Most teachers in the Rochester school district received the
results of their first evaluations under the new state law last week, and most
were rated either “effective” or “needs development,” says Adam Urbanski, president of the Rochester Teachers Association.
Four ratings were possible: highly effective, effective,
needs development, and ineffective. Urbanski says
that while he doesn’t have exact numbers, the scores fall into what resembles a
bell curve with single-digit percentages at either end of the curve, in the
highly effective and ineffective categories. The rest fall in the middle, he
says.
Even though the largest percentage of teachers received a
score of effective, Urbanski says that he doesn’t
agree that only a small number of Rochester’s teachers are excellent at what
they do, or that a significant number need to show improvement.
Urbanski and Rochester schools
Superintendent Bolgen Vargas have divergent views of
the Annual Professional Performance Review’s value and
accuracy. Vargas sees them as necessary and fair. And he says that the
city’s teaching as well as its non-teaching staff needs to embrace a new
culture of greater accountability.
“Great organizations have high accountability,” he says.
Urbanski says that accountability
is important, but that he doesn’t agree with the APPR.
“I think the whole thing with APPR is not only wrongheaded,
but badly incompetent,” he says. “If [State Education] Commissioner King thinks
they’re so wonderful, why don’t charter and private schools have to do them?”
Out of the district’s roughly 3,200 teachers, most have
received their professional review, Urbanski says.
About 100 haven’t received them, he says, even though the deadline has passed.
Late last week, the RTA held a special meeting to help
teachers understand the scores and what to do if they want to appeal their
results.
“We thought maybe 20 or 30 teachers would show up for that,” Urbanski says. “We had 300 teachers at that meeting.”
Another meeting is scheduled for this week.
Teachers have 15 days after receiving their scores to file an
appeal with a joint district-RTA panel, and Urbanski
says that he expects many teachers to do so. The grounds for appeal range from failure
to give special consideration to special education students or English language
learners, to test scores attributed to students who didn’t take tests.
The APPR provides Superintendent Vargas with the best tool in decades to help identify subpar teachers. Last year,
Rochester school officials fired one teacher, district officials say, while
another resigned under pressure. That’s less than 1 percent of the teaching
work force, which some critics and former superintendents say doesn’t reflect
the typical workplace.
Urbanski says it’s incomprehensible
that a veteran teacher can receive a perfect score of 60 points out of 100 on
professional practice, which is largely based on classroom observations by the
teacher’s peers, and flunk the 40 percent based on results of state and local
tests.
But Vargas says that it’s equally perplexing that teachers
could get glowing scores from peers, even though their students are failing.
“You can’t have an education [system] where all the adults
are doing fine and the kids are not,” Vargas says. “Any organization has to
have an evaluation system that is fair to teachers, but it’s an evaluation
system that is sound.”
Vargas says he’s not looking to fire teachers, but that more
teachers will likely be fired for being ineffective as the APPR is fully
implemented.
“The new evaluation system has some important elements,” he
says. “A good evaluation system for teachers uses multiple measures, and this
one does. A good evaluation system uses peer review. And it tries to get at the
contribution that teachers make to student learning.”
Vargas says that the first thing the APPR does is identify
teachers who need improvement. And he says that the district is committed to
supporting these teachers with an improvement plan. The majority will improve,
he says, but a small group will not, and they will need to be counseled out of
the profession.
“It’s the job of educators to constantly improve,” Vargas
says. “Even a highly effective teacher could improve.”
Vargas says that he supports the fullimplementation of APPR, and that he
wants to develop a similar evaluation program for the district’s non-teaching
staff. Half of the district’s staff, including many central office employees
don’t receive rigorous reviews, Vargas says.
And he says that he is much more careful about approving
tenure recommendations. Some teachers and principals have been recommended for
tenure even though they haven’t had an evaluation in years, Vargas says.
“The old system was indefensible,” he says. “You can’t have a
system that has everybody effective and highly effective. And you should never
have had a system where people came to me with a tenure recommendation without
an evaluation. It’s not the fault of the teachers, but we had a system in here
that let a lot of people down.”
