, a national group that pushes for tougher teacher evaluations. “If you cross the border from one town to another, the definition of great teaching shouldn’t be all that different.”