Lisa North
Teacher/Delegate
PS 3 Brooklyn
As s member of the 2007 UFT Task Force on Testing, I find it unconscionable that our current UFT leadership has agreed to an evaluation system that uses test scores to evaluate teachers when their own 2007 Task Force on testing states clearly,”Do not use student test scores to evaluate teachers. The use of data from student test scores on standardized tests to evaluate teachers may appear simple, be intuitively appealing, but it is wrong.”
It was our UFT leadership that made the agreement with Albany to use test scores to evaluate teachers and in fact to this day they say that it is good to use test data in our evaluations. Yet, in their own Task Force on Testing they stated that there is NO research that shows that a single test should be used to evaluate teachers or students. Read this section taken from the report:
“Professional organizations such as the National Academy of Sciences, the American Psychological Association, the National Council on Measurement in Education, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, the National Council of Teachers of English and the National Parent Teacher Association, have all come out against high stakes testing. The American Education Research Association has stated that tests are always fallible and should never be used as high stakes instruments.
Yet wrongheaded proposals from (former) Chancellor Klein, elected officials, corporate heads and other non-educators who do not understand the limitations of the test data continue to call for the misuse of student test scores in order to make important decisions about children as early as kindergarten. They are also proposing misusing these test results as an evaluative tool for teachers, as a factor in determining teacher salaries and as a basis for granting tenure.”
Only a few years after their own report, it was the UFT leadership, not Joel Klein and corporate leaders, that signed on to something that they know is not a valid way to evaluate teachers. It is time for the UFT leadership to join with community and education groups that are already fighting back against the the use of test scores to evaluate teachers, students, and schools. Students are harmed when the curriculum is narrowed to subjects that are tested.
Please read the full report from UFT task force here
http://www.uft.org/files/attachments/uft-report-2007-04-high-stakes-testing.pdf
If you believe teachers are “MORE than a SCORE’ and the new evaluation system needs to be halted immediately, join us for our day of action on 10/9 Win Back Wednesday! There will be a rally at UFT headquarters at 4:00pm on 10/9 at 52 Broadway NYC. Let’s remind our leadership of the findings of their report
The problem all started when the UFT agreed with Cuomo to go along with the Race to the Top money/application from the feds. For the State to gain this money they had to have the blessings of the major teacher unions. The unions had to AGREE TO CHANGE THEIR EVALUATIONS. All for the purpose of what? To please local governments. This blood money was never, ever, intended to reduce class size, pay for raises, or improve the schools or working conditions for teachers. The money was to be used for one purpose: to create a massive teacher evaluation scheme to get rid of as many teachers as possible and further erode public sector unions in the teaching profession. NYS teacher unions should have said “no” from the start. As we can all see now, the changes to our evaluations in the name of Race to the Top are a living nightmare. This nightmare is real and could have been avoided if the state and city teacher unions walked away the minute they were faced with the prospect of changing their evaluations.
WOW !!!