But Urbanski says that teachers unions across the state are working with legislators to
amend the APPR, specifically the portion pertaining to testing.
Urbanski says that if testing is
going to be used, that it should be more performance-based — asking students to
demonstrate what they know by applying their knowledge to a real-life
situation. The latter assessment is more accurate, he says, than multiple choice.
And he says that although he supports Vargas’s quest for
greater accountability, he doesn’t think that Vargas fully understands what the
APPR is doing to teachers. Five teachers recently retired and 30 resigned as a
result of their scores on the APPR, Urbanski says.
“I know Bolgen is not hunting for
teachers,” he says. “But I’m worried that he doesn’t understand the hurt and
humiliation this has caused.”
This article appears in Sep 4-10, 2013.
The teachers are hurt and humiliated? The ,”Wicked Words” by Hugh Rawson have come home to roost and it’s about time! Rosetta Douglass – Frederick Douglass’s Daughter
The sign embodies this message: “In 1845, the Rochester Board of Education implemented the common council’s recommendation that the city’s public schools be closed to black students. The board divided the city into school districts, determined the number of schools in each district, and organized specific schools for the instruction of black children. Frederick Douglass declined to send his eldest daughter to the black school that the city had maintained since 1830’s. In August 1848 he enrolled nine year old Rosetta in the Seward Seminary, Rochester’s oldest female academy, but withdrew her upon learning that she was being taught in a classroom apart from the other students. During the next five years, Rosetta was being educated at home by a private tutor.”
TO H.G. WARNER, ESQ., (Editor of the Rochester Courier)
Sir:
My reasons – I will not say my apology, for addressing to you this letter, will become evident, by perusing the following brief statement of facts.
About the middle of August of the present year – deeply desiring to give my daughter, a child between nine and ten years old, the advantages of a good school – and learning that “Seward Seminary” of this city was an institution of that character – I applied to its principal – Miss Tracy, for the admission of my daughters into that Seminary. The principal – after making suitable inquiries in the child’s mental qualifications, and informing me of the price of tuition per term, agreed to receive the child into the school at the commencement of the September term. Here we parted. I went home, rejoiced that my child was about to enjoy advantages for improving her mind, and fitting her for a useful and honorable life. I supposed that the principal would be as good as her word – and was more disposed to his belief, when I learned that she was an abolitionist – a woman of religious principals and integrity – and would be faithful in the performance of her promises, as she had been prompt in making them. In all this I have been grievously – if not shamefully disappointed.
While absent from home, on a visit to Cleveland, with a view to advance the cause of education and freedom among my despised fellow countrymen – with whom I am in all respects identified, the September term of the “Seward Seminary” commenced, and my daughter was promptly sent to that school. – But instead of receiving her into the school according to agreement – and as in honor the principals was bound to do, she was merely thrust into a room separate from all other scholars, and in this poison-like solitary confinement received that occasional visits of a teacher appointed to instruct her. On my return home, I found her still going to school, and not knowing the character of the treatment extended to her, I asked with a light heart, as I took her to my side, well, my daughter, how do you get on at the Seminary? She answered with tears in her eyes, “I get along pretty well, but father, Miss Tracy does not allow me to go into the room with the other scholars because I am colored.” Stung to the heart’s core by this grievous statement, and suppressing my feelings as well as I could, I went immediately to the Seminary to remonstrate with the principal against the cruelty and injustice of treating my child as a criminal on account of her color – subjecting her to solitary confinement because guilty of a skin not colored like her own. In answer to that I could say against such treatment, I was answered by the principal, that since she promised to receive the child into school, she had consulted with the trustees, (a body of persons I believe unknown to the public,) and that they were opposed to the child’s admission of the school – that she thought at first of disregarding their opposition, but when she remembered how much they had done for her in sustaining the institution, she did not feel at liberty to do so; but she thought if I allowed her to remain and be taught separately for a term or more, that the prejudice might be overcome, and the child admitted into the school with the other young ladies and misses. At a loss to know what to do for the best interest of the child, I consulted with Mrs. Douglass and others, and the result of the consultation was, to take my child from the Seminary, as allowing her to remain there in such circumstances, could only serve to degrade her in her own eyes, and those of the other scholars