As we all know, "U" and "S" are opinions, have no facts or data, are meaningless, and are changed by the NYC DOE if the teacher agrees to resign. We, the public, actually have no idea who is in the classroom with our children.
See the misleading report below.
Betsy Combier
Bad apples: New report shows dozens of city schools are plagued with 'unsatisfactory' teachers
A scathing new report from the education reform group StudentsFirstNY shows that kids in poorer neighborhoods who need more help in school are more likely to end up with the underperforming teachers.
NYDAILY NEWS
Jan 10, 2013
LINK
Dozens of city schools are crammed full of bad teachers, with some kids seeing incompetent hacks in as many as a third of their classrooms.
A scathing new report from the education reform group StudentsFirstNY shows that kids in poor neighborhoods who need the most help in school are far more likely to end up with the learning lemons.
“It’s a double hit,” said Micah Lasher, StudentsFirstNY’s director. “These kids start out with challenges, and then we give them a sub-par education. We’re making the challenges worse.
”
The report looked at the number of teachers in each of the city’s 1,509 general education schools who received “unsatisfactory” ratings from their principals.
The so-called “U-ratings,” which are based on formal classroom observations and used in tenure decisions, are very rare, with only 3% of the city’s 65,000 general education teachers receiving failing grades last year.
Nearly half of the city’s schools had no U-rated teachers at all.
Yet U-rated teachers were concentrated in certain schools, particularly in struggling neighborhoods of central Brooklyn, the South Bronx, southern Queens and lower Manhattan.
At a stunning 30 schools, 20% of teachers had unsatisfactory ratings.
Two schools had lemons in at least a third of their classrooms.
But teachers and parents say U-ratings aren’t just about teacher quality. They’re also a reflection on how aggressive principals are in pushing out teachers they don’t like.
Parents at Public School 4 in the Bronx suspected tough management led to 34% of instructors getting U-ratings last year.
“If the principal is rating the teachers, who’s rating him?” asked Anthony Patterson, 52, whose daughter, Tajanae, is a sixth-grader at the A-rated school. “I’ve never had an issue with the teachers.
”
The report on teacher quality advises the city to adopt a new teacher evaluation system and find new ways to attract high-quality instructors.
It comes a day after Gov. Cuomo used his State of the State speech in Albany to call for bar exam-style tests to keep bad teachers out of public schools as the city battles the teachers union over new teacher evaluations.
If the union and the city fail to reach an agreement on a new teacher rating system by Jan. 17, the state will withhold $250 million in funding.
Education Department officials said they are already working to implement the recommendations of the report.
“Having a great teacher is critical to our students’ success, which is why we have pursued many of these recommendations,” said agency spokeswoman Connie Pankratz.
bchapman@nydailynews.com
Dear Betsy,
ReplyDeleteThere is a research study stating that the academic levels of students will always reflect the economic level of the neighborhood. All other factors were tested to determine the cause of students' performance and not one of these factors was a major cause of student performance.