This is my prediction...in the end, it will all result in lawsuits because VAM and the SLOs will be found to be indefensible as measures of teacher quality. This is the full employment act for school attorneys.
Unfortunately it does not seem the UFT will be joining the lawsuits because they're too busy spinning how this is a win for teachers.
You can bet they are in major CYA mode at 52 Broadway and every critique of the system will get a response from the geniuses there.
I wonder, will they bring back Lyin' Leo Casey to lead the pushback?
Will they bring in Redhog to tell us how this deal is so good it "scrapes the skies"?
I think that the whole system is indefensible in court.
Again, I'm not a lawyer, but it seems to me both the VAM, with its large margins of error and wide swings in stability from year to year, and the SLO's, with their dubious make-up and quality, cannot stand up to scrutiny as measures of teacher quality.
In addition, I think that the changes to test part of the evaluation plan are also problematic.
Under the agreement made in February 2012 by King, Tisch, Cuomo, Mulgrew and Iannuzzi, a teacher found to have "zero growth" in the test score part of the evaluation (20%) would have to be rated "ineffective" automatically no matter what.
But under the plan revealed yesterday, we get this:
"Teachers rated ineffective on student performance based on objective assessments must be rated ineffective overall."
If I'm reading that correctly, that's a big shift from the February 2012 agreement - from "zero growth on student performance" to "ineffective on student performance."
Will that seismic change to the 20% test part of the evaluation stand up in court?
We may never know because the UFT doesn't seem like they're going to challenge any of this stuff in court.
They're already in major spin mode, with Mulgrew sending out a jive letter stating that "The commissioner’s plan is professional and fair and is designed to help teachers improve their skills throughout their careers" when the truth is, the plan is anything but fair and has been instituted simply to give the NYCDOE the tools to fire as many teachers as possible as quickly as possible.
I do think this system unveiled by King yesterday is indefensible.
Unfortunately for us, the UFT leadership are too busy defending it in the court of public opinion to take it to a civil court and see just how indefensible it really is.
0 comments:
Post a Comment