However, the utilization of these rubrics requires a rapport and open supervisory relationship between administrators and pedagogues—a human relationship—providing guidance and support to determine the extent to which practices are being developed, tempered with student achievement. What the State of New York has dispatched instead is a cold mechanical thing, like a trash compactor of data weighted and having “value added” in ways that will pop the springs on your old TI-30. I have a hard time doubting that the higher ups can define what determines “value added” because it has been something of a mystery in the past as to what the city’s value added metric was in schools assessments. The humanistic piece of the equitable rubric is unbalanced by the slavery of “Student Learning Objectives” or “SLOs” rating to high stakes testing. This bondage is unequivocally unfair because the high stakes tests change like sands beneath the tides, only more frequently throughout the school year.
Additionally, the preview tests in the 2012-13 school year were not reflective of the actual test in terms of the kinds of readings or skills assessed—and while the test itself was nominally fair in its questioning but not in the way teachers were directed to prepare the students. While I am, by no means, an advocate of the “teach to the test” mentality it stands to reason that if effectiveness is to be determined by performance on these high stakes mystery dates then we should at least know about bachelor skills 1-3 instead of looking at hundreds of standards and domains waiting for a drunk dial.
When I questioned a representative about whether or not teachers would be provided with the emphasized skills on the test at the beginning of the year so that teachers could attempt to meet the criterion of their own effectiveness assessments (the ones that determine their job security) the only answer that was given was “I don’t know”. What I was told is that 60% of the rating is based on what administrators see of teacher effect in the classroom. Unfortunately, a 60% rating on the scale is still an ineffective teaching grade, so essentially without a decent turnaround on the tests, a teacher is effectively sunk.This is the security of being on an airplane that is being built while it’s flying. Thanks a lot, Governor Cuomo and Commissioner King for this high enthusing system of rating. I sure feel valued.
With all the accountability of an airplane being built while flying on the part of the taskmasters, teachers are being held to an entirely unclear system of observation—a system which effects tenure, job security, and peace of mind in the work place. Reducing piece of mind is the addition of the student survey on teachers. A survey given to students—even elementary school students—to rate the effectiveness of their teachers is probably the single most ridiculous attack on the authority structure of a classroom that has ever been entertained by any system of education.
The system is more like trying to figuring out a Rubric’s Cube.
The lines quoted at the beginning of the post constitute the chorus of “Sixteen Tons,” and refer to the peculair economic system that prevailed in many coal-mining towns back when the song was written. The miners weren’t paid in cash, but in “scrip.” Scrip was not legal tender, but could only be spent by the miners and their families at company stores — the coal companies operated the general stores in mining towns — or to pay the rent for the company-owned housing where they lived.
Yes Rickie, sounds just like the direction our Government is heading..
Yes Ricky, you are absolutely right. Since te government owns me outright between employment and debt, and since they’ve stacked it so that manyike me will fail I felt it was an appropriate parallel. Tha is for reading!