attending the school. Before, however, carrying out my determination to withdraw the child from the Seminary, Miss Tracy, the principal, submitted the question of the child’s reception to each scholar individually, and I am sorry to say, in a manner well calculated to rouse their prejudices against her. She told them if there was one objection to receiving her, she should be excluded; and said if any of them felt that she had a prejudice, and that that prejudice needed to be strengthened, that they might have time to whisper among themselves, in order to increase and strengthen that prejudice. To one young lady who voted to receive the child, she said, as if in astonishment; “did you mean to vote so? Are you accustomed to black persons?” That young lady stood silent; the question was so extraordinary, and withal so ambiguous, that she knew not what answer to make to it. Despite however, of the unwomanly conduct of the principal, (who, whatever may be her religious faith, has not yet learned that simplest principle of Christianly – to do others as ye would that others should do unto you) – thanks to the incorruptible virtue of childhood and youth, in terms of fullness of their affectionate hearts, they welcomed my child among them, to share with them the blessings and privileges of the school; and when she should sit if admitted, several young ladies shouted “By me, by me, by me.” After this manifestation of sentiment on the part of the scholars, one would have supposed that all opposition on the part of the principal would have ceased; but this was not the case. The child’s admission was subjected to a severer test. Each scholar was then told by the principal, that the question must be submitted to their parents, and that if one parent objected, the child would not be received into the school. The next morning my child went to school as usual, but returned with her books and other materials, saying that one person objected, and that she was therefore excluded form the Seminary.
Now, sir, these are the whole facts, with one important exception that fact is, that you are the person, the only person of all the parents sending young ladies and misses to that Seminary, who was hardened and mean enough to take the responsibility of excluding that child from school. I say, to you exclusively belongs the honor or infamy, of attempting to degrade an innocent child by exclude her from the benefit of attending a respectable school.
If this were a private affair, only affecting myself, and family I should possibly allow this to pass without attracting public attention to it; but such is not the case. It is a deliberate attempt to degrade and injure a large class of persons, whose rights and feelings have been the common sport of yourself, and such persons as yourself, for ages, and I think it unwise to allow you to do so with impunity. – Thank God, oppressed and plundered as we are, and have been, we are not without help. We have a press, open and free, and have ample means by which we are able to proclaim our wrongs as people, and your own infamy, and that proclamation shall be as complete as the means in my power can make it. There is a sufficient amount of liberty in the public mind of Rochester to see that justice is done to all parties, and upon that liberality I rely. The young ladies of the school who saw the child, and had the best means of determining whether her presence in the schoolroom would be offensive or degrading to them, have decided in favor of admitting her, without a dissenting vote. Out of all the parents to who the question of her admission was submitted, not one, except yourself, objected. You are in a minority of
one. You may not remain so; there are perhaps others, whom you may corrupt, and make as much like yourself in blindness of prejudice, as any ordinary wicked person can be.
But you are in minority, and if I mistake not, you will be in a despised minority. – You have already done serious injury to Seward Seminary. Three young ladies left the school immediately after the exclusion of my daughter, and I have heard of three more, who had intended to go, but who have now declined going to that institution, because it had given its sanction to that anti-democratic, and ungodly cast. I am also glad to inform you that you have not succeeded as you had hoped to do, in depriving my child of the means of a decent education, or the privilege of going to an excellent school. She had not been excluded from Seward Seminary five hours, before she was gladly welcomed into another quite as respectable, and equally christian to the one from which she was excluded. She now sits in a school among children as pure, and as white as you and yours, and no one is offended. Now I should like to know how much better are you than me, and how much better your children than mine? We are both worms of the dust, and our children are like us. We differ in color, it is true, (and not much in that respect,) but who is to decide which color is most pleasing to god, or most honorable among men? But I do not wish to waste words or argument on one whom I take to be as destitute of honorable feelings, as he has shown himself full of pride and prejudice.
Frederick Douglass
The 9North Star, March 30, 184
Inga Songbird
Let’s see…if the teacher evaluation scores are wrong, maybe the student grades are wrong and maybe everything is really wonderful in Rochester schools.