Holding Education Hostage (Diane Ravitch)
-snip-
The new Secretary of Education Arne Duncan huddled with his advisors and decided to create the so-called Race to the Top, a competition among states for the new funds. Instead of asking states to come up with their own best ideas for education reform, Duncan laid out a laundry list of policies states must put in place to be eligible to win millions of dollars. Among them was a requirement that state governments base teacher evaluations to a significant degree on the test scores of their students. The assumption was that good teachers produce higher test scores every year, while ineffective teachers do not.
In a time of fiscal stringency, New York, like almost every other state, wanted a share of the federal windfall. New York promptly repealed a law that explicitly prohibited using test courses to assess teacher performance. New York applied for Race to the Top funds and was a finalist. In order to win, the state needed the cooperation of the teachers union. Michael Mulgrew, head of the union, joined city and state officials in applying for the funding. In return, the union received a promise that test scores would count for no more than 20 percent of any teacher’s evaluation. The state won $700 million, and was expected to do what Secretary Duncan wanted: evaluate teachers by test scores, open more charter schools, adopt “college-and-career ready” standards, and undertake a variety of other measures intended to produce rewards for successful schools and punishment for schools with low scores.
-snip-
Despite their qualms, most school districts reached agreements with their local unions, but New York City did not. Mayor Bloomberg believes that teachers can be measured by the rise or fall of their students’ test scores. He believes it so ardently that last year he released the names and rankings of 18,000 teachers to the media. The information was released in response to a Freedom of Information lawsuit filed by the New York Post. Although the city had promised the union that it would fight such a request, it did not, and the teachers’ names were made public.
The list contained many inaccuracies. The city admitted that the margin of error in the rankings was so large that the numbers were essentially meaningless. Bill Gates published an opinion piece in The New York Times opposing the public release of teachers’ names and rankings. Governor Cuomo agreed. Only Mayor Bloomberg remains adamant that “the public has a right to know,” even if the rankings are inaccurate and needlessly humiliating.
-snip-
http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2013/feb/01/holding-education-hostage/
