Comments on: NY Teacher Madness

By: Sally Merlo

Sally Merlo — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 16:09:58 +0000

Clearly, the purpose of Mayoral Control has been to ELIMINATE public schools, and to corporatize them- apologies to English teachers here.

Teachers have been tarred and feathered, demonized, micromanged to death – obviously by closing so many public schools, can it be said that the Mayor and his appointed Chancellor have the PUBLIC interest at heart? WHAT exactly, happens to ALL of the students of those closed down public schools?

If you are AGAINST the actions of this Mayor, do we REALLY want him to be in office for ANOTHER term, to wreck more havoc?

Let Mayor Mike KNOW what we think:

Petition:

htp://www.gopetition.com/online/22839.html

Thanks for signing, let everyone you know about this, if you agree.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 15:37:00 +0000

Who wins here is the question. Are we in education to “go get” teachers or are we here to help inform and train teachers?
The children in our care are not an experiment. We can not use them as such-we are here to teach them to the best of our ability. Is it fair of us to use them?

By: dt

dt — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 21:55:00 +0000

Your concern about the "downstream effects" of this sort of accountability is right on target. Your assertion that we already have the ability to use data to help evaluate the lowest performing teachers is really on target.

It would still be complicated but why can't we first concentrate on the more do-able task, getting rid of the most ineffective teachers? Then we could refine the process and incrementally raise our sights.
(after all, it does not do much good to fire bad teachers if you can't recruit qualified replacements, and given the primitive accountability systems of today its inconcievable to me that you could treat young talent the way current teachers are treated and hope for progress.)

This mostly has to be local, but I'd welcome suggestions for both local and national efforts. (Obama's Marshall Plan for Teaching is a great "carrot;" probably all "sticks" need to be local.) Clearly ineffective teachers are a burden on the union and fellow teachers, as well as the kids and administrators.

The key ingredient for any effort to remove ineffective teachers is trust. And trust is being squandered by efforts like the NYC district's approach. But the trust we build in negotiating data being used in a modest manner, could then be applied to other collaborative efforts.

I'm not naive and I understand the complexities in my suggestion. But in my experience, unions are getting a raw deal. Administrators often play the game like the old O State football team. They were such klutzs that their opponents walked off the field. O State scored three plays later.

I bumped into a union president when he was still depressed by a termination hearing that he had won! "What does it take to fire a teacher in this district?! I 'won' but ..." Our union repeatedly makes sincere offers to negotiate more efficient procedures. Is the issue about students' welfare, or is it about control?

John Thompson

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 14:31:00 +0000

This post is another unfortunate example of how far removed our most influential policy “wonks” are from actual social science research.

There is a *huge* difference between an actual live experiment where actions taken by the researchers can have life- (or career-) altering consequences for the subjects involved, and a statistical analysis of historical panel data on teachers and students, a charter admissions lottery, etc.

By: skoolboy

skoolboy — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 05:06:00 +0000

Andy,
You misunderstand Eduwonkette’s point regarding research ethics. She’s not saying that all experiments involving people are unethical — lotteries, panel studies, etc. can certainly be appropriate, but two important conditions must be met: participants in studies must voluntarily consent to participate after being informed about the potential risks and benefits of the study, and the study must provide appropriate protections for the privacy of participants. The Tuskegee syphilis experiment is one of the most egregious and racist governmental acts in American history. From the standpoint of research ethics, the central violation was that the individuals enrolled in the study did not give their informed consent; they were never told of their diagnosis, and were prevented from pursuing other treatment for what was described to them as “bad blood”. Of course what’s happening in New York is not commensurate with this. But the ethical principle of voluntary informed consent is still an issue in New York. Don’t people in a research study sponsored by a governmental agency have a right to know that they are being studied? Even if they’re teachers?