@ChadLivengood @DoverDelDenison: How this for a whopper? #netDE #Component5 @dwablog

So, here’s a quote from a News Journal Story from 1/12/12, after a pivot from schoolwide scores for non tested subject areas, Dr. Lowery then proclaims this:

 

Officials alleviate teachers’ concerns | The News Journal | delawareonline.com

She also said the state received a special one-year U.S. Department of Education exemption from rules that require student test scores to be a component of teacher evaluations.

“It will not in any way impact a teacher’s grade or trigger teacher discipline,” she said.

Then she writes this: HERE in which there is the following quote:

For the 2011/12 school year, educator summative ratings will be determined without use of Component V except as used to identify highly effective teachers, as noted below. Using Components I – IV, an educator’s summative rating will be determined as follows:

• 0 or 1 satisfactory components = Ineffective summative rating
• 2 satisfactory components = Needs Improvement summative rating
• 3 or 4 satisfactory components = Effective summative rating

Only teachers of DCAS-tested subjects (math, English Language Arts in grades 3-10) will receive a Component V score for this year. They will be eligible for a Highly Effective summative rating and therefore eligible for incentive and retention bonuses. Details on the incentive/retention program will be finalized and announced this spring and will be voluntary at the local level.

So, I attended the hearing that the NJ piece is based on as did several teachers. It couldn’t have sounded more clear to me: non tested subject teachers were not going to be subjected to component 5 at all, schoolwide scores or otherwise and component 5 will not be used in teacher performance conclusions even if the teacher got a rating their would be no punitive actions. Now, a quick read may suggest that since they are only offering perverse incentives for the ELA and Math teachers who score well, that they have satisfied the sensibility of no punitive actions….but, the scoring rubric above clearly suggests that a non ELA/Math teacher who gets 4/4 is effective only. Compared to an ELA/Math teacher who gets 5/5 and can be HIGHLY effective. So, Arts, Social Studies, Phys Ed, Foreign Language, Science teachers, no matter how good they are, cannot be rated highly effective this year? Seems so, and it seems to me like we’ve been lied to, again: non ELA/Math teachers will be punished by having an entire tier of ratings made inaccessible to them for OUTSTANDING, SUPERLATIVE work. I feel bad for all teachers in the system: leadership is failing them in so many ways and from so many different places. Keeping highly effective ratings from those who deserve, and more importantly EARN, them will poison any reasonable evaluation system with toxic doses of bad morale, jealousy, anger, and resentment: DPASS-II(R) will be no exception….

Cant wait to see the DDOE PIO spin machine on this load of crap.

Advertisement